Global Connections and Global Citizens—an Address to the Kennedy School By Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund
IMF News, May 23, 2012
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- Authors: Christine Lagarde
- Published: May 23, 2012
The “new” world of interconnections: a world in progress
- The present era is characterized by unprecedented interconnections across people, goods, ideas, and communications.
- Key statistics and illustrative facts cited:
- Since 1980, the volume of world trade has quintupled.
- About 900 million tourists traveled between countries in 2010, up from a mere 25 million in 1950.
- The world has over 200 million migrant workers, up from 78 million in 1965.
- Foreigners make up between a fifth and a quarter of the professional workforce in countries like Australia, Canada, and Switzerland.
- Global multinationals often earn only a small share of sales from their home countries: Nokia, Nestle and Philips earn only 1-2 percent of total sales from their home countries.
- Indian information technology companies regularly generate up to 95 percent of their sales in Europe and the United States.
- Communications examples:
- When the first transatlantic cable was laid in 1858, it took more than two minutes to transmit a single character.
- Last year, the world clocked up 438 billion minutes of international long-distance telephone calls; Skype clocked up 145 billion minutes.
- Facebook connects 845 million people across the world.
- International organization membership comparisons:
- United Nations original membership in 1945 was 50 member states; today there are 193 member states.
- IMF original membership was 40; membership has increased to 188.
- Core challenge identified:
- Reconciling the growing web of interconnections with fragmented global governance and ensuring cooperative governance to “make it better.”
The importance of being good global citizens
- Central claim: the interconnected age imposes a core responsibility to act as global citizens and consider how actions affect others worldwide.
- Major economic and social challenges highlighted:
- The inability of 75 million young people across the globe to find meaningful work.
- Rising inequality that strains societal compacts.
- A fear that the global economic engine will no longer deliver as it has in the past.
- Practical obligations and priorities for global citizenship:
- Seek better living standards for all and an economic system where the fruits of growth are shared fairly among peoples and countries.
- Work to put extreme poverty behind us so the world’s poorest can join prosperity.
- Take urgent action to preserve the planet from self-induced destruction and address a rapidly warming climate.
- Strive for greater equity and equality of opportunity between men and women, rich and poor, young and old.
- Work for peace—globally, nationally, and personally.
- Role of education:
- Education is presented as the first stepping stone to a better world, a bridge between peoples and generations, and the best investment in children everywhere.
- Kennedy School-specific fact: forty-three percent of graduates here today are non-U.S. nationals, hailing from 81 countries.
- Role of the private sector and finance:
- Private enterprise has a vital role—investing, innovating, creating jobs and value—but must be imbued with civic duty and consider a broader spectrum of stakeholders (workers, suppliers, customers, the public, the environment).
- The financial sector’s pre-crisis pursuit of narrow gains is criticized for contributing to the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression; a localized bad decision can have globalized catastrophic consequences (example: Lehman Brothers).
- Increasing women’s participation at senior levels is offered as a cultural corrective: “having more women at the upper echelons of business and finance can go a long way toward changing this culture.”
Personal story and leadership lessons
- Career path and experience highlights:
- Early transformative year at age 17 as an American Field Service scholar at Holton Arms in suburban Washington; motto: Inveniam viam aut faciam (“I shall find a way or make one”).
- Joined Baker and McKenzie in 1981; became chairman of the firm in 1999.
- Entered French public service in 2005 at the request of the Prime Minister; served as Minister of Trade, briefly in charge of Agriculture and Fisheries, then French Treasury Secretary and Finance Minister for a little over four years.
- “In May last year campaigned to be elected Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund.”
- Two major personal lessons passed to graduates:
- Be prepared for change, don’t take anything for granted, be willing to take risks; seek and fulfill your destiny.
- Always stand up for your values, principles, and ideals; let personal destiny overlap with the common destiny of humanity.
Calls to action and concluding exhortation
- Explicit calls to graduates and the global generation:
- Embrace global citizenship; reconnect interconnections with better cooperative governance.
- Apply talents, determination, and idealism to overcome economic insecurity and seize opportunities.
- When facing obstacles, persist—“when the world says ‘give up,’ don’t forget that hope whispers: ‘try one more time…’”
- Final confidence: the speaker expresses full confidence in the graduating generation as the “first truly global generation” with a global challenge and opportunity to make the world a better place.
Global Connections and Global Citizens—an Address to the Kennedy School. By Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund. Cambridge, May 23, 2012.