The UN’s greatest structural flaw is that the universal protection of human rights is only an afterthought. A grand gesture with absolutely no muscle other than words and noble promises

John Ashton was the UK Government lead negotiator in global climate talks for six years. He just gave this speech to an energy industry conference in Paris. He addressed it to Ben van Beurden, CEO of Shell, urging him and his industry to heed the global crisis of climate change.

The UN is currently coordinating a grand manoeuver of immense complexity. In order to agree to a new generation of global development outcomes called the Sustainable Development Goals. Unfortunately, even a cursory understanding of the data shows it is little more than hype, designed to rally public support behind a...

There are, essentially, two grand narratives about these times we live in. We can think of each as a kind of foundational logic, invoked as a way to frame the vastly complex reality we see all around us, and therefore help determine how we understand and respond to it.

As United Nations officials struggle to define the development priorities of the next 15 years, the UN Millennium Campaign, the World Bank, and many other organs of the development industry tell us that we are nearing the end of poverty.

Transparency International recently published their latest annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), laid out in an eye-catching map of the world with the least corrupt nations coded in happy yellow and the most corrupt nations smeared in stigmatizing red. The CPI defines corruption as “the misuse of public power for private...