The Stimson Center has published its third annual report on global governance innovation. The report explores approaches to advancing the Pact for the Future and revitalizing environmental governance through multilateral diplomacy and institutional innovation.
Titled, ‘Global Governance Innovation Report 2025: Advancing the Pact for the Future and Environmental Governance,’ the report provides tools for assessing and promoting implementation of the outcomes of the 2024 Summit of the Future (SoF) – the Pact for the Future, the Global Digital Compact, and the Declaration on Future Generations. It offers suggestions on how to overcome barriers to change ahead of the Pact’s official high-level review in September 2028. The report also outlines policy and institutional reform proposals to tackle the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, arguing that this issue was “underemphasized” at the Summit.
The report stresses the need to defend multilateral institutions and the international legal order amid divisive politics and mistrust among major powers. It demonstrates how efforts to deliver on the Pact and the “promise” of the UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP 30) in Belém, Brazil, such as the UN Secretary-General’s UN80 Initiative to modernize the UN’s structure, priorities, and operations, “provide both a positive narrative and a practical focus on near-term potential global governance breakthroughs.”
To monitor the Pact’s implementation, the report “assessed process deliberations, existing official SDG indicators, and proxy indicators that speak to the essential meaning of select Pact Actions.” Its review suggests that “slow yet visible progress is observed across key elements of the Pact.” Among examples, it cites:
- steps toward strengthening the Peacebuilding Commission;
- the role of the World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings and the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) in helping to sustain momentum on international financial architecture reforms; and
- progress toward the establishment of an Independent International Scientific Panel on AI and a Global Dialogue on AI Governance.
At the same time, the report acknowledges that proposed steep funding cuts will likely hurt the Pact’s implementation, as many countries slash their foreign aid and financing for international organizations. It underscores the potentially crucial role of the UN80 Initiative in helping advance, the Pact “by creating a more agile, cost-effective, and impactful UN system.”
Ahead of COP 30, the report offers policy and institutional reform proposals to address the triple planetary crisis, including:
- Enhancing the climate COPs, by adopting weighted or supermajority voting in COP decision making and aggregating fragmented climate action efforts through a Brazil-proposed high-levelClimate Change Council;
- Finalizing an effective global plastics treatythat prohibits a wide range of chemicals of concern, expands circularity, sets ambitious and legally binding global and national production reduction targets, and provides for effective financing mechanisms to ensure technology transfer and capacity building; and
- Embedding responsibility chains in global environmental governance through a task force that would assess governance gaps, map chains of responsibility across public and private sectors, and identify institutional barriers to coordinated action to counter the triple planetary crisis.
Noting that specific Pact actions “can garner momentum when they are championed by even a small number of diverse and committed governments,” the report outlines a multistakeholder governance approach to implementing the Pact for the Future by facilitating coordination and responsibility, maintaining the Pact’s integrity, and overcoming financing and other implementation barriers.
The report was launched ahead of FfD4 on 24 June 2025. [Publication: Global Governance Innovation Report 2025: Advancing the Pact for the Future and Environmental Governance] [Publication Landing Page and Executive Summary]