Yet the year ahead also offers a remarkable opportunity. These crises will shape 2023 as the world continues to grapple with the widespread consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and COVID-19’s long tail. As the UN Secretary-General recently lamented, “Our world is facing the most pivotal, precarious moment in generations.” After reaching record levels in 2021, concentrations of greenhouse gases continued to rise this year, and dozens of natural disasters - extreme heat waves, floods, hurricanes - contributed to record levels of humanitarian need.Įxtending their reach into households and pocketbooks, global crises left almost no one untouched. Misinformation and disinformation presented clear and present threats to the health of people, communities, and political systems around the world. COVID-19 continued to batter the world, and new data showed how devastating the pandemic has been beyond its overwhelming harms to our health.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine not only threatened the lives of millions of Ukrainians and violated the UN Charter, but it also accelerated a series of cascading and interconnected global crises in food, fuel, and energy. In 2022 the blows to global cooperation came hard and fast. Our Director of Policy Planning, Megan Roberts, takes stock of a tumultuous year that put global solidarity and cooperation to the test, and zeroes in on five key issues to watch in 2023.
