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Turbulent Times: A Framework for Navigating Global Crisis Through Conscious Transformation



ARTICLE | | BY Ketan Patel, Christian Hansmeyer

Author(s)

Ketan Patel
Christian Hansmeyer

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Abstract

We inhabit an era defined by unprecedented uncertainty, distrust, and insecurity. The world faces a multidimensional crisis, a “polycrisis”, encompassing political, economic, technological, social, and environmental components that defy traditional solutions.1 This turbulence stems from the rapid globalization following the Cold War’s end, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, climate change acceleration, and the emergence of artificial intelligence as both opportunity and threat. The current period represents more than isolated crises; it reflects humanity’s struggle to adapt to the fastest pace of change in human history.2 Population growth took millennia to reach one billion but only two centuries to reach eight billion.3 Global economic output has multiplied 100-fold in 200 years.4 We have evolved from hunter-gathers that gathered in isolated agrarian communities to an interconnected global society communicating instantaneously, yet our institutions, values, and governance structures lag far behind today’s technological advances.5 This turbulence manifests as a clash between progressive forces driving global integration, technological convergence, and universal values, and reactionary movements resisting change through nationalism, authoritarianism, and cultural retrenchment. The resulting tensions generate social polarization, institutional weakness, and the erosion of multilateral cooperation. Power is shifting from traditional centres to new configurations: from national governments to corporations, from scientific authority to populist narratives, from the middle class to extremes of wealth and poverty. Understanding these dynamics is essential for developing effective responses to our civilizational challenges. This article is a reprint of the lead article in the Sign of the Times newsletter in August 2025. It steps back from the current polycrisis facing the world to provide a conceptual framework for the causes that generate today’s turbulence, the consequences that follow from them, and the solution areas required to bend the arc of global society’s progress toward a more inclusive and sustainable future. This paper draws heavily on the World Academy of Art and Science’s paper on “Sources and Solutions for Global Turbulence” by Garry Jacobs and Ketan Patel in the July 2025 issue of Cadmus, but thoughtfully condensed and reshaped to highlight the theoretical underpinnings of the contemporary polycrisis.6

1. Context: The Roots and Symptoms of Crisis

The enabling environment of accelerated change has created fertile ground for instability, but specific root causes drive today’s symptoms. Socio-economic policies have failed to deliver prosperity to working class population while extreme inequality concentrates wealth among fewer and fewer people; today the top 0.1% alone holds as much wealth as the bottom 90%.7 Democratic systems struggle to evolve alongside rapid technological and communication changes, weakening national sovereignty against corporate power and global financial markets.8 Fragile governance structures cannot withstand technological disruption, while inadequate regulation fails to prevent the weaponization of artificial intelligence and social media.9

"Every problem we face is soluble in principle, and this requires that we seek and apply better explanations so that the solutions address root causes."

Global institutions lack the legitimacy and authority to ensure equitable distribution of technological advancement’s benefits.10 Environmental sustainability remains divorced from economic and political decision-making, despite climate change representing the greatest threat to global security.11 The failure to address automation’s disruptive impacts, combined with weak oversight of monetary systems, has created systematic imbalances that fuel populist backlash.

These causes manifest in predictable consequences across multiple dimensions. Internationally, we witness declining authority of global institutions and weakening adherence to commitments like the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Agreement.12 Militarily, the return of competitive nationalism has revived arms races and nuclear threats, destroying the post-World War II peace dividend. Politically, democratic principles erode as nations shift toward autocracy, plutocracy, and oligarchy, with national sovereignty increasingly undermined by financial elites and multinational corporations.

Economically, historically high inequality combines with rising job insecurity from trade, artificial intelligence, robotics, and immigration to create widespread displacement. Technological supremacy has become central to military and economic power, with some CEOs being far more assertive on its use, yet the societal impacts remain inadequately addressed.13 Environmentally, escalating ecological challenges threaten human security while global cooperation, financial investment, and technical expertise to address these remain insufficient.14 These interconnected consequences reinforce each other, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of instability that demands comprehensive solutions addressing root causes rather than symptoms alone.

2. Toward Solutions: Three Pillars of Global Development

Humanity has reached the end of an era that cannot be governed by 19th and 20th century ideas and institutions. The world stands at the threshold of what has been called “the Beginning of Infinity”: an era of potentially unbounded progress made possible by our capacity to generate explanatory knowledge.15 Every problem we face is soluble in principle, and this requires that we seek and apply better explanations so that the solutions address root causes. There are no hard limits to human progress other than the persistence of bad ideas, inadequate institutions, or failure to act on what we learn. The turbulence and polycrisis of our time are therefore not evidence of inevitable decline, but signs that inherited frameworks are breaking down and must be replaced by new knowledge, values, and systems capable of addressing complexity at a planetary scale. The signals indicate a transition not a collapse of the “human project”.

