Nicholas Ourusoff lives in New London.

World leadership today requires a commitment to multinational collaboration because we face global challenges that affect all nations and in addition they are existential, threatening our survival.

After World War II, the United States was a leader in founding the post-war international legal and governance structure: the United Nations System, a democratic framework of international law based on the UN Charter (1945) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), with the overriding goal “to end the scourge of war” by committing to non-violent resolution of conflicts of interest, and, since its beginning in 1945, with the specific goal to eliminate nuclear weapons.

In his 2023 briefing to the UN General Assembly, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reminded us that the world is at a breaking point with the Doomsday Clock set to 90 seconds! He called for transformation, the prioritization of long-term, existential global agreements, and a recommitment to the UN Charter and peoples’ right for peace.

“The war between Russia and Ukraine violates the right of people to live in peace: World leaders - Stop the fighting!” He warned. “We cannot have a new Cold War, an ideological competition that divides the world into two economies.” We must unite to mitigate climate change and to lower the risk of nuclear conflict - or we will rush like lemmings to our demise.

Inspired by the United States’ modern environmental movement, the UN, following the establishment of the UN Environmental Program (UNEP) (1972), has during the last 35 years come into its own with the publication of the landmark Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future (1987), which provided a resolution to the North-South impasse between more and less developed countries over global development, by a deeper understanding of the interrelationship between the Earth’s environment and the world’s economy, from broadening our understanding of world poverty and equity. This began ongoing transformative work to prioritize long-term, global problems into a strategic agenda for achieving a common sustainable future, where sustainability is taken to mean that the environment for future generations will be as good or better than it is at present, and includes equity, the elimination of poverty, and access to education as fundamental.

Today, a UN Global Policy (UNGP) exists as a set of evolving multi-faceted plans based on framework agreements and ongoing negotiated commitments to achieve goals on schedule, namely:

United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework

Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)

Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030

The entire world has the opportunity to unite. Global multinationalism under United Nations (UN) governance, to achieve a shared sustainable future in our home, Earth.

Either we unite or become extinct.

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