Using a panel of experts to regulate the world.

Jean-Francois Rischard: In the book, I sort of thought that the only way out would be not to try to extrapolate the nation state and _________ system all the way to the global levebecause I don't think that will workbut to actually think out of the box in terms of expert systems. In other words, not through representation systems, but expert systems. So I described in the book an idea which I call global issues networks where one would, for each of these 20 urgent global issues, set up a body of the world's best experts in that area. So let's take the example of fisheries depletion, which is a very serious problem which is about to become irreversible. The idea would be that one of the international institutions  matter which one because they would only be involved as facilitators . . . So if it's fisheries depletion, it could be FAO in Rome which is a UN outfit, or the World Bank. I don't care which one it is. They're just facilitators. Le's say it's the World Bank. The World Bank would essentially gather 30 of the best experts it knows of in the fisheries management area. Ten would come from governments that have a lot of experience in fisheries management; 10 would come from the NGO area the international civil society area ....... and 10 would come from business. Whether business is part of the problem or part of the solution, it doesn't matter. Business has a lot of knowledge about fishing techniques and so forth. And these 30 experts would create sort of the beginning of a global issues network, which would then go into a second phase where some . . . another 60 experts would be co-opted. So you would have 90 a third from government, a third from business, and a third from the NGO world. And it's very important to say that these 90 experts would be essentially gathered by the international organization and then later by the early on experts only on the basis of their knowledge. In other terms, I happen to be from Luxembourg as we said earlier. I would not a fisheries expert from Luxembourg government to be in there because we don't know anything about fish. But I would want an expert from Iceland, from Mauritania, from South Africa, from Portugal, from Spain to be in there. So it's really an expert-driven . . . expertise-driven concept. And these 90 experts, once gathered, would go into a seclusion mode for two, three years. Not this off and on mode of the international system now which is very shallow; but essentially they would spend the next two or three years of their lives forgetting where they came from whether they came from this or that government, this or that company, or this or that NGO; but represent all of us in terms of representing all of us in the humanity of this planet to solve this fisheries problem onceand for all.

Recorded on: 7/2/07