The Rome Roundtable
16-18 June, 2024
About the Roundtable
Join us for our 2024 Rome Roundtable, which will serve as the official launch of the Global Foundation’s Shaping Agreement on Global Governance, Climate and Nature project.
The Rome Roundtable will take place from 16-18 June 2024, with an optional visit to the city of Assisi on 18-19 June, where you will learn about the Foundation’s project to elevate Assisi’s global standing as a centre of ecology and peace. See here for more information about our Assisi project.
The Roundtable will mark the seventh occasion that the Foundation has convened an international dialogue in the Italian capital. It will be headed by our global leadership team.
Register your intent to join the Rome Roundtable now. You will appreciate that, as a not-for-profit organisation, the Foundation requests a modest financial contribution from those taking part in the roundtable to help meet the program’s costs. Please note that the costs of flights, transfers and accommodation will be incurred at your own expense.
Register now
Confirm your intention to join our delegation to Rome. Places are limited.
Global leadership team
*Mark and Sharan are co-chairs of our Steering Committee for Shaping Agreement on Global Governance, Climate and Nature Project.
The Rome Roundtable promises to be a dynamic and robust discussion about ways in which agreements can be reached for better global governance to impact on climate change and benefiting nature.
The Roundtable is designed to demonstrate global business leadership and partnership with all other sectors of society, including the Vatican, other global institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank, as along with national governments, central banks, academia and global civil society. Leaders of global corporates are already confirmed to attend, including from: Aviva Investors** (UK), King & Wood Mallesons (Australia/China/HK), Vale (Brazil) and TotalEnergies (France).
The roundtable sessions will include:
**Aviva Investors, a Key Partner of the Foundation, will lead the sessions addressing the global governance financial architecture to make it more fit-for-purpose in action on climate solutions. The Foundation seeks other key partnerships with like-minded organisations that are also invited to lead specific elements of the agenda, both in Rome and ongoing.
The Foundation has also requested an audience with His Holiness, Pope Francis, who personally addressed the Foundation’s Rome Roundtable in 2017 and endorsed our efforts in promoting cooperative globalisation. Engagement with other most senior Vatican figures is also planned, as with the Bank of Italy, with its Governor and senior officials having hosted Foundation meetings in Rome in the past.
Visit to Assisi
Participants in the Rome Roundtable will also have the option of visiting the city of Assisi on 18-19 June. Assisi is known as the birthplace of St Francis, Patron Saint of Ecology, and the Foundation enjoys a close working relationship with its mayor and the Franciscan Friars. Those taking part in the visit will enjoy behind the scenes access to the treasures of Assisi and will be briefed on the status of the program to elevate Assisi’s global standing as a centre of ecology and peace, centred around a new chapel in the woods of Saint Francis, for which the Foundation is assisting with fund-raising in Australia. See here for more information about the Assisi project.
Background
Over the past 25 years, the Global Foundation has become a trusted platform for international dialogue about pressing global challenges, including but not limited to climate change and nature. Some of the Foundation’s past achievements in the areas of global governance, climate and nature include:
The Foundation brought together China, the United States and Australia to align on global climate change policy, first by hosting the Australian Prime Minister in Beijing, then by initiating three-way follow-up discussions with the officials in Washington DC a few months later.
At its second Rome Roundtable, the Foundation brought together some of the world’s most powerful actors from business, governments, institutions, academia, faiths, and civil society to discuss cooperative globalisation, with a focus on sustainable development. The meeting was addressed by Pope Francis, who endorsed our work and commitment to cooperative globalisation. The Rome Roundtable also brought together the founding partners of the World Benchmarking Alliance, a not-for-profit that ranks and measures business contributions towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The Assisi Accord meeting of May 2022 brought together figures of international significance from diverse professional, social, and religious backgrounds to reach agreement on how to reform global financial architecture to incentivise investment in climate change action and other areas of sustainable development. Signatories agreed to harness global finance to work towards delivering the Paris Agreement and the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda. The Accord is an ongoing document that recognises the role played by the global financial sector in environmental degradation while also advocating for it to be part of the solution.
In June 2023, the Foundation co-convened and co-chaired a meeting at the prestigious Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences that in many ways helped create the template for the new global governance project. That meeting at the Vatican concluded that:
1. Reorienting economies towards the common good to raise human well-being and planetary flourishing 繁荣 (fánróng), and to reduce inequalities of opportunities and outcomes. In this perspective, the redesign of the current System of National Accounts should be pursued not only to go “beyond GDP,” but also to build a new system focused on the measurement of well-being now and prospectively in the future. New measurements of a Fraternal and Sustainable Economy for the Common Good must ensure that the well-being of humanity and of the planet are at the core of the SDGs, and are in line with the philosophy of the 2030 Agenda and the concept of integral ecology as defined in Laudato Si’.
2. Promoting new global governance arrangements to oversee the sustainability of the global environmental commons, including the climate, the oceans, biodiversity, world heritage sites, and to ensure a fair and just transition that advantages the poor. The formulation of such arrangements should be affiliated with the United Nations and its many institutions and should involve governments as well as religious groups, civil society, enlightened businesses and investors, educators, students, and young people around the world.
The Shaping Agreement on Global Governance, Climate and Nature project was announced at the State of the World Roundtable and endorsed by Ms Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations. The project is led by Dr Mark Cutifani CBE and Ms Sharan Burrow AC and will consist of at least ten global roundtables over the next three years. Learn more.
