To better cope with great power tensions, extremist violence in fragile states, pandemics, the prospect of runaway climate change, cross-border economic shocks, and ever more sophisticated cyber attacks, the world needs a better way of marshalling its talent and resources—new voices, tools, networks, knowledge, and institutions. In Road to 2023: Our Common Agenda and the Pact for the Future, the authors show how a close coupling of justice and security imperatives can best drive the work needed to deal with critical global problems, underscoring twenty key ideas in support of inclusive, networked, and effective multilateralism, many outlined by UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his seminal September 2021 report, Our Common Agenda. Such a rethink, to be sealed by the widely anticipated September 2023 Summit of the Future, has become imperative.

Creatively mobilizing diverse actors worldwide, next year’s Summit and the preparations for it must look to equip our shared global governance architecture with the instruments, structures, and connectivity required to rebuild institutional trust and competence, and to navigate with confidence humanity’s perilous coming decades.