A new role for the UN in an age of collapse

Not long ago, I sat across from a UN civil servant at a quiet café in Geneva. She had worked for over two decades in the UN system, from humanitarian relief to climate diplomacy. As she stirred her coffee, she confessed: “I feel disappointed, bewildered. Sometimes I wonder if anything we do makes a difference anymore.” Her voice was tired, but not bitter—more like someone watching a dam crack and realising she only had her teaspoon to stem the flood.

She is not alone. In conversations across UN agencies, I’ve been hearing similar expressions of despair. As institutions strain under the weight of cascading crises—climate chaos, ecosystem breakdown, spiralling inequality, violent conflict, and the abandonment of international law—many international civil servants find themselves in a moral and professional no-man’s land. They are loyal to the ideals of the UN, yet unable to reconcile those ideals with what they now see daily: the world is not just “failing to meet the SDGs“—it is unraveling.

Like my friend, I’d given years of my life to working for the UN system, as well as with NGOs working on ‘sustainable development.’ I told her we need not feel guilty for our failure to create lasting change. We did not deregulate the markets and sell off the common good. We did not spread suspicion and hate. And we did not break the biosphere. However, as someone who quit the system myself, I shared that I think people in the international community might be lying to themselves: “You are caught in a system that pretends the old order can be patched up and rebooted. That’s not only false—it is harmful to you, to the people you serve, and to the possibility of real integrity in public service.” I want to share with you what came of our conversation…

This is an excerpt of an article that the UN staff magazine published from me earlier this year. In it I talk about a new context for future efforts at international cooperation. Please read the full article here, and consider joining myself and like minds discussing such subjects in the metacrisis meetings next week!