What follows is set firmly in this context: progress is possible, transformation is within reach, and humanity’s future will be determined not by fixed limits but by our willingness to embrace reason, openness, and the infinite power of discovery. Moreover, the solutions we develop must be commensurate with the range and depth of root causes underpinning global turbulence. Three priorities emerge as essential for a stable and prosperous future. First, rebuilding global governance so that multilateralism becomes a platform for the systemic change needed rather than gridlock. Second, reframing security around human needs rather than military rivalry, to address the root causes of instability. And third, advancing economic justice to counter extreme inequality and ensure that new technologies translate into broad-based opportunity. Taken together, these pillars define the challenge of our time: creating a global order that is more resilient, inclusive, and equitable.

2.1. Global Governance and Multilateralism: Rebuilding International Order

Core Challenges: The current international system, designed on post-war foundations, is increasingly incapable of meeting the scale of today’s global challenges. Only 16% of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) remain on track, while the annual funding gap for achieving them has grown to more than US$14 trillion.16 Even though the SDGs involve 193 UN member states, progress has been slow and uneven. At the same time, the rules-based international order itself is fragmenting. Powerful nations are bypassing or ignoring multilateral legal norms for strategic advantage, whether through wars of aggression such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the escalation of violence in Israel-Gaza, or the growing use of tariffs as unilateral foreign policy tools rather than reliance on World Trade Organization mechanisms. This shift from universal law to selective enforcement reflects the weakening of multilateral institutions.

Unintended Consequences: The result is a system unable to deliver coordination, finance, or legitimacy at the scale required. Development is underfunded and fragmented, with the SDG gap widening rather than closing, now estimated to be US$15 trillion to 2050.17 A retreat to national competition, militarization, and transactional power politics risks intensifying turbulence and social unrest. Without effective coordination, inequality deepens, climate and energy transitions stall, and international cooperation weakens further. The rule of law is increasingly replaced by the rule of power, multilateralism by selective coalitions, and human rights by geopolitical calculation. This dynamic threatens to magnify rather than mitigate the crises confronting humanity, including climate instability, inequality, food insecurity, and armed conflict. Left unchecked, it will reinforce cycles of violence and mistrust and further erode confidence in global institutions.

Emerging Solutions: Addressing these failures requires a multi-layered strategy with solutions that combine technology, finance, and participation to revitalize multilateralism:

  • Reframe the SDGs as market opportunities by treating them not only as moral imperatives but also as investable platforms, with Force for Good’s research showing that unlocking a fraction of the world’s US$653 trillion in wealth across nine transformative solution sets, augmented by peace as a vital condition, could address nearly 90% of SDG targets. 18
  • Build digital infrastructure as the foundation of inclusion, following models like India’s “India Stack,” which brought financial access to more than 500 million people, and scaling similar approaches in Africa where investment in telecoms, data centres, and financial systems could deliver transformative impact.19
  • Unlock commercial investment opportunities by leveraging the estimated US$15 trillion in new markets that SDG progress could generate, particularly in food systems, climate and nature-based solutions, gender equity, and inclusive digital economies, supported by policies that reduce barriers to capital flows and digital deployment.20
  • Adopt targeted, transactional execution strategies that prioritize large developing nations capable of driving 65% of SDG progress, adapt scalable solutions from developed economies, and mobilize blended finance, philanthropy, and private capital through technology-enabled delivery mechanisms.
  • Reform the global financial system by exploring “big bang” liberalization of capital flows to mobilize resources worldwide, while also instituting risk management frameworks that can contain instabilities arising from deregulation.
  • Redesign citizen participation for legitimacy by developing new transnational platforms that give voice to individuals across the world, particularly youth and marginalized communities, counter polarization on social media, and create the foundations for a global consciousness that strengthens support for inclusive multilateralism.21

Revitalizing global governance means reframing the SDGs as actionable opportunities, mobilizing capital at scale, embedding technology into delivery, reforming financial governance, and enabling citizen participation. Together, these steps can reorient multilateralism away from fragmentation and toward inclusive cooperation under a renewed global rule of law.

