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.

And that's what it was supposed to achieve.

So by pushing the direction of
the argument, the conversation,

towards a new way of looking at countries,

then I think that
it's pushing the agenda forward

So, my colleague Robert Govers and I

just released the latest edition
of the Good Country Index.

And I'll just give you a very quick glimpse
of what's going on there.

Finland came first.

One of these days, somebody is going to
invent a country ranking

that does not have
a nordic country in the top ten.

(Laughter)

An index of modesty perhaps.

Anyway well done Finland, seriously!
It's absolutely great.

And another rather interesting thing
happened in this latest edition

of the Good Country Index,
and that was

what you can see if you go to the
slightly lower in the Index,

the USA has various reasons sunk
quite a long way since the last edition,

and Russia for various reasons has risen.

And we now have this peculiar situation
where the USA and Russia

relative to the size of their economies,

are neck and neck,
quite a long way down the Index.

It's like two mean kids holding hands
at the edge of the playground

and refusing to join the others.

(Laughter) (Cheering)( Applause)

But hey, it's an interesting result,

but in the end, I'm afraid to say that
the world hasn't changed very much

since the first one came out in 2014.

It's still America first, Britain first,
Russia first, Germany first.

And in a way I understand that.
I don't have a problem with it.

I mean after all, if you are elected
to run a country, it's pretty obvious

you put that country's interest first.

But what I find rather demoralising
about those kinds of sentiments

is the implication that
everybody else has to come last.

And this is what I dispute.

I think we can all come first.

And one of the nice things about
the job I have been doing

for the last 20 years or so
advising governments around the world

and trying out real policies
in the real world,

is that it's perfectly
possible to harmonise

your domestic and your
international responsibilities.

You can do the right thing
for your own people,

and you can do the right thing
for humanity at the same time

without sacrificing yourself.

And the funny thing is,
it makes better policies.

This is something that most
governments have simply never tried.

So on to the second thing
that's stopping the world working

the slightly more complicated issue
of the behaviour of us humans.

Well, to get started on this.

I thought it would be interesting
to find out how many people in the world

already agree with
some of these basic principles,

the ones outlined behind
The Good Country Index.

So Robert and I did some research

and we discovered that no less than
10% of the world population

appears to fully share
the principles of The Good Country.

The idea that countries should collaborate
and cooperate a great deal more,

and compete a tiny bit less.

This is great news. 10 percent,
that's 760 million people.

If that were a nation, that would be
the third largest nation on the planet

after China and India.

And I have to admit when
those numbers came out,

I got very excited.

But then on mature reflection,
I realised that actually

the counterpart of that is that
90% of the people in the world

don't agree with that proposition.

And I think if one was going to
take this challenge seriously,

one has to focus on the 90%.

It's not enough just to sell messages
to the people who already agree with you,

and try to make them make tiny tweaks
in their behaviour because

frankly, it's too late for that.

We are in too much of a hurry.

We need big change,
we need it very soon.

In fact, we need it right now.

So how can we deeply educate
the majority of the world's population

to behave in a way which is more
friendly to the world that we live in

and more friendly to each other?

Because by the way, when I was speaking
of trolls, of course it reminded me

of this strange idea that emerged recently
and I don't know where it came from

that the people who
care more about local things

and people like me who
care more about global things

should be enemies.

Who thought of this idea?

I think this is the most dangerous idea
in the world at the moment,

and I think we should all look out for it
and challenge it whenever we hear it.

The people who care more
about local things

and the people who care more
about global things shouldn't be enemies.

They should be working together.

We should be glad that each other exist.

There isn't time for this kind of
childish tribalism.

We need to get on and fix things.

While anyway as I was saying

the 90% need to be fundamentally
educated in a different way.

And I started looking at some
of the websites of the NGOs,

the campaigning organisations
and charities,

and I began to notice there was
a common theme emerging.

There was a sentence, which in
one form or another

kept on cropping up.

And the sentence was something like this,

"And we should leave the world
in a better state for our children."

And I've tried to read this sentence
about 93 times in different places.

I began thinking to myself,

"you know that's pretty arrogant really."

The idea you can take something huge

like climate change, huge systemic problem
or conflict or migration

that's taken billions of people
centuries to perpetrate,

and you are gonna fix it
before you check out?

(Laughter)

It's this kind of arrogance and impatience
that causes more problems than it solves.

If we only have the nerve,
if we only have the courage

to give it one generation,

we can fix everything and
we can fix it for good.

Because every single day that passes
humanity has an opportunity to start again.

Because every single day that passes
new children are born,

and they can learn in new ways.

So there is a solution to every
single challenge facing humanity.

It's called education.

But we need to do it in a new way
and a different way

and a much more ambitious way
than we've done it before.