WEBVTT

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Give me 30 seconds,

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And I can give you a list of 
30 terrifying challenges

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facing humanity and the planet 
at this point in history.

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And we wouldn't sleep tonight.

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There are so many of them, 
and they seem to be so frightening

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It's not really surprising

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that many of us are feeling 
a little bit disheartened,

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and a little bit anxious at the moment.

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But the way I see it -

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There are really only two things

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stopping the world working at the moment

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The first one is the fact that 
the countries don't collaborate enough.

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We know the solutions 
to most of those challenges.

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But we don't implement them
because we don't work together.

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And the second thing 
that stopping the world working properly

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is the fact that every single 
one of those challenges

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has been caused by the behaviour
of human beings.

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And if we can change that
we can change everything.

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Now those sound like 
big tasks and they are.

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But I'm optimistic.

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For the last 10 years, I've been working
on projects and plans and policies.

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to try and attack those two barriers
to making the world work better.

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Some of them I tried to encourage
countries to implement.

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But the coolest ones, I keep
and I try to do them myself.

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So I'd like to tell you two of those
in the few minutes that I've got today.

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The first one is more of an update.

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It's a project called the Good Country Index,
which I launched back in 2014.

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I haven't spoken about it for a while,
but it has been through 4 different editions.

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And I thought it would be good
to give an update.

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So the Good Country Index is an attempt
to measure what every country on earth

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gives to the rest of the world

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outside of its own borders,

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a kind of balance sheet
for the world if you like.

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A lot of people, when I 
originally launched it said

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not another country index, surely 
there are enough of those around already.

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But the interesting thing is that
almost all of the others look inwards.

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They treat countries as if they were little islands

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inhabiting their own private oceans.

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But surely that doesn't really make sense.

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Because everything everybody does
has an impact on all of us, always.

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If one country pollutes the air or water,
that's our air and our water.

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If they go to war, 
drags other countries in

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and the refugees pour out.

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There is really nothing you can do any more

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So what the good country 
index attempts to do

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is to make a start towards 
helping people to understand

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that this is an interconnected system.