There is a wave of challenge to the structures of government and the instruments of social order. Examples include the Arab Spring in parts of the Middle East, the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong and the rise of populism in the United States and Europe, including the UK.

Changes in media technologies have amplified dissatisfaction and enhanced a desire for change leading to many single-issue campaigns, such as the powerful calls for a climate emergency across the world. A form of new people power has emerged: the immediacy of social media contrasts sharply with the slow deliberation of government institutions, adding to a sense of disconnection from established civic institutions.

National economies are more interdependent than ever before. This creates opportunities but can also create considerable instability. Access to the opportunities that globalisation has to offer are unevenly distributed, with many feeling alienated beyond their immediate communities. Changes in work practices and production models have left many in insecure low paid employment, with many citizens feeling that they have lost control over their destinies to distant institutions run by strangers.

For some states, the response has been inward-looking nationalism, which threatens vital global collaboration to address challenges like cybersecurity, health pandemics, climate change and environmental sustainability, increased refugee vulnerability and migration, none of which any state can resolve alone.

In 2005 the combined output of emerging economies reached more than half of world GDP. Developing countries have a far greater influence on the performance of the advanced economies than is often discussed. Many western businesses have parent companies from emerging economies and this process is increasing across the world.

This shift in economic power is driving policy changes and diplomatic arrangements. As the United States moves away from leadership of a rules-based international order to focus on its own domestic concerns, other countries are stepping into the vacuum and shaping a new balance of power

The increasing pace of change and the expected speed of response does not leave time for reflection and there is constant pressure to move onto the next thing. This leads to short-termism and an inability to devise solutions needed to address deeply embedded societal issues. We need a system leadership approach, re-finding some form of moral leadership, promoting local collaboration and broader engagement across society, drawing in shared and diverse narratives to inform decision-making.

Leadership can no longer be held by a small group, it must be shared across organisations where members take responsibility for their actions in agreed frameworks of accountability.

There is considerable research on the increase in global warming negatively impacting our society. Ice losses are
rapidly spreading deep into the interior of the Antarctic. The warming of the Southern Ocean is resulting in glaciers sliding into the sea increasingly rapidly, with ice now being lost five times faster than in the 1990s. The decisions we make today will affect the nature of the eco-systems of our planet. Growing pressure to act has resulted in a number of policy commitments across the world to reach net zero carbon emissions as one major solution to the variety of harms from our societies.

We are losing our most precious resources such as water and we are polluting the air we breathe. We need to address a wide variety of issues related to climate change, and environmental degradation. The effects we are seeing are impacting societies differently, with poorer people and poorer nations being disproportionately affected.

The transformation in information, nano, bio and neuro technologies is already creating significant disruption at unprecedented scale and pace. Learning to live and work with AI as part of our lives is vital if we are to benefit from these changes. Trends suggest the global stock of robots will multiply in the next few years, reaching as many as 20 million by 2030, with 14 million in China alone. At the same time estimates also suggest that a similar number of manufacturing jobs will be lost.

The effects of these job losses will vary greatly across countries and regions, with a disproportionate toll on lower-skilled workers and on poorer local economies. In many places, the impact will aggravate social and economic stress in times when political polarisation is a worrying trend. As the OECD has highlighted, this means that participation in higher education matters more than ever.

We see a greater degree of conflict across the world than for some time. Ideas and passion spread faster than ever and factions and groups work across countries and can be more powerful than some states. The rise and spread of asymmetric conflicts will continue with many more civilian deaths. Increasingly, countries are exporting their wars to other territories to play out tensions closer to home. Meanwhile, inter-state global tensions are increasing as some countries retreat from globalisation.

Conflict and war is often triggered by access to resources, increasingly exacerbated by climate change, a fear of migrants and many of the other challenges set out here. Conflict and war are moreover major contributors to environmental damage and climate change.

Rising social inequality comes from unequal access to wealth (capital and assets) on the one hand and income (earned money). Since the 2008 financial crash, recovery has been uneven: countries such as the UK, US, Canada and Australia have seen an increase in income inequality while it has continued to decrease in countries like India and China.

Wealth inequality is more universal as privileged groups have consolidated their control of assets and resources in a global market. In many parts of the world a sense of inequity has been sharpened by these real inequalities. Inequality in wealth and income leads to wider inequality in access to resources which will be exacerbated as new skills and knowledge are required with the extent of technological disruption.

On the one hand, many of the changes underway promote a greater diversity of views, beliefs, groupings and movements allowing people to connect in new ways valuing diversity.

On the other hand, we are seeing a retreat towards older social norms and beliefs in search of security. In some locales, people’s chosen identities continue to incite violence and abuse. Despite access to more voices than ever before, there is a danger of narrowing rather than broadening one’s gaze. These tensions play out in different ways across the world and with several affecting both individual and group identity at any time.

The world is more mobile than ever before but mobility and migration is disproportionately and unequally spread. Voluntary migration is usually stimulated by economic factors, including the belief that another country offers better prospects. Forced migration is driven by environmental change and degradation, war and persecution of minorities. Increased mobility, while enabling skilled people to engage globally results in an elite distanced from their own communities of origin. The ease of travel, on the other hand, means that health pandemics could spread faster than we could control and increased air travel is contributing to climate change.

Within universities, knowledge has always been global. International researchers are important to the community of scholars. International students are a valued part of the university community but are not always perceived positively by people living locally to the host institution.