2.2. Security and Peace: Human-Centred Approaches

Core Challenges: Traditional security paradigms remain dominated by military deterrence and power projection, yet these approaches have failed to address today’s complex and interconnected threats to human wellbeing. At a time when opportunities for progress are unprecedented, investment continues to flow into weapons systems rather than solutions that address root causes of insecurity, reaching US$2.7 trillion, the highest ever recorded, marking an increase of 9.4% in a single year and 37% over the past decade.22 Wars such as those in Ukraine and Gaza illustrate how violence erodes all dimensions of human security, from health and food to jobs, rights, and stability. Instead of creating security, military buildup increases temptation for war, perpetuates cycles of violence, and weakens international law.23

Unintended Consequences: The persistence of military-focused security has produced a contagion of insecurity, spreading instability across regions and undermining prospects for cooperative development. War not only destroys lives, but fuels forced migration, famine, poverty, and human rights violations. Global governance systems have proven inadequate to prevent or resolve these conflicts, and militarization continues to crowd out investment in resilience, inclusion, and peacebuilding. The missed opportunity of the early 1990s, when competitive security systems could have been replaced by cooperative frameworks, has left a legacy of Cold War thinking where alliances such as NATO enhance security only for their members while others remain excluded. Without new approaches, negotiated ceasefires or temporary settlements will simply reproduce future conflicts.

Emerging Solutions: A new security paradigm must be built on human security and cooperative systems rather than military rivalry. Key priorities include:

  • Shift from military to human security by reorienting investment away from weapons toward addressing root causes such as food, health, jobs, rights, and environmental safety, ensuring that security is defined in terms of human wellbeing rather than territorial competition.24
  • Advance the Human Security for All campaign as a model for bottom-up approaches that resonate with citizens. By framing security in terms that everyone understands, food, health, jobs, pollution, and community safety, the campaign has already shown broad appeal across business, technology, academia, and civil society, and its early adoption in schools in India demonstrates its scalability.25
  • Launch a Global Peace Offensive that reframes crisis response into opportunities for lasting peace. This strategy should emphasize reciprocal initiatives, symbolic unilateral gestures that invite compromise, and citizens’ diplomacy led by academic and civil society institutions, with initiatives already supported by groups such as the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Alma Mater Europea University, the Club of Rome, and the World University Consortium.26
  • Build inclusive cooperative security systems that move beyond Cold War alignments and guarantee peace for all nations. Rather than competitive blocs, this approach envisions a rule-based cooperative framework extending across regions such as Europe from the Atlantic to the Pacific, designed to institutionalize peace and stability for all states rather than a privileged subset.

The world must evolve from military security systems that perpetuate violence to human-centred and cooperative frameworks that address root causes of insecurity. This requires scaling person-centred campaigns, reframing crises as opportunities for peace, and ultimately building inclusive institutions that protect all nations, laying the foundation for a more stable global order.

2.3. Economic Justice: Addressing Inequality and Structural Imbalance

Core Challenges: Rising economic inequality has become one of the defining drivers of instability worldwide. Despite 1.5 times increase in global GDP per capita over the past two decades, the bottom fifty of the world’s population owns just 2% of global wealth and receives 10.7% of global income, while the top 10% holds 76% of wealth and receives 56.8% of income.27 Staple costs have surged by 40% to 60% in many countries since the pandemic, inflation peaked globally at 8.8%, and 165 million people were pushed into systemic poverty.28 Middle-income countries remain trapped in structural stagnation, and even wealthy nations report poverty or social exclusion affecting up to a quarter of their populations. These trends have fueled populism and undermined social cohesion, as technological advancement disproportionately benefits investors and shareholders while eroding employment opportunities and wage security.

Unintended Consequences: Without coordinated responses, structural imbalances will intensify, with the benefits of growth captured by the wealthy while the majority face wage stagnation, job insecurity, and rising costs. The rapid convergence of artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation threatens to accelerate displacement, potentially pushing global unemployment toward 25% by 2050.29 In the short to medium term, the mismatch between emerging jobs and obsolete skills risks redundancy for millions. A lack of proactive policies on reskilling, education reform, and social safety nets will exacerbate inequality, drive further populism, and destabilize political systems. The concentration of corporate and financial power reinforces this imbalance, as mega-corporations shape governance through donations, lobbying, and political influence, entrenching a plutocratic system that undermines democracy.

