Selected Solution Proposals

GES 2015 – Selected Solution Proposals
Thanks for attending the GES 2015. Thanks also for contributing and discussing solutions
to address global problems that we all share. You hopefully appreciated the hallmarks of
the GES: the spirit of open-minded, innovative thinking that is research-based and
solution-oriented, bringing together decision-makers across nations, cultures and
professions. Members of the GES community have come up with many excellent
proposals to address the global challenges we have discussed at this year’s meeting. With
this newsletter we are presenting some of these ideas. All Solution Proposals will be
evaluated and published in a variety of formats. To encourage implementation they will be
communicated to international communities of leading policy-makers and researchers.
We hope that you continue share your ideas and suggestions for important topics and
innovative thinkers for the next Symposium and other GES events. And we encourage you
to share the GES Solution Proposals with your networks.
Please save the date: the next GES will be held in Istanbul, Turkey, from October 25 to
27, 2016. The GES-Team looks forward to seeing you there.
Dennis Görlich
Managing Director GES
[email protected]
Macroeconomic Indicators
Venturing Beyond GDP to Measure Wellbeing
by Juliet Michaelson and Karen Jeffrey
Despite a growing international consensus that gross domestic product is too crude a measure of a
country’s national wellbeing, alternatives are having trouble establishing themselves, according to
Michaelson and Jeffrey. This is because they lack a clear narrative, suffer from information overload,
or fail to match public perceptions.
In the hope of changing the mindset of the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), Michaelsen and
Jeffrey looked at measures of national success used in recent public consultations. They came up with
five headline indicators they say will provide a better measure of national success than GDP: decently
paid, secure employment; subjective wellbeing; environmental impact; economic inequality; and
health-care provision.
A handful of clear, communicable, and memorable indicators allow for a close alignment of
policymakers’ priorities and the concerns of the public, they argue. Although the number and mix of
indicators will vary from country to country, Michaelson and Jeffrey argue only similar efforts
elsewhere will spur policymakers to adapt.
Click here to read the full Solution Proposal.
Food Security
Crop Production: Satellites and Ploughshares
by Wolfram Mauser, Gernot Klepper, Florian Zabel, Tobias Hank
and Ruth Delzeit
Satellites, computers and new modeling techniques could more than double global crop production,
meeting future food and biomass demand without increasing the area of farmland, Mauser, Klepper,
Zabel, Hank and Delzeit argue. Enlisting modern technology to improve crop management would
automatically raise farm-management standards and spread the use of profit-maximizing crop
allocation techniques across the globe.
Mauser et al. say innovation in all three areas could raise farm output by 148 percent points and keep
pace with the demand for food and biomass, which is expected to double by 2050. With satellites
monitoring the growth of crops and new computer models, farmers will be able to maximize yields
while reducing water and fertilizer use.
In the coming years, global agriculture will be transformed into an information business, and trade in
agricultural commodities will come to include regions that currently stand apart, they predict. Satellites
like the EU’s Copernicus system will provide the backbone for this new degree of “local-yet-global”
information flow.
Click here to read the full Solution Proposal.
Recycling
The Circular Economy: The Producer Pays
by Hermann Erdmann
Manufacturers should pay an up-front fee to cover recycling costs when their products are thrown
away, according to Hermann F. Erdmann. This would for the first time give producers and consumers
an economic - rather than simply an ethical - incentive to manufacture and consume responsibly, he
argues.
Voluntary schemes to prevent waste have proved of limited use, mainly because they have failed to
ensure that everyone contributes their fair share. Instead, Erdmann calls for the founding of an
independent national or supra-national agency to assess – and charge for - the social costs of
products once they are thrown in the trash.
The Extended Producer Responsibility Organization (EPRO) would charge the manufacturer a fee per
unit product and take responsibility for recycling. Being forced to pay for the hidden social cost of
waste management would encourage manufacturers to design and consumers to buy products that
are easier to recycle, he says. While EPRO’s basic structure is simple, agreeing governance and fees
could be a challenge, Erdman admits.
