Dan Banik speaks with Gro Harlem Brundtland on global responses to Covid-19, multilateralism and the role of UN agencies such as the WHO, and the current status of the sustainable development agenda.
Our guest this week is Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former prime minister of Norway and former head of the World Health Organization.
Gro has had an illustrious career in Norway and abroad. In addition to becoming the first female head of the Norwegian Labor party, she became the first female prime minister of Norway in February 1981. And during her second stint as Prime Minister in 1986, her cabinet made world news headlines when she appointed 8 female ministers in a cabinet of 18.
In addition to being widely regarded as the most influential Norwegian politician of all time, Gro is also widely known for having chaired the World Commission on Environment and Development, popularly referred to as the Brundtland Commission. The Commission’s influential 1987 report, Our Common Future, popularized and defined the term “sustainable development”.
She is also known for her work as Director General of the World Health Organization between 1998 and 2003, during which time she and the WHO coordinated a rapid worldwide response to stem outbreaks of SARS.
We discussed the world response to Covid, multilateralism and the role of UN agencies such as the WHO and the current status of the sustainable development discourse.
A full transcript of our conversation is available.
(Transcript prepared by Ingrid Ågren Høegh)
Gro Harlem Brundtland on Covid response, multilateralism and sustainable development
Brundtland In my time, the evidence about what was happening was there. Qualified research institutions across the world knew the danger of SARS and I knew it was necessary to call on countries to take action. I didn’t have a committee that had to give me advice.
Theme music You are listening to In Pursuit of Development with Dan Banik.
Banik My guest this week is Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former prime minister of Norway and former head of the World Health Organization. Gro has had an illustrious career in Norway and abroad. In addition to becoming the first female head of the Norwegian Labor party, she became the first female prime minister of Norway in February 1981. And during her second stint as Prime Minister in 1986, her cabinet made world news headlines when she appointed 8 female ministers in a cabinet of 18.
In addition to being widely regarded as the most influential Norwegian politician of all time, Gro is also widely known for having chaired the World Commission on Environment and Development, popularly referred to as the Brundtland Commission. The Commission’s influential 1987 report, Our Common Future, popularized (and defined) the term “sustainable development.” She is also known for her work as Director General of the World Health Organization between 1998 and 2003, during which time she and the WHO coordinated a rapid worldwide response to stem outbreaks of SARS.
Over the years, I have been fortunate to have had numerous opportunities to interact with Gro both in the United States as well as here in Norway. Since we could not meet in person due to Covid restrictions, we met on Zoom in early January of this year. We discussed the world response to Covid, multilateralism and the role of UN agencies such as the WHO and the current status of the sustainable development discourse.
I hope you enjoy our conversation.
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Banik Welcome to the show Gro. It’s such a pleasure to see you again.
Brundtland Hello, good morning.
Banik Good morning. It’s a beautiful day in Oslo and I’m so happy to see you again, albeit online. I want to get us started with a very broad question Gro, and that has to do with the Covid pandemic.
It’s been a year since we began hearing about the virus and much has happened. A lot of obviously bad things – with over a 90 million infections and almost 2 million deaths. Of late, of course, there has been some positive news such as the development of vaccines in record time. Given your vast experience in global health and in tackling such pandemics, the question is: what did the world get right and what should we have done more of?
Brundtland Well, I think we had a little late start in sharing information. Not as bad as back when SARS came in 2003, China also this time was too slow in the first weeks to share information that something bad was happening. However, they were quicker than before. They had learnt a lot from the SARS experience, and the context, or the definition of the virus, was shared with the world and with the WHO already around 10 days into January. And that made it possible for the rest of the research community across the world, having had that information, to really quickly start preparing vaccines and therapeutics. So that was an essential thing that happened early on.
Then of course, in many ways, many countries have been dealing with it in a systematic way. More than anything, the Asian countries around the former SARS pandemic, or challenge, because they had the experience, they knew how dangerous such a virus could be. And also I think Asian culture is more pluralistic and less individualistic than the typical Western culture, so the shutdowns around different Asian countries around China, and in China itself, helped stop spreading the virus and helped them deal with the situation.
Now in the Western world, there was too much of waiting-to-see attitude. Of course, they did not know if this disease was as dangerous as SARS, they probably already knew that it was not as deadly – we knew that quite quickly – but the fact that it spread so quickly and is so infectious I think has taken many of the public health systems by surprise.
