'A plurilateral approach': 3 experts detail how to revive global cooperation

International cooperation around various issue areas has stalled, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Cooperation Barometer 2025.

Cooperation levels, the report found, have not increased over the past three years, flatlining at a precarious time defined by political and technological turbulence. The barometer notes that the “lack of progress comes as the past year was the hottest on record, the global economy faces weak growth prospects and global security is at a crisis point.”

The report—developed in collaboration with McKinsey & Company and released ahead of the Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland—analyzes global cooperation around five dimensions: trade and capital, innovation and technology, climate and natural capital, health and wellness, and peace and security.

The barometer maintains that global cooperation remains critical to mitigating many of the issues facing the global economy. It also calls on public and private sector leaders to rethink cooperation strategies and boost collaboration efforts, noting that the “foundation of resilience, security and growth is cooperation.”

Given the urgent need for cooperation, we asked three experts on the Global Cooperation Barometer Advisory Board to detail where there is both a necessity and a path forward to deepen collaboration in the year ahead. Here’s what they had to say:

The Global Cooperation Barometer provides valuable insights for the Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain community as geopolitical factors will greatly influence investments in the sector. From a manufacturing supply chain perspective, conflict — be it trade related or linked to peace and security — is accelerating regionalisation of manufacturing operations, shortening final stage supply chains that can improve resilience.

However, collaboration will remain vital as new factory investments will inevitably require adoption of advanced manufacturing and digital technologies in these new facilities with opportunities to radically improve productivity in terms of energy, labour and materials.

These investments can support the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, which is not yet at the pace required to meet targets. In many sectors, we are witnessing a radical change in globalization where the configuration of manufacturing supply chains will become more national and regional. This report highlights the key trends driving the emergence of this multi-polar global reset.

To achieve the ambitions of the Paris Agreement and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, we must urgently scale up carbon removals and nature-based solutions. Both are essential for tackling climate change and biodiversity loss, yet we currently lack the mechanisms to fund their deployment at meaningful scales — nationally, regionally and globally.

Nature-based solutions, such as reforestation and wetland restoration, can play a vital role in removing carbon from the atmosphere while delivering critical co-benefits in the form of eco-system services. Carbon removals encompass a much broader range of technological pathways, including direct air capture and storage (DACCS), bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), enhanced weathering and ocean-based approaches. Each has the potential to remove significant volumes of carbon and contribute to wider environmental and social objectives, but face market failures that hinder large-scale deployment.

New Advanced Market Commitments (AMCs), underwritten by governments and the private sector, can provide the revenue certainty needed to front-load investment into these areas while ensuring value for money from limited public funds. Structured as put options, AMCs can be established quickly, targeting diverse technologies and geographies flexibly, and underwritten by different constellations of actors as required. This approach represents an innovative form of plurilateral cooperation, enabling coalitions of actors to mobilise capital efficiently and at scale.

International cooperation is in exceptionally challenging times. This is particularly so for international trade. The rise of economic nationalism and geopolitical tensions is leading to growing fragmentation and uncertainties in the longstanding rules-based global trading system. That governments increasingly turn inward and prioritize national interest over international commitments does not bode well for international cooperation in trade policymaking.

There is an urgent need to rethink how the system can be reconstructed to promote collective responses to the fast-evolving domestic and international economic and political landscape. International cooperation is also needed to address a range of contemporary, global issues efficiently and coherently to minimise costs and frictions.

Ideally, such cooperation should be undertaken among all governments in the multilateral architecture already created under the World Trade Organization (WTO). Yet, the involvement of 166 governments, at different stages of development and in many cases with divergent policy priorities, makes this approach increasingly infeasible. A possible path lies in a plurilateral approach within or outside of the WTO with an aim to eventually achieve more inclusive cooperation. This path is already being taken to facilitate collaboration in dealing with some of the most cutting-edge global issues such as sustainable development and digital economy. This approach should be applied more widely to address other existential challenges, particularly the dysfunctional dispute settlement system.

However, any form of sub-multilateralism will necessarily bring about some degree of fragmentation and uncertainties. A multilateral trading system, therefore, remains a core foundation upon which international trade cooperation is to stand, to deliver long-term peace and prosperity for all.