Click here to read the full Solution Proposal.
Migrant Crisis
Note to Europe: Stress Upside of Immigration
by Philippe Legrain
Europe needs to change the narrative about the tens of thousands of refugees streaming over its
borders, argues Legrain. Instead of using the tools of border protection and policing to cast them as an
implicit threat, he says governments should welcome them as an explicit opportunity for reinvigorating
their rapidly aging populations.
Young, hard working, taxpaying newcomers would prove a shot in the arm for a European Union with
its shrinking working-age population. With new arrivals this year amounting to 0.1 percent of the EU
population, Legrain says it is wrong to cast the region as overburdened. Instead, governments should
stress the upside of aspirational and often highly skilled newcomers. Nearly one in two Silicon Valley
start-ups has an immigrant co-founder, he notes.
Once European countries see immigration in terms of their economic self-interest, Legrain argues, the
strains and stresses of the EU’s current response to the refugee crisis should resolve themselves.
Member states would see welcoming migrants as an investment – one that pays dividends the sooner
refugees can start to work.
Click here to read the full Solution Proposal.
Migrant Crisis
The World Needs to Embrace a new Paradigm
by William Lacy Swing
Policymakers have to come to terms with the roots of irregular migration in order to embrace a muchneeded paradigm shift in dealing with the problem, argues Swing. Only by accepting the economic
and social drivers, the demand for migrant workers, and the effects of global communications can they
get ahead of the curve.
What Swing calls the largest migration of people in recorded history should, he says, remind us of how important
mobility has become to the modern world. By accepting to this fact, host countries can transcend the crisis mode
in which they find themselves to develop longer-term strategies in co-operation with other governments.
Swing stresses that only a truly comprehensive approach stands any chance of succeeding in the long run.
Governments will have to continue to offer protection to refugees. But at the same time, new ways must be found
to ensure safe regular migration – for workers of all skill levels, as well as for families looking to re-unite. In poor
or war-torn countries, community stabilization and development programs would reduce migratory pressures.
Click here to read the full Solution Proposal.
Fostering Values
The World Needs More Altruism to Fight Crises
by Tania Singer
Improving the mental health of citizens can help mitigate economic and environmental crises, growing
rates of stress and depression, and the adverse effects of individualism and egoism, according to
Singer. Rather than a redesign of institutions or rules, she advocates a science-based training
program to help each individual.
Singer argues training is needed because many social and economic problems are becoming more
global. It would help citizens broaden their domain of altruism, strengthening co-operation and limiting
conflict as a result. Schools, universities, offices and factories might profit from the introduction of
contemplative techniques. These and other social settings could be re-configured to emphasize
teamwork and co-operation over competition.
Over nine months, Singer studied the effects of a new, science-based secular mental training program
on well-being, brain, health, and behavior. First results suggest that daily training can indeed reduce
stress, induce plasticity at brain level, increase pro-social behavior and trust, body awareness, and
subjective well-being.
Click here to read the full Solution Proposal.
Sustainable Development
Food, Water, Energy: Key to Everything Else
by Christian Berg
The global community should focus on bringing food, water and energy production to the world’s vast
arid regions as a precondition for meeting the United Nations’ much broader Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs), according to Christian Berg. He says this narrow focus would be the best way to
minimize painful trade-offs between economic growth and environmental protection implicit in the
SDGs, expected to be finalized next spring.
Bringing plant-life back to eroded land would lure farmers and allow crop production to rise while
ending the land consumption that sees fertile natural habitats turned into farmland, Berg argues.
Setting up solar or wind power plants in these often sunny and breezy regions would lure
manufacturing and spur infrastructure development.
Berg reckons this focus on three “foundational SDGs” could quickly improve conditions in arid regions,
some 41 percent of the earth’s terrestrial surface. It would also put the global community on course to
addressing half of the UN’s 17 SDG goals, including the top two on the list - poverty reduction and
food security.
Click here to read the full Solution Proposal.