Emerging Solutions: Achieving economic justice requires systemic interventions that redistribute opportunity, strengthen employment security, and rebalance wealth and power. Priorities include:

  • Tackle the inequality crisis directly by adopting redistributive policies that address wealth and income concentration, ensuring that the bottom 50% of the population share in productivity gains rather than being excluded from growth.
  • Guarantee the future of work and employment security by reforming education systems, investing in lifelong learning, and expanding vocational training. With 170 million new roles expected in AI, data analytics, renewable energy, and care sectors, but 92 million jobs displaced, coordinated strategies must reskill 59% of the global workforce, or risk large-scale redundancy.30
  • Implement public job programs and wage protections as demonstrated by India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which secured livelihoods for tens of millions while raising wage floors. Recognizing employment as a right, establishing basic minimum wage standards, and expanding welfare programs can provide stability and reduce long-term costs to society from unemployment.
  • Introduce fair taxation of the digital economy to capture value where it is created and consumed, not only where corporations are headquartered. With stark disparities between user bases and value creation, such as Asia hosting 41% of internet users but capturing only twenty-two of value, international tax frameworks are needed to redistribute digital wealth toward workers and unemployed populations.31
  • Confront plutocracy and corporate power by regulating political donations, mandating full disclosure of funding sources, and reforming corporate governance structures. With nearly half of the world’s largest corporations American and concentrated in technology and finance, generating 72% of OECD GDP, unchecked influence risks hardening inequalities.32 Progressive taxation, political finance reform, and limits on corporate influence are essential to restore democratic accountability while preserving entrepreneurial innovation.

Economic justice requires coordinated global and national responses that rebalance opportunity and redistribute rewards. This means tackling inequality head-on, securing employment in the face of technological change, ensuring fair taxation of the digital economy, and limiting plutocratic influence on governance. Without such interventions, economic imbalance will continue to drive political instability and undermine global cohesion.

3. A Framework for Change to Navigate Global Turbulence

The emerging theory of change rests on a clear causal logic: systemic turbulence is driven by accelerating technology, entrenched inequality, geopolitical rivalry, and climate stress, all compounded by the erosion of governance. Left unmanaged, these forces reinforce a cycle of insecurity, populism, and institutional decline.

The pathway out of these challenges requires interventions across three levels. At the structural layer, reforming financial systems, global governance, and security architectures is essential to restore legitimacy and coordination. At the societal layer, redressing economic injustice and building inclusive social contracts can blunt the appeal of authoritarianism and populism. At the level of consciousness, reframing core concepts of security, sovereignty, and power can shift expectations toward cooperation rather than competition.


Figure 1: Theory of Change: Navigating Global Turbulence

If pursued together, these interventions have the potential to yield tangible outcomes— human security, global governance renewal, economic justice, sustainability, and the expansion of knowledge—that cumulatively create the conditions for a peaceful and stable order.

"Technological solutions alone cannot address the deeper philosophical crisis at civilization's heart, which result from fundamental limitations in the concepts and theories underpinning governance of nation-states and global society."

The underlying premise is pragmatic but optimistic, namely humanity’s capacity for explanatory knowledge means that none of these problems are insoluble, but their resolution depends on political will and institutionalized innovation commensurate with the scale of the challenge.

4. Changing Core Concepts to Change our Language, Behaviors and Values

Changing the way we think about core concepts is not an abstract exercise, it is the key to reshaping the language we use, the behaviors we practice, and the values we uphold as a global community. However, technological solutions alone cannot address the deeper philosophical crisis at civilization’s heart, which results from fundamental limitations in the concepts and theories underpinning governance of nation-states and global society. Addressing global turbulence requires confronting the assumptions at the heart of our systems, going beyond policy reforms to examine the philosophical foundations of modern civilization.33 Ten core concepts demand critical rethinking:

"The crises we face today are profound, but they are not destiny."
  1. Concept of Security: Security must shift from militaristic frameworks toward human security for all, recognizing that no fortress can contain pandemics, climate threats, or cyber risks.
  2. Concept of Freedom: Freedom requires reimagining as both personal autonomy and collective empowerment, protected by institutions resisting both populism and plutocracy.
  3. Concept of Sovereignty: Sovereignty must evolve into cooperative agency, the capacity to act with others protecting planetary viability rather than narrow self-interest.
  4. Concept of Economics: Economics must be redefined from a machine for endless growth to a system of provisioning for long-term human welfare and ecological sustainability.
  5. Concept of Identity: Identity should foster unity through shared values while preserving cultural diversity, transcending exclusion and division.
  6. Concept of Justice: Justice must move beyond punishment toward restoration, peace, and social cohesion, making empathy and equity converge.
  7. Concept of Knowledge: Knowledge must remain open, plural, and resilient to manipulation while integrating objective and subjective dimensions of reality founded on universal values.
  8. Concept of Time: Our conception of time must expand beyond short-term calculations to address slow-burning, systemic crises requiring intergenerational thinking.
  9. Concept of Nature/Human Relationship: The human-nature relationship must recognize ecological interdependence as strategic imperative, not merely moral argument.
  10. Concept of Power: Power must be reconceived as the ability to set others free rather than impose control, rooted in service to others and affirmation of universal values.
"If we treat turbulence as a generative condition rather than a terminal threat, we can transform polycrisis into opportunity."

