UN75 Global Consultation with Business, Tech, and Communities of Wealth in San Francisco:a Collective Narrative

By Agustina Singh

On April 18, 2020, the United Nations Association of the USA, San Francisco Chapter (UNA-SF) in partnership with Innovation 4.4 hosted the UN75 Global Consultation with Business, Tech, and Communities of Wealth in San Francisco to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the United Nations (UN) and to help the UN set priorities for the next twenty five years. This event was part of a series of consultations with several stakeholder groups of San Francisco—the birthplace of the UN. 

This group of fourteen delegates shared perspectives shaped by their experiences with Airbnb, Google, NEXUS Global, Salesforce, Swissnex, Twitter, Uber, and other relevant companies, organizations, and communities. Keeley Mooneyhan, Lina Constantinovici, and Tracey Milligan served on the Engagement Team led by Denis Lemeshchenko. 

In the context of the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic, this consultation was conducted online. A participatory process called World Café was used to combine the benefits of small group conversations and cross-pollination of diverse perspectives of the group-at-large. Tatiana Vekovishcheva served as Head of Process.

Delegates’ reflections were processed into a collective narrative by Agustina Singh using the Collective Narrative Methodology. As Head of Reporting, she will use this collective narrative to submit a report to the National Office of the United Nations Association of the United States of America in Washington DC to be shared with the United Nations and members of the United States Congress.

COLLECTIVE NARRATIVE

Our group had some really great sessions where we were able to discuss several issues that we most care about. We met every round with new perspectives while bringing in content from previous rounds and thought it was a really great experience. While each of the three discussion rounds was different, we are happy to report that there were also a lot of synergies between them. 

Overall, we saw that there was a general trend in needing equality, representation, and transparency. We shared that we really want to have universal access to food, shelter, healthcare, education, communication, transit, elections, and a sense of vocation that provides personal growth and economic sustainability. 

So we want to dive into these issues we see and then talk about what are some of the best practices that civil society and government organizations can adopt, and what the United Nations actions can look like. 

Understanding Our Own Responsibility: Equity Requires Sacrifice

One of the main themes that we talked about was equity. We are faced with many questions. How do we define “equity”? What does that mean? If the equity we want to see come to fruition in the future means an individual sacrifice on our part, are we ready to make that sacrifice? We can do these exercises all day long and talk about what kind of future we want to see, but when it comes down to the personal responsibility and the personal individual input, we wondered if we would make a sacrifice we knew would make our lives harder. What are those sacrifices? What are those tradeoffs? And are people really willing to make that sacrifice themselves beyond making these recommendations for others? We thought that was an extremely great point that underpins a lot of this bigger conversation.

Advocating for Universal and Equal Access to Services, Information, and Resources

We need to ensure equality across many different categories such as healthcare, education, housing, and food security. We wanted to highlight that there must be universal and equal access to services, information, and resources. We need to have equal access and inclusive conversations, making sure that all voices are being heard. Universal censorship-free internet access should be guaranteed along with more transparency. Data should be accessible and procedures should be utilized in the same way everywhere. 

Affordability and accessibility are key concerns for providing equal opportunities. Providing access can give people the ability to engage in their communities in a meaningful way, and give them opportunities to understand what is going on in their communities and what changes might be made that they may not be aware of. Similarly, we can create an informed electorate by making sure that people have equal education opportunities. 

Trusting Experts to Improve Healthcare, Phase Out Toxic Chemicals, and Combat COVID-19

Healthcare is something that kept coming up in our discussions, and mental health is definitely included in that. One thing we can try to do to bring more equal services within healthcare is to work with doctors, governments, and organizations to make sure that we have some widespread standards and knowledge base. At the same time, we think that, when decisions are being made, they should be made by doctors or researchers in the field—not people who are not part of that. 

Another issue that we discussed within the topic of human health was the impact and prevalence of toxic chemicals. Toxic chemicals—endocrine disruptors in particular—have impacts on cancer, asthma, diabetes, immunity, and many other human health implications, but especially on fertility. Some of the facts and models around this issue is showing that by 2060 the human race will be infertile and by 2040, which is only twenty years from now, four out of every five men will be infertile. 

We are also currently seeing the direct connection between immunity and COVID-19, and particularly in communities of color where we are seeing twice the rates of COVID-19. We correlate that to the rates of toxicity in those communities and can see the implications this has on infection and mortality of COVID-19. 

