Global cooperation on the decline since 2020
A new global study has shown that international conflict is threatening the world economic stability dramatically. While environmental and economic ties seem to have tightened in recent years, global peace and security collaborations have plummeted, jeopardising that other progress.
During the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, the international community saw unprecedented levels of cooperation to try and limit the spread of the virus. While travel between countries was almost entirely ended during the lockdown months, the world’s trade operations had to collectively adjust to adapt their supply chains, while cross-border technological solutions to the problem also peaked.
But not every form of cooperation flowered in 2020. The pandemic occurred as tensions between the US and China had been worsening – hostilities which bled into a number of conspiratorial opinions on the origin of the virus becoming mainstream. This was by no means the most serious of the conflicts bubbling beneath the surface, though. In the years since the outbreak, huge conflicts have come to the fore, including the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, and the Israel-Gaza war.
In an attempt to quantify the effects of these changes, global consulting firm McKinsey & Company has compiled an index, calculating how often international cooperation occurs in the world today. According to the firm’s study, while global cooperation was resilient from 2012 to 2020, it saw an average decline of 2% between 2020 and 2022.
But that is not because all kinds of cooperation diminished. McKinsey asserts that the net levels of cooperation for trade and capital, climate and nature, and innovation and technology are all positive – while health and wellness remained more or less level.
In fact, what seems to be dragging the overall perceived cooperation rates of the international community down is peace and security – which conspicuously seems to have fallen off a cliff in the last two years the firm studied. The data ends in 2022, meaning that McKinsey did not factor the alleged war crimes committed in the Gaza strip into proceedings – but with the war seemingly spreading through the Middle East, as US and UK forces shell Houthi rebels in Yemen, it seems unlikely that this metric has improved in the last year.
McKinsey released the study ahead of the World Economic Forum’s annual summit in Davos. According to a release from the firm, the massive uncertainty surrounding peace and security collaborations in the years ahead could jeopardise much of the progress the world has made in other areas – particularly with regard to the impacts of the huge levels of forced displacement that war is now having on the world’s population. In the years McKinsey examined, in 2022, forced displacement reached a record for the decade, hitting 108.4 million people – up from 89.3 million a year before. These included huge displacements of 13 million people from Syria, as well as 11.6 million from Ukraine, and 10.2 million from Afghanistan.
To attempt to mitigate the impact of this displacement, McKinsey urged global leaders to do more to support vulnerable populations on two fronts. They need to manage the integration of refugees from conflict zones – with the firm suggesting failing to incorporate them into communities could lead to a loss of social cohesion. Meanwhile, the firm also suggested the world needs to find ways to better support the provision of basic needs for civilians in conflict zones – reducing friction of aid flows without compromising risk standards. However, with the UK and a number of other European powers moving to ship refugees to Rwanda in the near future, and the international community having largely backed Israel in cutting off the supply of water and aid to civilians in Gaza, it seems that both of these suggestions might be easier said than done.
However, one person who still strikes an upbeat tone on the matter is McKinsey’s Global Managing Partner Bob Sternfels. On the release of the study, he optimistically contended that while “in some dimensions the world has become increasingly divided”, the bigger picture shows “global cooperation has remained surprisingly robust over the last decade”. In this context, there is “special cause for optimism on climate and nature and breakthroughs in frontier technologies” – which suggest that the potential for improved collaboration in other areas is still there.
