Expert comment on UN’s Pact for the Future: “It’s difficult not to be cynical about such pacts, when cynicism is justified by past events…”

“No-one would argue with the Pact’s goals of addressing the urgent challenges of the 21^st-century: escalating war, poverty and inequality, an unstable and dangerous environment, technological transformations without oversight or moderation. Neverthless, the member states of the UN gave it their best shot before a consensus to support the Pact finally emerged, though not without a range of misgivings from various countries, all of which will be very familiar to those who follow the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change “COP” process. Notable fracture lines exist between the USA and China, between the EU and Russia, and between the developed and developing worlds in general, with the failure of the rich countries to honour financial pledges being a persistent weakness of COPs and similar negotiations. Progress on issues like the reformation of the UN Security Council, which consistently fails to address neo-colonial wars in the Middle East among other abundant shortcomings, is essential not only to bring about desperately-needed peace, but also to break the grip of the fossil fuel and arms industries on international policy. It’s difficult not to be cynical about such pacts, when cynicism is so often richly-justified by subsequent events, but this is a challenge no-one, even the most pessimistic, can afford to ignore.”