5. Conclusion: Preparing for Transformation

The turbulence of our time is not the result of isolated crises but of systemic failures in how humanity organizes power, distributes resources, and conceives of security, justice, and progress. Globalization, technological acceleration, inequality, and ecological strain have outpaced the capacity of existing institutions and values to adapt, leaving societies vulnerable to fragmentation, polarization, and mistrust. Incremental reforms that address symptoms alone will not suffice.

What is required is transformation across three interconnected layers. At the structural level, global governance, financial systems, and security architectures must be reformed to restore legitimacy and cooperation. At the societal level, justice, inclusion, and human security must be advanced to counter inequality, displacement, and populism. At the level of consciousness, core concepts, like security, sovereignty, economics, identity, justice, power, must be redefined to align human systems with interdependence, sustainability, and dignity. Together, these interventions can generate outcomes that strengthen resilience: renewed multilateralism, economic justice, ecological balance, and the expansion of human potential.

The magnitude of contemporary challenges requires comprehensive approaches to conscious social transformation of our human community. The crises we face today are profound, but they are not destiny. They are problems awaiting solutions that lie within humanity’s reach through the growth of explanatory knowledge, the redesign of institutions to harness that knowledge, and the cultivation of values that empower inclusion and cooperation. If we treat turbulence as a generative condition rather than a terminal threat, we can transform polycrisis into opportunity.

In this sense, our age is the end of one era as part of humanity’s progression, and the advances we are now making place us at the beginning of infinity, a moment when conscious transformation can align human systems with unbounded progress, in ways that are sustainable. The choice before us is stark yet simple: eschew science and truth-seeking, cling to bad explanations and fractured systems, or embrace the infinite potential of reason and knowledge to create a sustainable, just, and peaceful future for all.

Acknowledgements

With thanks to Garry Jacobs, President of the World Academy of Art and Science, for his work on global turbulence and root causes and as lead author on the paper published on the topic, which this work builds off.34