Our recommendation for addressing this is to build awareness of the impact of toxic chemicals and encourage countries to establish regulations and to begin to phase out toxic chemicals that are detrimental to human health and ecosystem health, including ocean health, and so on.

In terms of recommendations on what actions need to be taken by the government and the industry, we specifically discussed testing and vaccines needed to address the COVID-19 situation. It has become apparent that new processes are needed, new ways of achieving certain outcomes that are critical and urgent. As a concrete example of creating new and re-examining existing processes, some of us argued that animal testing is needed in order to fast track a vaccine that can save lives. 

Giving People a Voice and Opportunity for Community Engagement 

Representation is another big topic that came up in our conversations. Giving a voice to the voiceless, making sure that they are heard and not being silenced. Underrepresented persons are usually not heard and too often we come up with strategies without them being present. If we are going to create solutions that are going to help or impact a community, these people need to be there and represented. 

We think it is important to know what policies or changes are being made, who is making and enforcing them, and how it is done. We cannot create solutions or strategies without representation of parties that will be impacted. With underrepresented persons and communities, we need to make sure they are being heard without judgement. We need to make sure represented parties are part of that conversation and it is shown that they are part of that conversation. We cannot let egos and greed prevent growth for others in need. That is one thing that we have noticed throughout history.

That means that if we want to solve an issue, let’s say, in a rural part of Guatemala, we need to be working with local communities to help create solutions to better the community. We need to make sure that they are actually in charge of it and are there to facilitate it, because they are the ones that know their community best. There is also nothing more empowering than seeing people of your own community succeeding in life, so we need to keep that in mind as well. We should not put our own norms and beliefs on someone else and force it, thinking that is going to work, because it is not going to work. 

We also discussed balancing community needs with commercial needs of the travel industry, especially because it is so prominent in a great city like San Francisco. We want to make sure that people who choose San Francisco as their home have a sense of community and are put front and center when commercial decisions are being made that may affect them. 

Building Trust, Listening without Judgement, and Collaborating with Kindness 

There was also a discussion on how trust is so important in generating the right kinds of responses in societies. The lack of trust in the government has been seen as a big risk in how we respond to the current crisis. We see that the kind of response we give, either to COVID-19 or in future situations, is really influenced by the levels of trust in society. 

In addition to trust, the ability to plan for the future or have confidence for the future is a very important quality that goes on that next level of food and shelter. So having trust, that confidence, more connection, more access, and more collaboration were all definitely big patterns in our conversations.

In terms of more connection and collaboration, we think that having the ability to connect across the world without placing invisible borders is very important. We should have honest discussions and debates instead of shutting people off. Listen without judgement and practice empathy. For example, if you do not agree with someone's opinion: listen, instead of judging them or immediately shutting down and not listening. We can understand and question our own beliefs with new opinions. And overall, treat people with kindness. There is not enough kindness in this world.

Inspiring a Shift in Values and Identity: From the Individual to the Collective 

Identity also became an emerging pattern alongside inclusion. While we think it is important to preserve individual identity, there was a discussion about the growing concern over the recent trend towards nationalism—and we think this is going to come more to the forefront of world discussions. We debated whether to loosen or tighten the hold on identity. We noticed that, in several different nation states, nationalism could actually come as a reaction or an answer to a lost identity. In countries like Hungary, China, or the EU with Brexit—we see the breakdown of cooperation treaties and are now seeing a very direct impact on the flow of goods that are critical to saving lives regarding COVID-19. 

We also understand that, in Africa, identity can be at the tribal level and ethnic groups do not fit individual country borders, so we wondered what implications this would have on global geopolitics. Our recommendation here would be to launch initiatives to counteract the effects of nationalism, or amplify and build on the initiatives that may already be in progress. This was an issue that we really cared about and think it is highly relevant to the work that the United Nations has done for the past seventy five years.

We think it is important to have a shift in values, where we can move from the individual belief to understanding more diverse beliefs. We should be inclusive and have experiences that move us between those perspectives so the ability to empathize with others is really easy and comes naturally. 

We see a really big role for the arts to play in shaping global culture and amplifying the messages and aspirations towards new goals. We think the arts can be used not only for well-being, but also for inspiring change. We have seen that one of the healing roles of science fiction, for example, is its ability to paint a bright future that we can all move towards (like Star Trek) or away from (like 1984). 

