1
00:00:03,958 --> 00:00:09,467
(Applause)

2
00:00:11,737 --> 00:00:13,920
Give me 30 seconds,

3
00:00:15,715 --> 00:00:19,900
And I can give you a list of 
30 terrifying challenges

4
00:00:19,900 --> 00:00:24,905
facing humanity and the planet 
at this point in history.

5
00:00:25,091 --> 00:00:27,416
And we wouldn't sleep tonight.

6
00:00:29,713 --> 00:00:31,874
There are so many of them, 
and they seem to be so frightening

7
00:00:31,874 --> 00:00:34,122
It's not really surprising

8
00:00:34,122 --> 00:00:37,074
that many of us are feeling 
a little bit disheartened,

9
00:00:37,585 --> 00:00:39,674
and a little bit anxious at the moment.

10
00:00:39,674 --> 00:00:41,567
But the way I see it -

11
00:00:41,567 --> 00:00:43,570
There are really only two things

12
00:00:43,570 --> 00:00:46,161
stopping the world working at the moment

13
00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:51,788
The first one is the fact that 
the countries don't collaborate enough.

14
00:00:52,582 --> 00:00:55,755
We know the solutions 
to most of those challenges.

15
00:00:56,151 --> 00:00:59,263
But we don't implement them
because we don't work together.

16
00:00:59,898 --> 00:01:03,013
And the second thing 
that stopping the world working properly

17
00:01:03,013 --> 00:01:06,058
is the fact that every single 
one of those challenges

18
00:01:06,058 --> 00:01:09,549
has been caused by the behaviour
of human beings.

19
00:01:10,089 --> 00:01:13,769
And if we can change that
we can change everything.

20
00:01:14,394 --> 00:01:18,403
Now those sound like 
big tasks and they are.

21
00:01:18,403 --> 00:01:20,184
But I'm optimistic.

22
00:01:21,212 --> 00:01:27,061
For the last 10 years, I've been working
on projects and plans and policies.

23
00:01:27,491 --> 00:01:31,755
to try and attack those two barriers
to making the world work better.

24
00:01:32,396 --> 00:01:35,936
Some of them I tried to encourage
countries to implement.

25
00:01:36,560 --> 00:01:41,624
But the coolest ones, I keep
and I try to do them myself.

26
00:01:42,992 --> 00:01:48,115
So I'd like to tell you about two of those
in the few minutes that I've got today.

27
00:01:49,511 --> 00:01:51,314
The first one is more of an update.

28
00:01:51,618 --> 00:01:56,305
It's a project called The Good Country Index,
which I launched back in 2014.

29
00:01:56,714 --> 00:02:01,752
I haven't spoken about it for a while,
but it's been through 4 different editions.

30
00:02:01,892 --> 00:02:04,411
And I thought it would be good
to give an update.

31
00:02:04,411 --> 00:02:09,312
So The Good Country Index is an attempt
to measure what every country on earth

32
00:02:09,685 --> 00:02:11,495
gives to the rest of the world

33
00:02:11,495 --> 00:02:13,535
outside of its own borders,

34
00:02:13,535 --> 00:02:16,064
a kind of balance sheet
for the world if you like.

35
00:02:16,428 --> 00:02:18,665
A lot of people, when I 
originally launched it said

36
00:02:18,665 --> 00:02:22,178
not another country index, surely 
there are enough of those around already.

37
00:02:22,178 --> 00:02:26,603
But the interesting thing is that
almost all of the others look inwards.

38
00:02:26,603 --> 00:02:29,513
They treat countries as if they were little islands

39
00:02:29,513 --> 00:02:32,095
inhabiting their own private oceans.

40
00:02:32,095 --> 00:02:34,855
But surely that doesn't really make sense.

41
00:02:34,855 --> 00:02:39,647
Because everything everybody does
has an impact on all of us, always.

42
00:02:39,927 --> 00:02:44,666
If one country pollutes the air or water,
that's our air and our water.