Notes

  1. K. Whiting and H. Park, “This Is Why ‘Polycrisis’ Is a Useful Way of Looking at the World Right Now,” World Economic Forum, March 7, 2023, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/03/polycrisis-adam-tooze-historian-explains/; Rebeca Grynspan, “Weathering a ‘Perfect Storm’ of Cascading Crises,” UNCTAD, May 25, 2022, https://unctad.org/es/isar/news/blog-weathering-perfect-storm-cascading-crises.
  2. Christopher Chase-Dunn, “Social Evolution and the Future of World Society,” Journal of World-Systems Research 11, no. 2 (2005): 171–92, https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2005.385; Hartmut Rosa, ed., High-Speed Society: Social Acceleration, Power, and Modernity (University Park, PA: Penn State Press, 2010).
  3. U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Estimates of World Population, last revised December 5, 2022, https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/international-programs/historical-est-worldpop.html.
  4. J. Bolt and J. L. van Zanden, “Maddison-Style Estimates of the Evolution of the World Economy: A New 2023 Update,” Journal of Economic Surveys 38, no. 2 (2024): 631–71, https://doi.org/10.1111/joes.12618.
  5. E. O. Wilson, “James Watson and Edward O. Wilson: An intellectual entente,” Harvard Magazine, September–October 2009, https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2009/09/james-watson-edward-o-wilson-intellectual-entente “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology.”
  6. G. Jacobs and K. Patel, “Sources and Solutions for Global Turbulence,” Cadmus 5, no. 4 (July 2025): 1–32.
  7. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, “Distribution of household wealth in the U.S. since 1989,” Data visualization, Federal Reserve, June 20, 2025, https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/.
  8. M. Bollerman, Digital Sovereigns: Big Tech and Nation-State Influence (arXiv, 2025), https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21066; Reuters, “Europeans seek digital sovereignty as U.S. tech firms embrace Trump,” Reuters, June 21, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/europeans-seek-digital-sovereignty-us-tech-firms-embrace-trump-2025-06-21/.
  9. S. Feldstein, “Issues on the frontlines of technology and politics,” (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 2021), https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2021/10/issues-on-the-frontlines-of-technology-and-politics; Reuters, “Rapid AI proliferation is a threat to democracy, experts say,” Reuters, November 8, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/technology/reuters-next-rapid-ai-proliferation-is-threat-democracy-experts-say-2023-11-08/.
  10. J. Smith, “Challenging corporate power: Human rights globalization from above and below,” Development 64, no. 1–2 (2021): 63–73, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41301-021-00292-2.
  11. A. Maia and P. D. S. Pires, “An understanding of sustainability through the levels of organizational complexity of decisions,” Revista de Administração Contemporânea 15, no. 3 (2011): 455–73.
  12. E. M. Lederer, “In 2015, Obama committed the US to achieving UN global goals by 2030. Trump just rejected the goals,” Associated Press, March 7, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/trump-un-goals-us-poverty-climate-economic-d2cb095d85f60358eafcbebd6eb3c4f6.
  13. A. C. Karp and N. W. Zamiska, “Why Silicon Valley lost its patriotism,” The Atlantic, February 12, 2025, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/silicon-valley-has-lost-its-way/681633/.
  14. Force for Good, Technology as a Force for Good: Catalyzing New Markets Globally, Report No. F4G/008.1, in Creating the future: Transforming the world beyond sustainable development, sec. 3, Competing to own the future (Force for Good, 2025), https://www.forcegood.org/tf4greport-2025.
  15. D. Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World (London: Allen Lane, 2011).
  16. United Nations, 2024 SDG Report: Global progress alarmingly insufficient (2024), https://unsdg.un.org/latest/stories/2024-sdg-report-global-progress-alarmingly-insufficient.
  17. C. Hansmeyer and K. Patel, Capital as a Force for Good: Shifting the Global Order Through Mass Mobilization of Resources (F4G Foundation, 2024), https://www.forcegood.org/frontend/img/CF4Greport-2024/Capital%20as%20a%20Force%20for%20Good,%20Report,%202024.pdf.
  18. Ibid.
  19. National Payments Corporation of India, “UPI product statistics,” April 2023, https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/product-statistics.
  20. Hansmeyer and Patel, Capital as a Force for Good.
  21. United Nations, “Goal 16: Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies,” United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Sustainable Development, https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal16.
  22. X. Liang et al., “Trends in world military expenditure, 2024” (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, April 2025), https://doi.org/10.55163/AVEC8366.
  23. Greater Pacific Capital, Cycles of Violence: Impact of US Intervention in Overseas Conflicts, May 2025, https://www.greaterpacificcapital.com/thought-leadership/cycles-of-violence-impact-of-us-intervention-in-overseas-conflicts.
  24. Smith, “Challenging corporate power,” 63–73.
  25. Human Security for All campaign
  26. Donato Kiniger-Passigli, “Time for a Peace Offensive,” Cadmus 5, no. 3, pt. 2 (2024), https://cadmusjournal.org/article/volume-5-issue-3-p2/time-peace-offensive/.
  27. L. Chancel et al., World Inequality Report 2022 (Harvard University Press, 2021), https://wir2022.wid.world; World Inequality Lab, “Inequality in 2024: A closer look at six regions,” WID.world, November 19, 2024, https://wid.world/news-article/inequality-in-2024-a-closer-look-at-six-regions/.
  28. World Bank Group, The Middle-Income Trap (2024), https://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-2078-6.
  29. Eurostat, “People at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2023,” European Union, June 12, 2024, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20240612-1.
  30. Ibid.
  31. Tax Foundation, “Digital Taxation around the World,” April 30, 2024, https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/global/digital-taxation/.
  32. Greater Pacific Capital (GPC), Sign of the Times. Global Champions Critical to Long Term Growth, Focus on India, May 2024, https://www.greaterpacificcapital.com/thought-leadership/global-champions-critical-to-long-term-growth-focus-on-india.
  33. Greater Pacific Capital, Cycles of Violence.
  34. Jacobs and Patel, “Sources and Solutions.”

About the Author(s)

Ketan Patel
Founder & CEO, Greater Pacific Capital; Trustee, World Academy of Art & Science
Christian Hansmeyer

Founding member, Greater Pacific Capital