We also talked about using virtual reality and other technology to create global empathy. There is an opportunity to create new incentive systems as well as new experience systems. For example, the virtual reality game “Follow the White Rabbit” is all about going to different places and different cultures and having the feeling they are really there because it is in 3-D. We can also have virtual currencies and other kinds of incentive systems. In games, we can get a person to punch a plastic button for 40 hours to get a piece of virtual clothing. So there was also a mention about including a point system to the census, and of course there are lots of different ways of doing it aside from points. We can do a lot of things on an individual, organizational, institutional/government level by using lots of different sorts of games or goals. We think that this kind of entertainment can prevent people from turtling—from being very attached to identity.

Solving Problems Created by Technology and Rebuilding its Reputation 

We, of course, saw that we can streamline technology and really show future generations that it can play a really big role in helping us. Whereas technology previously had a bad reputation before this COVID-19 pandemic we are facing, we think it can really redeem itself at this time and place in facilitating information sharing across borders and societies, and giving us a way to work with this new normal. We think information should be accessible and available; that there exists an enabling and sense-making educational process; and that information is appropriately processed so people have the capacity to respond and act. 

We think there should be innovation in traditional enterprises. We should allow for technological disruption in the fields of medicine, education, etc. to happen at a much faster rate and create breakthroughs to strive for. Amidst rapid change, however, we recognize the need to prepare people for a changing job market and changing job landscape globally, especially as it pertains to San Francisco. 

We recognize that we in tech have created some problems, and we think we need some things to solve them—like an information digestion system. We have access to more information than any other generation on the planet, but we do not have the ability to actually analyze. And we think that creates some of the disruption that we are seeing. Where some of the lack of empathy comes from having so much in the world that is coming to us, our reaction might be to just shut it all off and then attach a sort of identity politics thing (thinking we are going to say this when we hear that). We also think that being exposed to a lot more pain and people means that empathy costs a lot more.

Recognizing the Growing Role of Tech Companies in Addressing Human Rights Issues

We noticed that tech companies have more of a role to play in a place where it was not previously a place for them to make these decisions. We discussed that nations were almost reneging the responsibilities of human rights to tech companies right now. It is as if they were lifting up the flag of net neutrality and basically being the flag bearer of how important it was—in the developed countries and especially in developing nations—to not only provide connectivity, but also more access to data.  

We see that the role of tech companies has now become particularly more prominent in ensuring transparency and open access. We think universal internet access is crucial, along with not controlling it with any censorship and promoting press freedoms. We think openness of information has been particularly important during COVID-19, and we saw how some of the initial spread was a result of the closed internet in China and suppression of medical professionals and journalists. 

We have also seen big risks like internet kill switches—which can be used for good (to prevent the spread of panic), but can also be used for bad (has a lot of repressive tendencies). So we think there should be a focus on press freedoms, on the governance of journalism and how bad actors can twist stories in a certain way, and an awareness of the risks journalists take with everything that is going on in different nation states.

We imagine that the tech companies would almost want the United Nations to step up in the ways they had been holding nation states responsible and acting on tech issues like net neutralities, or open source access to data, or even strengthening access to stronger encryptions—which we saw as critical to developing nations. So we think that, as the United Nations makes important decisions, it could play a very significant role in amplifying or representing the voices of tech companies as well as nations. 

Increasing Advocacy, Awareness, and Accountability through the United Nations

We also see the UN playing a very key role in raising awareness and shining a light on the issues we have discussed, issues we have seen come up across different nations. We think the UN can advocate for press freedom and rule of journalism—curbing the tendency for bad actors to intervene in this whole equation. We think it can speak for the voices of the individual as well as understand the problems that arose in this reaction of nationalism, and provide the space for these issues to be discussed by different nation states. Facilitating these open and transparent conversations is especially pertinent when we are dealing with a global pandemic. 

We see the opportunity for the UN to play a governance role in the global human rights arena, especially because different societies had meant different things when they said human rights and press freedoms. We think that human rights need to be heard and known—that includes facts and figures. We cannot allow governments to repress it or hide it, because facts and figures are something that help us know what the situation is, and if it is getting better or worse.  

Therefore, we think the United Nations could give a formal recommendation to its accumulated country partners to have a set of universal basic need thresholds. This means that they have determined—amongst a set of professionals they have established from consultations with different industries (healthcare, education, etc.)—a set of basic guidelines that each country must follow in order to provide a humane living environment for its citizenry, thereby putting pressure on countries who do not adhere to the universal basic needs threshold to align themselves with that threshold. By establishing this threshold, and by having the full weight of the United Nations behind the recommendation, this can start to push forward any issues or any approaches that have to do with creating equality.