43
00:02:44,866 --> 00:02:48,810
If they go to war, 
drags other countries in

44
00:02:48,810 --> 00:02:50,920
and the refugees pour out.

45
00:02:52,036 --> 00:02:53,938
There is really nothing
you can do any more

46
00:02:53,938 --> 00:02:56,718
that only impacts the domestic population.

47
00:02:56,718 --> 00:02:59,351
So what The Good Country Index
attempts to do

48
00:02:59,351 --> 00:03:02,836
is to make a start towards 
helping people to understand

49
00:03:02,836 --> 00:03:05,464
that this is an interconnected system,

50
00:03:05,464 --> 00:03:09,240
by measuring what each country
contributes to the rest of the world.

51
00:03:10,410 --> 00:03:14,927
Now, it's not my opinion which countries
rank higher and which ones rank lower.

52
00:03:15,330 --> 00:03:19,293
It's formed from a set of 35 
large databases,

53
00:03:19,293 --> 00:03:21,940
which mostly come from the UN system.

54
00:03:21,940 --> 00:03:25,143
And what they do is they simply measure
the positive and negative effects

55
00:03:25,143 --> 00:03:27,205
that the countries have.

56
00:03:27,205 --> 00:03:30,291
It's always been a tiny bit controversial.

57
00:03:30,291 --> 00:03:31,714
But that's kind of good,

58
00:03:31,714 --> 00:03:34,864
because it helps to start
a new kind of argument.

59
00:03:35,709 --> 00:03:38,191
In fact, it works really well.

60
00:03:38,191 --> 00:03:42,374
Within hours of me releasing the first
edition of The Good Country Index

61
00:03:42,374 --> 00:03:47,186
I started receiving thousands of 
beautiful hate mails from trolls

62
00:03:47,186 --> 00:03:52,547
all over the world, demanding to know 
why the country they hate ranks so high.

63
00:03:52,547 --> 00:03:57,512
and the country they love ranks so low,
and how I cooked up the entire thing

64
00:03:57,512 --> 00:04:01,342
just to produce that specific result
and annoy them personally.

65
00:04:01,342 --> 00:04:02,842
(Laughter)

66
00:04:02,938 --> 00:04:06,093
And we have conversations about
these things and we argue about it,

67
00:04:06,093 --> 00:04:10,413
and at the end I'd always say 
the same thing, "Look, it's working."

68
00:04:10,685 --> 00:04:12,693
I don't know if I am right. 
I don't know if you are right.

69
00:04:12,693 --> 00:04:15,343
But in the end, we are 
discussing the right thing.

70
00:04:15,343 --> 00:04:18,795
We are talking about 
not how well is your country,

71
00:04:18,795 --> 00:04:21,136
but how much is your country doing.

72
00:04:21,506 --> 00:04:23,870
And that's what it was supposed to achieve.

73
00:04:24,043 --> 00:04:28,695
So by pushing the direction of
the argument, the conversation,

74
00:04:28,695 --> 00:04:31,039
towards a new way of looking at countries,

75
00:04:31,039 --> 00:04:33,390
then I think that 
it's pushing the agenda forward

76
00:04:33,827 --> 00:04:35,928
So, my colleague Robert Govers and I

77
00:04:35,928 --> 00:04:39,061
just released the latest edition
of The Good Country Index.

78
00:04:39,242 --> 00:04:43,068
And I'll just give you a very quick glimpse
of what's going on there.

79
00:04:44,258 --> 00:04:46,172
Finland came first.

80
00:04:47,705 --> 00:04:51,142
One of these days, somebody is going to
invent a country ranking

81
00:04:51,142 --> 00:04:53,760
that does not have 
a nordic country in the top ten.

82
00:04:53,760 --> 00:04:56,330
(Laughter)

83
00:04:56,584 --> 00:04:59,014
An index of modesty perhaps.

