Co-operative Globalisation is the best way to navigate our world to the future:

The Global Foundation recently conducted its two most important global roundtable meetings for 2019, in London on 19 June and in Paris on 21 June.

More than 100 invited participants came from around the world, including from China, the US, Australia, Indonesia, UK and France, also from major international institutions.

The meeting helped to align and progress the views of leaders from civil society, business, faiths, media, institutions, academia and think tanks.

All endorsed and re-committed to support, with urgency, the Global Foundation’s framework of ‘co-operative globalisation’ as a necessary modus operandi that will help to ensure our fracturing world is made more whole, and in ways that are transformative, inclusive, fair and prosperous.

The London and Paris meetings followed on from a succession of other global roundtable meetings convened by the Global Foundation, in Rome (on 3 occasions), Kuala Lumpur, the Pacific Islands and in Sydney, along with previous international roundtable series it has held over the past 20 years on most continents. In keeping with usual practice, the roundtables were conducted on the basis of the Chatham House rule.

As a way of encouraging wider community engagement, this website contains progressively updated materials from both meetings, including reports, photos, statements of support from the Vatican, the advance media release, the program and participants and their Bios, along with slide presentations.

I hope that you will enjoy better understanding this evolving work and invite you to consider joining us on our journey.

Scroll down to access all the information about the two meetings, including Reports, photos, statements from the Vatican, Media release, Program and Participants and their Bios and Slide presentations.

Reports from the Roundtables will be progressively updated to this page.

Steve Howard
Secretary General, the Global Foundation

Key Outcomes from London and Paris Roundtables

We, as citizens, from many diverse backgrounds, cultures and disciplines, accepted both the responsibility and the opportunity to help turn around a world that is turning in on itself. We acknowledge that a tide of community anxiety, combined with political short-sightedness, risks displacing the more open and engaged global order that has brought benefits to so many and is now under serious threat.

We endorsed ‘co-operative globalisation’ as a crucial strategy, to help build community and political support and involvement for a more open and engaged world, one that operates to much higher standards and for shared benefits than previously.

We agreed that we must do all we can to avoid the clash of civilisations between East and West, particularly between China and the US. We are deeply concerned about the long-term impacts of the current fracturing.

We supported leadership efforts by enlightened business, working in partnership with civil society and other allies, for positive ‘coalitions of the willing’.

We learned about and committed to support many practical initiatives, large and small, that demonstrate ‘cooperative globalisation’ in action. These are making a positive difference to the sustainability of our planet and the unity of its peoples, in some cases working effectively across all sorts of borders, real and imagined. This is the new model for the 21st Century and we agreed to continue to champion and illuminate these efforts. The World Benchmarking Alliance was a major highlight of the London Roundtable.

Further, we encouraged our partners who lead these initiatives to broaden their scope, to include an East-West component, to go global, to demonstrate in practice that it is possible to bring about harmony through diversity.

We proposed a Grand Bargain – if those is us in the West could welcome the East in to these many and varied practical works and vice versa, then as a corollary, we would offer to work with the East and West for a fast-track of adjustment required to global governance, one that would take better account of new realities of economic and political weight. In this regard, the continuing work of the Paris Peace Forum is a key vehicle.

The Global Foundation plans to maintain continuity of the London and Paris agendas, through communication, such as via this website and engagement with decision-makers and community and business leaders in the world.

Subject to sufficient expressions of support and local partnership, it is also proposed to convene a further Rome Roundtable, in the first half of 2020. A Beijing Roundtable and a New York Roundtable are also under development.

Address of Secretary General, Steve Howard, to the World Peace Forum in Beijing on 9 July, 2019
Click here to download

Vice President of China, Mr Wang Qishan, opened the Forum

Steve with Forum Secretary General, Dr Yan Yuetong

Former Ambassador and Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Madam Fu Ying, chaired a closed-door session of an Asia Pacific security dialogue, in which Steve participated

Steve Howard with Madam Fu Ying, who has just released her latest book on international relations.

Photos from the London Roundtable meeting, 19 June, including discussions at Aviva Investor headquarters and reception at the Australian High Commission.

Photos from the Paris Roundtable meeting, 21 June, including lunch and discussions at the Banque de France and reception at Australian Embassy.

Powerful endorsements from Rome, ahead of London and Paris

On Monday 17 June, immediately ahead of the London and Paris Roundtable meetings, the Board of the Global Foundation, comprising Chairman Jock Murray AO, Louise Watson and Secretary General Steve Howard, visited Rome, where they met and received vigorous endorsements for the upcoming roundtable series from the Governor of the Bank of Italy, HE Ignazio Visco and the Secretary of State at the Vatican to His Holiness, Pope Francis, HE Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

Mr Visco hosted the Rome Roundtable 2018 dinner, at which Cardinal Parolin was the keynote speaker.

The Global Foundation was inspired to aim high in the deliberations in London and Paris and encouraged by their Excellencies to convene a further Rome Roundtable, with their respective participation, at an early date.

Download the Statement of Support dated 18 June from Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State to Pope Francis