The Birth Of Global Public Investment. Mutual Interest And Mutuality In International Public Finance

I have to be honest, I've been working on GPI for a long time, with people all over the world and building on the scholarship of many who have been trying to transform the global cooperation system for decades. And there were times when it really felt like an uphill struggle, especially early on, when the idea was considered really unrealistic and sometimes in meetings people actually laugh as we presented it. And I myself thought it was a long shot sometimes, but there were always people from all geographies and sectors saying, this is going to happen, this is the right direction, we need to share And it really separated in a new era of truly global cooperation that's more effective in a response to the world as it is in the 21st century, and maybe we've honed the concept to make it clearer and tighter, but I think mostly it's the context that's changed, that's made people realise that the GPI approach, all benefit, all contribute, all decide, is not only necessary, but urgent. The increasingly obvious climate crisis, the new challenges of tech and AI, I think mostly it was the COVID moment that really shifted people's understanding of how we need integrated financial approaches to global health challenges, not ad hoc, hidden hope arrangements. And now of course, there's the mega crisis in multilateralism sparked by Donald Trump. Ends any speculation about the need for global public investment. So now the language of GPI is pervasive, pervasive in the financing for development conference that I've just been in, in Seville, increasingly clear in government statements, I was just listening to a UK government minister today emphasising the need to move towards mutual interest. South Africa are keen to include GPI in their G20 work, I live here in Colombia and they've been keen for years, Chile, Norway was on the GPI expert working group a few years ago and always been supportive, funded this paper actually, which I will be coming on to. All converging on the need to reframe global cooperation as in our shared interest, responding to global challenges, if we're going to have any chance of revitalising it. But as someone sitting next to me earlier this year, as I presented this document said to me, this is not just a comms problem, it's not a question of just talking differently about the same thing, we need to change the product, not just the adverts. And that's why this report, actually here in its Spanish version, emphasises two major evolutions or transitions. People often ask me how do we go about implementing GPI, and that's why I wrote this report. So first, a narrative transition towards mutual interest as the framing, and second, a transition in our institutions towards mutuality, in other words, fair decision-making processes. So what does a narrative renaissance look like? For GPI to become a reality, we need to rediscover an old story about international cooperation and retell it for a new time. Current narratives, rooted in donor generosity and recipient need, are no longer resonant. They fail to inspire public support and they entrench unequal relationships. We need to shift from charity to mutual interest, from transactional to transformational. This new narrative should start from a simple premise. In an interconnected world, our fates are interdependent. Investments in health systems, clean energy, stable economies and peace, anywhere, are investments in stability and wellbeing everywhere. Like I said, it's an old narrative that we need to re-find, but alongside that, and it's not just a commerce problem, it's not just a narrative problem, we need to evolve our institutions. While global public investment envisions new structures and mechanisms, it does not require waiting for a single global breakthrough. Change can begin now. All of us can begin it by embedding GPI principles into all of our institutions, existing institutions, initiatives and processes, as well as new ones. The key idea is mutuality. Designing systems where responsibilities are shared, governance is inclusive and benefits are collectively owned. In this report, I argue that moving in this direction, and I've even put together, again in Spanish, a kind of little theory of change here, explaining how if we evolve our narratives and evolve our institutions in this way, it will lead to more money from both Global North and Global South, and more effective spend of that money, and also, crucially, a renewed sense of dignity in international relations. So here we are. And yes, this evolution for GPI is necessary and urgent, and it does seem to have momentum, but it's not inevitable. The world can move in any number of different directions right now, some of them quite scary. So this requires real effort to push and steer governments and leaders. And in the GPI network, which you should join if you haven't already, and also join the WhatsApp group, which is open to all, I'll put the link below, this year we started a broader campaign sharing the key insights of the GPI approach, so that organisations and governments all over the world can begin to move in this direction. And different sectors are running with it. Just last couple of weeks, I've been talking to colleagues in the humanitarian sector, in disability, social protection, global health, obviously, actually global education as well, all talking about how to apply the GPI approach to increase funding and to increase the effectiveness of that funding. And at UNGA next week, the General Assembly at the UN in New York, a group of governments will be meeting as part of the coalition for GPI that we launched in Seville at the Financing for Development Conference, putting more details on what GPI could look like and beginning to implement the idea internationally. So if you haven't already started actively pushing for a shift to global public investment, get in touch and get involved.