84
00:04:59,907 --> 00:05:03,177
Anyway well done Finland, seriously!
It's absolutely great.

85
00:05:03,379 --> 00:05:06,839
And another rather interesting thing
happened in this latest edition

86
00:05:06,839 --> 00:05:08,951
of The Good Country Index, 
and that was

87
00:05:08,951 --> 00:05:12,932
what you can see if you go to the 
slightly lower in the Index,

88
00:05:12,932 --> 00:05:20,332
that the USA has various reasons sunk
quite a long way since the last edition,

89
00:05:20,332 --> 00:05:23,315
and Russia for various reasons has risen.

90
00:05:23,315 --> 00:05:27,535
And we now have this peculiar situation
where the USA and Russia

91
00:05:27,535 --> 00:05:29,579
relative to the size of their economies,

92
00:05:29,579 --> 00:05:33,675
are neck and neck, 
quite a long way down the Index.

93
00:05:33,675 --> 00:05:37,474
It's like two mean kids holding hands
at the edge of the playground

94
00:05:37,474 --> 00:05:39,433
and refusing to join the others.

95
00:05:39,433 --> 00:05:44,283
(Laughter) (Cheering) (Applause)

96
00:05:47,993 --> 00:05:50,566
But hey, it's an interesting result,

97
00:05:50,566 --> 00:05:54,299
but in the end, I'm afraid to say that
the world hasn't changed very much

98
00:05:54,299 --> 00:05:57,452
since the first one came out in 2014.

99
00:05:57,452 --> 00:06:01,612
It's still America first, Britain first,
Russia first, Germany first.

100
00:06:03,137 --> 00:06:06,176
And in a way I understand that. 
I don't have a problem with it.

101
00:06:06,184 --> 00:06:09,978
I mean after all, if you are elected
to run a country, it's pretty obvious

102
00:06:09,978 --> 00:06:12,856
that you put that country's interest first.

103
00:06:12,856 --> 00:06:16,706
But what I find rather demoralising 
about those kinds of sentiments

104
00:06:16,706 --> 00:06:20,418
is the implication that
everybody else has to come last.

105
00:06:20,418 --> 00:06:22,136
And this is what I dispute.

106
00:06:22,136 --> 00:06:24,223
I think we can all come first.

107
00:06:25,153 --> 00:06:27,257
And one of the nice things about
the job I have been doing

108
00:06:27,257 --> 00:06:30,392
for the last 20 years or so
advising governments around the world

109
00:06:30,392 --> 00:06:33,322
and trying out real policies
in the real world,

110
00:06:33,322 --> 00:06:36,141
is that it's perfectly
possible to harmonise

111
00:06:36,141 --> 00:06:39,103
your domestic and your
international responsibilities.

112
00:06:39,103 --> 00:06:41,301
You can do the right thing
for your own people,

113
00:06:41,301 --> 00:06:44,560
and you can do the right thing
for humanity at the same time

114
00:06:44,560 --> 00:06:46,472
without sacrificing yourself.

115
00:06:46,472 --> 00:06:49,341
And the funny thing is, 
it makes better policies.

116
00:06:49,341 --> 00:06:52,248
This is something that most
governments have simply never tried.

117
00:06:53,463 --> 00:06:57,155
So on to the second thing
that's stopping the world working

118
00:06:57,155 --> 00:07:01,576
the slightly more complicated issue
of the behaviour of us humans.

119
00:07:01,975 --> 00:07:03,890
Well, to get started on this.

120
00:07:03,890 --> 00:07:07,673
I thought it would be interesting to try
to find out how many people in the world

121
00:07:07,673 --> 00:07:10,654
already agree with 
some of these basic principles,

122
00:07:10,654 --> 00:07:14,361
the ones outlined behind 
The Good Country Index.