So that’s why it spread so quickly in Europe, in Italy, in Spain. Even now, we are quite certain that it already spread in several southern European countries already in 2019, in December. It was already there. Nobody knowing what it was until late January or so. So these are some of the aspects of this time. And then it took time before the international community in a broader sense, I mean the financial institutions, those who have to be supporting countries when a crisis like this occurs, and it starts not only affecting the health system but also affecting the economies of countries, which happened quite quickly, and it has revealed the lack of accountability of our system, international system, but also the system does not have criteria and action points that can be used quickly. You know to use the resources necessary, also economically, to help countries deal with the crisis. For instance, the IMF and the World Bank, they have certain systems that can be mobilized but they are limited. And they are dependent on countries that are in the leaderships of those institutions to make new decisions, to mobilize additional new resources. So as we look at what we have experienced this time, it’s not only empowering the WHO itself, which is obvious, but also our international institutions, certainly our economic ones, the World Bank and the IMF, to more quickly help countries deal with the situations.
And of course, generally, we have revealed that the preparedness to counter an epidemic threat, the world preparedness, is not at the level where it should have been, after all our experiences before.
Banik That surprised me a lot, you know. It seems that in relation to any problem really, it has to be sensational, huge, visible before we act. Even though there are lots of warnings before, and you yourself were part of a committee and you warned that this could happen, there was very little preparedness. I want to follow up on what you said earlier, Gro, about leadership. One of the things that is fascinating, and we see this in our own neighborhood, in Sweden, is this focus on scientific knowledge-based information coming out, and then political decisions. And most countries seem to have pursued a mix of both, whereas some countries, like Sweden, have been the outliers until recently, where the political leadership has almost taken a back seat. And I know you’ve been very critical to it, I mean comparing our own country’s experience with our neighbor’s, so what are your thoughts on that, in terms of the political leadership: should political leaders involve themselves more forcefully and perhaps even override that kind of bureaucratic, professional decisions that are taken in relation to such big crises such as pandemics?
Brundtland Yes, I mean, when you have a national crisis and something that affects the whole of the country, in most countries, democratic countries and even in others, the leadership of the country has to take charge. The leadership is responsible at the government level. However, we have different types of constitutions and experiences. So when you look at Norway and Sweden, and you can add Denmark to Norway, with quite similar traditions, in Sweden, they have the strong authoritative institutions dealing in different areas, including in health, and you can understand why this can be look at as a good thing, that the administration, irrespective of the government at the moment, they are responsible to deal with a crisis in health. And in the Swedish tradition and constitution, this had been the case and it hasn’t led to these kinds of difficult situations that it did this time. So as it starts, you can understand why the Swedish government was reluctant to intervene. The system was expecting them to listen to the public health authorities and let them make the basic decisions. Now in this case, it’s different from Norway and Denmark, where the tradition in any big crisis is that the government is responsible. So decisions were made in Norway by listening to the public health authorities and then making government decisions, and also involving parliament in a number of the big decisions because the authority of the government is after all limited. We don’t have laws that give the government complete authority, even in crisis. So that’s why we have had in Norway the experience of the government and the parliament discussing the issues and giving the clear signals about how to rule, how to mobilize a lot of economic resources, new legislation, to make it possible to help the country also economically.
And you now see Sweden realizing that, this time, their system has not been perfect in any way. So they are now pushing new legislations and changes to their constitutional background, in order to be able to more clearly make – they don’t have legislation even – that is clear enough to take quite drastic measures that affect the population. In Norway now we have a discussion about our legislation: can we give people the signal that they have to stay home, shutting down by closing doors – its not clear that we can easily in our system. So the government is proposing a law to make that clearly possible, in case, and to me it is necessary, when you see there is a limitation to government authority in an area like this, you should really act. Not that we necessarily have to use it in the Covid situation, but listen, there are so many worse situations that can come. Imagine that we had something like Ebola or with mortality of 60-70%, or even at 10% deadly outcome such as in the SARS situation, then we certainly have to use very drastic measures to stop societies from being completely overrun. So yes, we have to learn from that experience and in this case, the mortality, it’s deadly and it has taken a lot of lives, but it could have been so much worse.
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Banik Let’s move on, and this is related to what we’ve just discussed, the role of multilateralism, and the role of UN agencies, Gro. You’ve led the WHO during the SARS, and we can discuss that later. First question in this section really has to do with how effective you think agencies, UN agencies like the WHO are, how powerful are they? Because there’s been a lot of debate about UN reforms, that the UN is only as powerful as the member countries make them out to me, there’s often the problem of lack of finances, the soon outgoing president of the United States cut off funding to the WHO, there have been all of these problems, and reflecting on your time as the head of the WHO, Gro, should we continue as things have been? Are there areas where you feel like there is a need for major reforms in agencies like the WHO?