Embracing Enforceable Commitments and Transparent Data to Prove Progress

We encourage the United Nations to promote the vision, to make it very concrete, very achievable, break it down into smaller steps like a good game design, and provide feedback on progress towards that goal—whatever it is—so it becomes very clear that we are making progress towards it. This does not just mean numbers—it is numbers for some people, but then it is a bar graph for other people—so we need to deal with these multiple modalities to properly communicate with people. 

The UN should make sure that member states agree and take action on all measures that have been agreed on. So if they agree on the sustainable goals, they need to be part of that. They need to show that they are part of it a lot more. They cannot just sign something and say they are doing it, that is not how it works. Unfortunately, there is no magic wand to fix these things. It needs to be enforced and UN member states need to be reminded that they came up with the collective goals all together. Then, it is necessary that they follow through and show how they are following through and making that very transparent so we can all see the data. We think it is going to be very, very important for the future that these countries are providing updates and data on meeting these goals, and since they are going to have to be more transparent with their data and figures, UN members need to all be in agreement.

This data-centered approach was a big topic of conversation in regards to recommendations for action by the United Nations. There needs to be a push for not only tech companies in Silicon Valley, but among states in the United States, and then countries globally, to share relevant data about their citizenry, of course in a responsible and ethical way. We need to ensure that best practices are established, and that this is informed by a push from the UN, to share certain relevant data across borders and across communities in order to determine exactly what the issues are and do an impact analysis to see where the most effort can be concentrated for the most impact. Having a data-centered approach can allow us to determine which issues need to be addressed in order of priority, which could be helpful in attacking problems in general.  

Another thing that came up in all these discussions was the need for the United Nations itself to also be more transparent. This is in regards to the processes it follows, and especially regarding the membership of agencies like the Human Rights Council and their processes. We think that providing this kind of transparency would help the United Nations to build more trust and that could enable it to be a stronger player in challenging the governments that are member states. We see the UN right now is failing to live up to its potential and it could really step up its game in terms of building trust and transparency. 

Creating UN-Led Coalitions for Supply Chain Management on a Global Scale

We also see the United Nations as having an important role to play in making supply chains more connected by collaborating and helping with the transfer of physical goods between nations, just like the Red Cross and different UN agencies were already doing. We think it is important to create coalitions for supply chain management on a global scale. Not having such a coalition and an integrated, aligned process has been a significant barrier to saving lives and accessing critical equipment. We see the United Nations taking a bigger role in that collaboration. 

Creating a Brighter Future Through Systemic Change

We discussed the fact that a lot of the problems we face are more systemic, they have been created by systems or lacked systems thinking to be properly addressed. Understanding that is very important and probably even more important is having public policy that is systems thinking oriented and not incremental. There was a discussion about San Francisco being a result of incremental policies, where we need to have a much more broad, global, and collaborative lens for policy that is inclusive and covers the really simple cause and effect problems we have probably already solved. These best practices can be for governments but also organizations—which can be companies, nonprofits, or clubs. 

We need a systems level approach to optimize how systems function and integrate various elements of how society functions in a more aligned way, which again is being highlighted now. Not having that has been an apparent obstacle in achieving much of what is needed at the moment. We noticed this emerging pattern of the connection between the macro level systemic implications and individual level implications, and how we live our lives and navigate a situation like the pandemic we are navigating right now.

These changes would place an importance on education and require a shift in educational systems from linear models of education that have not been able to adequately prepare citizens to respond in a chaotic, critical situation like the one that we are in now. So we need to make sure there is a global response system that is in place for all different types of crises.  

Systems thinking in education is important for creating global citizens and shifting the focus on those inclusive and collective values we have discussed. We see the need for leadership training at all levels of society and we support using tech as a platform, an avenue for this change. We believe in systems thinking to create systemic, not incremental change.

In all of this, we want to point out that, as a whole, we tend to be more reactive. That is typically how humans are. If we do not see a problem, we do not need to think of solutions of how we can fix a potential problem. Instead, we need to create proactive solutions by making sure there is a collective strategy and measures in place that include all players. In general, we noticed that we are a lot more reactive, and we all need to become more proactive in creating the future we need.