123
00:07:14,361 --> 00:07:16,225
So Robert and I did some research

124
00:07:16,225 --> 00:07:20,153
and we discovered that no less than
10% of the world's population

125
00:07:20,153 --> 00:07:23,716
appears to fully share
the principles of The Good Country,

126
00:07:23,716 --> 00:07:28,436
the idea that countries should collaborate
and cooperate a great deal more,

127
00:07:28,436 --> 00:07:30,930
and compete a tiny bit less.

128
00:07:30,930 --> 00:07:35,925
This is great news. 10 percent,
that's 760 million people.

129
00:07:36,295 --> 00:07:39,832
If that were a nation, that would be
the third largest nation on the planet

130
00:07:39,832 --> 00:07:41,564
after China and India.

131
00:07:42,149 --> 00:07:45,086
And I have to admit when 
those numbers came out,

132
00:07:45,086 --> 00:07:46,786
I got very excited.

133
00:07:47,234 --> 00:07:50,411
But then on mature reflection,
I realised that actually

134
00:07:50,411 --> 00:07:54,285
the counterpart of that is that
90% of the people in the world

135
00:07:54,285 --> 00:07:56,179
don't agree with that proposition.

136
00:07:56,371 --> 00:07:59,102
And I think if one was going to
take this challenge seriously,

137
00:07:59,102 --> 00:08:01,624
one has to focus on the 90%.

138
00:08:01,894 --> 00:08:06,274
It's not enough just to sell messages
to the people who already agree with you,

139
00:08:06,274 --> 00:08:09,688
and try to make them make
tiny tweaks in their behaviour

140
00:08:09,688 --> 00:08:12,493
because frankly, it's too late for that.

141
00:08:12,493 --> 00:08:14,214
We are in too much of a hurry.

142
00:08:14,227 --> 00:08:16,919
We need big change,
we need it very soon.

143
00:08:16,919 --> 00:08:18,984
In fact, we need it right now.

144
00:08:19,571 --> 00:08:24,311
So how can we deeply educate
the majority of the world's population

145
00:08:24,311 --> 00:08:27,515
to behave in a way which is more 
friendly to the world that we live in

146
00:08:27,515 --> 00:08:29,474
and more friendly to each other?

147
00:08:29,707 --> 00:08:33,980
Because by the way, when I was speaking
of trolls, of course it reminded me

148
00:08:33,980 --> 00:08:38,652
of this strange idea that emerged recently
and I don't know where it came from

149
00:08:38,918 --> 00:08:41,857
that the people who 
care more about local things

150
00:08:41,857 --> 00:08:44,592
and people like me who
care more about global things

151
00:08:44,592 --> 00:08:46,174
should be enemies.

152
00:08:46,186 --> 00:08:48,217
Who thought of this idea?

153
00:08:48,217 --> 00:08:51,314
I think this is the most dangerous idea
in the world at the moment,

154
00:08:51,314 --> 00:08:55,024
and I think we should all look out for it
and challenge it whenever we hear it.

155
00:08:55,035 --> 00:08:57,194
The people who care more 
about local things

156
00:08:57,194 --> 00:09:00,584
and the people who care more
about global things shouldn't be enemies.

157
00:09:00,584 --> 00:09:02,392
They should be working together.

158
00:09:02,392 --> 00:09:04,941
We should be glad that each other exists.

159
00:09:04,941 --> 00:09:08,397
There isn't time for this kind of
childish tribalism.

160
00:09:08,397 --> 00:09:10,913
We need to get on and fix things.

161
00:09:11,488 --> 00:09:13,395
While anyway as I was saying

162
00:09:14,008 --> 00:09:18,128
the 90% need to be fundamentally 
educated in a different way.

163
00:09:19,092 --> 00:09:21,883
And I started looking at some 
of the websites of the NGOs,

164
00:09:21,883 --> 00:09:24,637
and the campaigning 
organisations and the charities,

165
00:09:24,637 --> 00:09:27,721
and I began to notice there was
a common theme emerging.

166
00:09:27,891 --> 00:09:30,960
There was a sentence, which in
one form or another

167
00:09:30,960 --> 00:09:32,346
kept on cropping up.