Brundtland You know, I think we have to separate what we think would be ideal, because that certainly is very different from what we have. However, thinking about what is possible, it is clear that it is the sum of what governments are able to agree to, which will decide what kinds of reforms can be carried through. You sometimes have academic circles or NGOs wishing for the ideal solutions, and in a situation where we are now, in the last 5 or 10 years, have had a kind of backlash with regard to the belief and focus on international cooperation. It is certainly so that when the big powers don’t agree, and other countries also follow them to a certain extent, there is no background, no possibility to make major reforms. Now hopefully, given the lack of preparedness that has become evident, that there is sufficient agreement across countries that something substantive can happen with regard to global health security. I believe many countries have become skeptical and alarmed by what has happened. So I think there is a potential for doing something in this area, within this year and next year, so that we can be better prepared next time. I do think so.
However, to kind of launch a major reform effort across the system, I don’t think we have the political situation at the moment where this could succeed. So we have to improve what we have, and show the weaknesses and start repairing and improving within the system. That means reforms, yes, but it doesn’t mean a big shake-up because the atmosphere is not there yet for that kind of commonality across the world, between the US and China etc.
Banik It is indeed China-US rivalry, competition, the struggle for influence, I think, that has characterized some of the debates of course, and from the US perspective, the feeling that the WHO was too soft on China, and it is in that context it was particularly interesting to hear that you were praised by President Trump, and many others, for your handling of SARS, and one of the issues that have been raised, is your strategy where it was much more about using local contacts and diplomatic channels and the internet to get that information rather than relying on national governments. That has been highlighted as one of those success stories. Could that have been done in the situation today? Is it possible for agencies like the WHO to challenge a country and to openly criticize the lack of information coming out? In other words, is it possible to do what you did then today?
Brundtland Well, I think it is possible and its necessary. But you know, in a strange way, so the follow up to the SARS, and then others that happened even before the Ebola, the follow up to the improvement to the international regulations, which started during my time, and continued, and were finalised in 2005. After SARS. Improving the international health regulations. Widening it and broadening it because it used to have only a few diseases, not a broader perspective of any big health emergency. And that was necessary. However, countries in that process also weakened indirectly the WHO and its director general, by placing committees that were going to advice the DG about international health emergencies. And leading by committee can sometimes, when there is urgency, become a problem. So there were committees that now this time, the DG was awaiting their confirmation about whether this was a public health emergency. That was in January already. Was it or was it not? Did it qualify according to international health regulation to be declaring an international public health emergency of major concern. And that committee was divided. Obviously in that committee you had people from the US and China, they did not agree. Now, to me, it reveals political considerations maybe being implied into an expert group that is supposed to be doing public health expertise and advice. In my time, the evidence about what was happening was there, qualified research institutions across the world knew the dangers of the SARS, and I knew it was necessary to call out countries to take action. I didn’t have a committee that had to give me advice. So it has illustrated that we shouldn’t be reigning in the DG in such a way that his voice gets thwarted. As we move forward, we have to re-establish the authority of WHO, and the DG as the chief administrative and technical officer that can speak out, when something is dangerous.
Banik I noticed that you have argued for a revision of the international health regulations, right, that those need to be achieved. What aspects?
Brundtland So there are several, I think. I think many countries are ready to look through that and there is a review committee already looking at it. But let me give a couple examples of where it needs to be strengthened. First of all, the transparency question. It has to be more clear with regard to the responsibility of countries, to immediately open and tell the WHO when something strange is happening. It must be even more clear about the transparency and the accountability of the countries that are reporting to WHO on potential emergencies.
Then there is another aspect which led to a weakening of any recommendations which has to do with travel. The air industry in many countries were very strongly against the WHO advising and recommending travel restrictions, which I did at that time. So it was kind of changed in the direction of warning countries and making it difficult to have travel recommendations. There are certain public health reasons to do this. Because it could lead to countries feeling they want to conceal what is happening, because they are afraid of being hit by travel recommendations. So there are certain realistic and public health arguments. However, when you look at the world, even with Covid, which is less lethal, countries did apply travel recommendations. Why? Because from a logical perspective, many countries saw that they couldn’t avoid doing that. So this is one aspect which has to be thought through again. And to find better ways to both protect those considerations, to avoid it as much as possible, but to not make it a public health principle, not to have travel recommendations. I think that’s wrong. Because if you have a really deadly situation, you have to use – just like we limit contact between people in the local community – we also have to limit contact between countries when we are in a really dire situation.