Migrant Crisis
Fixing Europe’s Dysfunctional Asylum System
by Matthias Lücke
Europe’s governments should end dysfunctional national asylum policies by giving the European
Union sole responsibility for the tens of thousands of migrants entering the region, argues Lücke. That
would ease the strain on poorer southern EU countries through which migrants enter and richer
northern countries where they collect.
Centralized responsibility for the processing and welfare of migrants would in Lücke’s view end the
mismatch between the much-vaunted freedom of movement in the EU’s Schengen area and the socalled Dublin III Regulation, which demands that asylum seekers be administered by the member
states in which they first set foot. It would enable joint responsibility, common standards, and real
burden-sharing among EU members.
With around 1.5 million migrants – mainly from the Middle East and Africa - entering the EU every
year, Lücke estimates the EU would need national governments to top up its annual budget by E45
billion. That would be equivalent to one third of the current EU budget, but only 0.3 percent of member
states’ gross domestic product.
Click here to read the full Solution Proposal.
Fiscal Consolidation
Austerity and Growth can go Hand in Hand
by Christian Kastrop
Critics of the Eurozone response to the currency bloc’s debt crisis have questioned so-called austerity
policies to shore up public budgets. But Kastrop argues that economic growth can – and must – go
hand in hand with fiscal consolidation. The trick, he argues, is to design spending cuts and tax
increases with care and flexibility.
The OECD studied the effects of cutting various types of public spending and increasing various forms
of taxation, Kastrop says. It found cutting subsidies and pensions, as well as raising inheritance taxes
to be the least harmful to economic growth. Most harmful were education and health care cuts, and
raising social security contributions.
But, Kastrop stresses, policymakers should avoid one-size-fits-all solutions and favor bespoke recipes
that reflect a country’s position and preferences. For example, raising taxes that are already very high
can have little economic or social value. Policymakers should also allow policies to evolve – tax
increases are easy to implement quickly but should give way to spending cuts over time. Lastly, they
should set prudent long-term debt targets.
Click here to read the full Solution Proposal.
Sustainable Cities
Urbanization Demands Public-Private Schemes
by John Macomber, Shanker Singham and Albert Ting
The number of people living in cities is expected rise by a third by 2050, but governments have proved
incapable of creating the necessary infrastructure to keep pace with this development, say Macomber,
Singham and Ting. They argue only public-private partnerships can generate the investment needed
to house 2 billion new city-dwellers and provide public services like water, electricity, and mass
transportation over the longer term.
So-called enterprise cities would foster orderly growth of urban areas, avoiding the unplanned sprawl of many
existing cities in which unregulated land use has hindered adequate provision of infrastructure, and planning for
housing and education. Such township planning can be seen an extension of traditional office-park development.
Inspired by examples across the globe, Macomber, Singham and Ting argue that streamlining regulations,
transparent tendering, and fair competition is key to success. Crucially, so-called regulatory framework
agreements to attract investment should be agreed at municipal level to avoid the pitfalls of national politics.
Click here to read the full Solution Proposal.
Digital Journalism
A Fund to Kick-start Pan-European Media
by Henrik Müller
Public responses to recent European crises have varied widely from one member country to another,
a stark reminder that a truly European public sphere remains elusive, according to Müller. To address
this problem, he argues, Europe needs public funding to foster pan-European media with a genuine
cross-border appeal.
Müller says subsidies are needed to deal with the paradox of digitization – more people consuming
more news than ever before, even as free access weakens the ability of news organizations to fund
their work. This, he says, is a particular problem for media in the European Union, given the expense
of gathering news across the region.
Given the risk of political pressure, Müller calls for a fund financed by public stakeholders like industry
associations and labor unions, rather than governments. A team of independent media experts would
decide how to allocate the fund’s resources. The committee would select private media companies
according to their journalistic track records and organizational ability to report pan-European news free
of national agendas.
Click here to read the full Solution Proposal.
Find all GES 2015 proposals on our website under session descriptions,
or browse for them in our Knowledge Base.
We encourage you to share the GES Solution Proposals with your networks.
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Finding Solutions. Together.
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