168
00:09:32,346 --> 00:09:34,494
And the sentence was something like this,

169
00:09:35,073 --> 00:09:39,333
"And we should leave the world
in a better state for our children."

170
00:09:40,679 --> 00:09:44,622
And I've tried to read this sentence
about 93 times in different places.

171
00:09:44,622 --> 00:09:46,587
I began thinking to myself,

172
00:09:47,550 --> 00:09:49,969
"you know that's pretty arrogant really."

173
00:09:49,969 --> 00:09:51,835
The idea that you could 
take something huge

174
00:09:51,835 --> 00:09:56,172
like climate change, huge systemic problem
or conflict or migration

175
00:09:56,172 --> 00:10:00,212
that's taken billions of people 
centuries to perpetrate,

176
00:10:00,212 --> 00:10:02,352
and you are gonna fix it 
before you check out?

177
00:10:02,352 --> 00:10:03,488
(Laughter)

178
00:10:03,488 --> 00:10:07,971
It's this kind of arrogance and impatience
that causes more problems than it solves.

179
00:10:08,621 --> 00:10:12,193
If we only have the nerve,
if we only have the courage

180
00:10:12,193 --> 00:10:13,850
to give it one generation,

181
00:10:13,850 --> 00:10:17,360
we can fix everything and 
we can fix it for good.

182
00:10:17,976 --> 00:10:22,996
Because every single day that passes
humanity has an opportunity to start again.

183
00:10:23,938 --> 00:10:27,695
Because every single day that passes
new children are born,

184
00:10:27,695 --> 00:10:30,105
and they can learn in new ways.

185
00:10:30,105 --> 00:10:33,272
So there is a solution to every
single challenge facing humanity.

186
00:10:33,272 --> 00:10:34,745
It's called education.

187
00:10:34,745 --> 00:10:37,365
But we need to do it in a new way
and a different way

188
00:10:37,366 --> 00:10:40,836
and a much more ambitious way
than we've done it before.

189
00:10:40,836 --> 00:10:43,769
Imagine if you wield a test tube rack

190
00:10:43,769 --> 00:10:46,957
of the sort that you probably had
when you studied science at school.

191
00:10:47,422 --> 00:10:51,834
And in this test tube rack made of wood
there are 7, 8, 10 I don't know

192
00:10:51,834 --> 00:10:55,861
little glass test tubes, and each one 
contains a different coloured liquid.

193
00:10:55,861 --> 00:11:00,646
And each one of those liquids
is a vaccine, an educational vaccine

194
00:11:00,646 --> 00:11:04,083
against the behaviours that cause
climate change, conflicts,

195
00:11:04,083 --> 00:11:08,498
human right abuses, terrorism, migration
pandemic and all the rest of it.

196
00:11:08,498 --> 00:11:12,390
And if we administer these educational
vaccines to all of our children,

197
00:11:12,390 --> 00:11:16,696
in the next generation, they will be
incapable of continuing the behaviours

198
00:11:16,696 --> 00:11:19,081
that we have indulged in for so long.

199
00:11:19,802 --> 00:11:23,149
If we teach our children 
cultural anthropology at the age of 6,

200
00:11:23,149 --> 00:11:25,935
it's a wonderful subject for 6 year olds.

201
00:11:25,935 --> 00:11:30,385
They grow up taking a scientific pride
in understanding cultural differences.

202
00:11:30,817 --> 00:11:32,894
They are immunised 
against the kind of ignorance

203
00:11:32,894 --> 00:11:35,096
that leads to prejudice and intolerance.

204
00:11:35,096 --> 00:11:37,899
I know that one works, because 
I experimented on my own children

205
00:11:37,899 --> 00:11:39,403
and it works a charm.

