World leaders must reboot global cooperation

Final negotiations are under way in New York for this month's Summit of the Future, where Heads of State will agree on reforms to the building blocks of global cooperation. The United Nations has convened this unique summit because of a stark fact: Global problems are moving faster than the institutions designed to solve them.

We see this all around us. Ferocious conflicts and violence are inflicting terrible suffering; geopolitical divisions are rife; inequality and injustice are everywhere, corroding trust, compounding grievances, and feeding populism and extremism. The age-old challenges of poverty, hunger, discrimination, misogyny and racism are taking on new forms. Meanwhile, we face new and existential threats, from runaway climate chaos and environmental degradation to technologies like artificial intelligence developing in an ethical and legal vacuum.

The...