By Dr. Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah
12 February 2026 - I was delighted to be asked to speak at the 80th anniversary celebration of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in New York on 23 January, exactly 80 years to the day of the inaugural ECOSOC session. On that day, the acting UN Secretary-General, Sir Gladwyn Jebb, opened that first session by declaring: “For the first time…the Nations of the world have set up one common body to consider and when possible, to rectify, the economic and social problems that beset mankind”.
It’s a mission that feels timelier than ever. Yet, as the facilitator of our discussion reminded us, its task is far from plain sailing. These multilateral institutions, he suggested, can feel like a large cargo tanker navigating choppy waters while trying desperately to steer a new course.
The analogy is apt. But let’s not forget the tanker was also designed 80 years ago. Reduced funding is accelerating the kind of age-related corrosion and structural fatigue that can render a ship unseaworthy. And there is significantly less trust among its 193 sailors than is ideal for navigating difficult conditions.
But it is these truly inclusive and accountable multilateral institutions that give us the best chance to reshape the way the global economy works. As creaky as it may feel, we need to invest in and modernise the tanker to deal with our turbulent times. The alternative is that we relinquish ever more decision-making power to the billionaires cruising in their super yachts or networking at alpine ski resorts.
The work of ECOSOC remains vital, especially when it comes to delivering the bold but critical agenda behind the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs give us a compelling framework for an economy that truly serves people and planet. We need an urgent reset of our economic fundamentals around growth, equity and human flourishing.
The 20th century assumptions on which our global economic policy is based no longer hold water. This much should be painfully obvious. Take growth, for example. American educator, Kenneth Boulding once said: “Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist”.
Yet, “growth” as we know it isn’t delivering for most people and is wreaking huge damage on the climate and nature. Indeed, prioritising crude growth above all else is having far-reaching and damaging consequences, tipping the balance of power away from the greater good and towards the narrow interests of financial markets and investors. Small wonder that political action on climate change has been so limited.
Or take our enslavement to the equity markets. The assumption has always been that they do well, and everyone benefits. The fact that global billionaire wealth grew three times faster in 2025 than in the five years before, and that the world’s 12 richest men now have more wealth than the poorest 4 billion people? Not a problem. Or so the economic orthodoxy goes.
Except that it is a problem. A big one. This gaping, widening wealth gap has demonstrably negative impacts on our economies, societies, democracies, and environment. Numerous lessons from history and much current research suggest it will be a major driver of societal collapse within the next decade. We need urgent international cooperation to curb the accumulation of extreme wealth by working together on common tax rules and, perhaps, discussing where we should draw an extreme wealth line.
Our dogged obsession with using measures like GDP to assess economic progress means we’re failing to capture a true sense of what genuine human flourishing and wellbeing could look like. Many of the drivers of poor wellbeing are hardwired into an economic system designed and maintained by the wealthy for their own interests. This is why the work of the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Expert Group on Beyond GDP is so critical and timely.
Forty years ago, the founders of my own organisation, the New Economics Foundation, said that “to challenge the complacent orthodoxies of growth economics was once considered absurdly heretical; not to do so now is positively antediluvian”. I couldn’t agree more: those orthodoxies about endless growth, extraction, and a narrow economistic view of human wellbeing all need to be challenged.
The good news is that the 2030 Agenda provides us with a map for where we should be heading, and bodies like ECOSOC give us the mechanisms to agree on how best to deliver on the SDGs, measure progress, and hold each other to account for that progress. The challenge, especially in these turbulent and uncertain times, is to deliver the systemic change we need to build an economy that serves people and the planet, and to strengthen the multilateral system so that it is both fit for purpose and truly inclusive. Rather than leave the big economic decisions to elites on their superyachts or alpine resorts, we need to reinvigorate and revitalise the United Nations system so that we have "one common body" that will help unlock the 21st century’s new economic order.
Dr. Dhanajayan Sriskandarajah is Chief Executive of the New Economics Foundation and a member of the UN High-level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs. He is the author of Power to the People.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of UN DESA.