206
00:11:39,403 --> 00:11:40,894
(Laughter)

207
00:11:41,571 --> 00:11:44,687
If we want to lessen 
the speed of climate change,

208
00:11:44,687 --> 00:11:47,692
we need to teach our children 
oceanography and meteorology,

209
00:11:47,692 --> 00:11:49,722
and then maybe one day
they will switch off the damn light

210
00:11:49,722 --> 00:11:50,844
when they leave the bedroom.

211
00:11:50,844 --> 00:11:52,344
(Laugher)

212
00:11:52,344 --> 00:11:56,202
We need to teach our children hygiene
so that there is less disease.

213
00:11:56,202 --> 00:11:59,568
We need to teach them to meditate 
so there is less mental illness,

214
00:11:59,568 --> 00:12:02,680
and they learn to have more empathy 
and more understanding and more kindness

215
00:12:02,680 --> 00:12:04,647
towards everybody else.

216
00:12:04,647 --> 00:12:06,121
There are so many subjects.

217
00:12:06,121 --> 00:12:08,166
I can't decide which ones they should be.

218
00:12:08,166 --> 00:12:11,238
What I think we need to do is 
we need to have a big global discussion

219
00:12:11,238 --> 00:12:12,325
on the internet

220
00:12:12,325 --> 00:12:14,556
where everybody puts in their own idea

221
00:12:14,556 --> 00:12:17,184
about what should be 
the next set of values

222
00:12:17,184 --> 00:12:19,784
that we are going to teach the next
generation of children

223
00:12:19,784 --> 00:12:22,261
so they can run towards
the global challenges

224
00:12:22,261 --> 00:12:24,769
instead of running away 
from them as we've done.

225
00:12:26,862 --> 00:12:28,658
And we can do this.

226
00:12:29,253 --> 00:12:34,895
Next year, it will be my aim, my ambition
to have one hundred ministers of education

227
00:12:34,895 --> 00:12:38,632
signing up to this new global compact
of educational values.

228
00:12:38,932 --> 00:12:42,268
UNESCO has already signed a letter saying
that they would like to support this

229
00:12:42,268 --> 00:12:44,181
if we can get it going.

230
00:12:44,688 --> 00:12:48,077
And if you have any doubts
about whether it's possible

231
00:12:48,078 --> 00:12:52,588
for humanity to engage
in such a big common project

232
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
despite all of that cultural differences,

233
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
we'll just have a think about
the United National's charter

234
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
or the human rights documentation.

235
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Have a read if you 
haven't read it for a while.

236
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
These are the most beautiful documents
ever produced by humanity,

237
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
and they really give you faith,
because they remind you as you read them

238
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that we are capable of 
behaving like a single species

239
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
inhabiting a single planet.

240
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We can do it if we really want to
and if we do it at scale.

241
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The good news is that 
it's more about joining up the dots

242
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
than starting from scratch.

243
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Because there are of course hundreds 
and hundreds if not thousands of projects

244
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
around the world at the moment,
finding and experimenting different ways

245
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
of educating children so they
behave better in the future.

246
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
The trouble is they are mostly
single topics and in single countries.

247
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
There's no time for doing it 
that slowly now.

248
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We need to do it big,
and we need to do it in one go.

249
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Greta Thunberg, the 16 year old 
Swedish climate activist

250
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
is beginning to discover and beginning 
to show us how very difficult it is

251
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
to persuade grown-ups
to change their behaviour.

252
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But the simple fact to the matter is

253
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
that we can see that a lot of children
have got the right attitude,

254
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
but they don't have the solutions.

255
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Some adults have the solutions but they
definitely don't have the right attitude.

256
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And so guess what, it's another 
necessity for collaboration,

257
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
the children and the grown-ups
working together.

258
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
We all have to think very hard now
about being better human beings.

259
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
And that's about being better citizens,
both locally and globally.

260
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
But it's also perhaps mainly
about being better ancestors.

261
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
If we can do that,
we can make the world work.

262
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
Thank you.

263
99:59:59,999 --> 99:59:59,999
(Applause) (Cheering)