How to make the world work | Simon Anholt | TEDxHamburg

Give me 30 seconds,

And I can give you a list of
30 terrifying challenges

facing humanity and the planet
at this point in history.

And we wouldn't sleep tonight.

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

It's not really surprising

that many of us are feeling
a little bit disheartened,

and a little bit anxious at the moment.

But the way I see it -

There are really only two things

stopping the world working at the moment

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

We know the solutions
to most of those challenges.

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

And the second thing
that stopping the world working properly

is the fact that every single
one of those challenges

has been caused by the behaviour
of human beings.

And if we can change that
we can change everything.

Now those sound like
big tasks and they are.

But I'm optimistic.

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

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

Some of them I tried to encourage
countries to implement.

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

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

The first one is more of an update.

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

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

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

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

gives to the rest of the world

outside of its own borders,

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

A lot of people, when I
originally launched it said

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

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

They treat countries as if they were little islands

inhabiting their own private oceans.

But surely that doesn't really make sense.

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

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

If they go to war,
drags other countries in

and the refugees pour out.

There is really nothing you can do any more

So what the good country
index attempts to do

is to make a start towards
helping people to understand

that this is an interconnected system

by measuring what each country
contributes to the rest of the world.

Now, it's not my opinion which countries
rank higher and which ones rank lower.

It's formed from a set of 35
large databases,

which mostly come from the UN system.

And what they do is they simply measure
the positive and negative effects

that the countries have.

It's always been a tiny bit controversial.

But that's kind of good,

because it helps to start
a new kind of argument.

In fact, it works really well

within hours of me releasing the first
edition of the Good Country Index

I started receiving thousands of
beautiful hate mails from trolls

all over the world, demanding to know
why the country they hate ranks so high.

and the country they love ranks so low,
and how I cooked up the entire thing

just to produce that specific result
and annoy them personally.

And we have conversations about
these things and we argue about it,

and at the end I always say the same thing
"Look, it's working."

I don't know if I am right.
I don't know if you are right.

But in the end, we are discussing
the right thing.

We are talking about
not how well is your country,

but how much is your country doing.