Territorial and functional structures in the face of global systemic risks
Carlo Jaeger, Global climate Forum, Germany
It is often assumed in debates about global systemic risks - like those of climate change, financial instability, disruptive inequality and more - that they have ultimately to be resolved through some kind of agreement among the governments of the world. This perspective gives priority to the territorial structure of nation state and leads to the difficult question of whether the world economy can and should be controlled by political means. The global economy, however, is not based on territorial, but on functional structures. They include global markets as well as multinational corporations and border-crossing supply chains. Particularly important are regional innovation systems linked over large distances, like Northern California, South Korea, Taiwan and others. The linkages between such innovation systems would be impossible without the professional networks that are characteristic of what has been called the knowledge society. How to harness the potential of such networks might become a key question for the TIMES project.
Carlo Jaeger is an economist and the chairman of the Global Climate Forum. He is professor at Potsdam University in Germany, at Beijing Normal University in China and at Arizona State University in America. His present research is focused on the potential of new forms of green growth to tackle global systemic risks.