The third thing, WHO must have absolute access to any country, any place in any country, the moment WHO feels it is necessary. It shouldn’t be possible for any county to refuse the WHO to come in to check. So that has to be strengthened.
Banik Do you think the WHO is facing a reputational crisis? And if so, is it because of perhaps more recent efforts, and I don’t know how you would characterise the WHO’s response to Ebola or the Swine Flu, SARS was of course a success, and then we have the Covid pandemic: where do you see the kind of reputation being perhaps restored again. So firstly, is there a reputational crisis and if so, what should be done in the next few years for the WHO to regain that kind of trust and international reputation that it had?
Brundtland I think there is less of a real reputational crisis than politicisation, like the US and China competing for their own interests. Most countries trust WHO. WHO showed some weaknesses in the Ebola crisis. But that became obvious and many things then were done to strengthen the WHO to make a new emergency department, they got support from governments to strengthen their action, and how to deal with it. So the reputational crisis back after Ebola, I think has been mostly resurrected before this happened. Countries generally trust the WHO, however, they know they don’t give enough resources to the main health international authority that we have. So that part of what we talked about earlier about multilateralism. Countries across the world have to realise that our international system needs stronger general international support. And certainly the WHO does. Its budgets are very small, and when you look at what the world is dependent upon, it is really outrageous how weakly they are resourced. And the people who are working in the WHO, how can they overcome the lack of financial resources that they are struggling with? So that’s up to countries to deal with.
Banik That's why it was particularly heartening that when the US pulled its support, many others stepped in and reaffirmed their commitment, which was a very nice show of support for that institution.
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Banik You are famous for very many things, but among those is the concept of sustainable development and that definition that was launched in your 1987 report, Our Common Future, that development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. That definition is still going strong. And I remember you and I had a discussion about this when we were recording lectures for an online course in 2015 and I asked you about your thoughts about sustainable development because the idea was ebbing and flowing, and I wondered if you could reflect briefly on how you see that idea being used currently. And I’m asking you this because since 2015 we had the 2030 Agenda, the SDGs, and of course there’s a lot of talk about how progress towards the SDGs is being slowed down or reversed because of the pandemic, but what are your thoughts about the idea of sustainable development as you and your colleagues thought of and developed and published it in that famous Our Common Future report?
Brundtland Well, I think it took, first of all, in the first years, after our report, there was a real awareness, awakening across the world, in many centres, in many academic and also NGO circles, and also governments. And so, we wouldn't have had Rio five years after the report. All the decisions that were taken in Rio, illustrates how the world was really awakening to something new and something dramatic. And a lot of important decisions were made. Climate convention. Biodiversity. Desertification. Agenda 21. It was impressive what the world was ready to do back in 1992. And then of course, a lot of things continued positively happening in the next five years. But then you had a financial crisis , the Asian crisis, in 1997, and setback started and it kind of, the climate issue became more central to the whole situation, and then of course we went to Copenhagen with all its backlashes, and it really, time was kind of running out without important decisions made.
However, as we approached 2015, or at least Rio+20 in 2012, then the sustainable development goals were again taken up in a systematic fashion, and we got both the Climate Agreement and the sustainable development goals, in 2015. So there was again a new kind of coming together, because China and US were then able to cooperate on this, under the leadership of Obama. So the world was really better prepared in 2015. Now, that means it took 28 years from our report to these two major agreements were made. And I think that it’s not strange in a world with more than 190 countries, that it could take 28 years before they could agree on a more systematic approach to both of these major concerns. I still think we are in a situation where the total build-up of awareness on climate, and on sustainable development as essential to the future, I think it’s there in most countries and now more than even five or ten years ago. And I think for many people the Covid crisis has kind of illustrated the points. Yes, you get setbacks because of the acute prices focusing people’s minds on doing the urgent efforts, but I don’t think the idea has left people’s minds. Covid has illustrated our interdependence. This is why I believe that both the climate issue and sustainable development goals will be alive and kicking going forward. I don’t think we will have a real setback. There are so many in the private sector now that realise there is no alternative path ahead. So now they are really calling on governments to make decisions to, for instance, get beyond the fossil fuel era and so on. it’s there. And people know that the future means change.
Banik You are right. I haven’t ever seen the private sector show as much enthusiasm for development as they're doing now. But going back to the 1987 report, Gro, I've re-read it and I think there were some really interesting ideas there and going back to what you were saying that maybe there was a period where there was more focus on climate change, and one of the wonderful things about the sustainable development concept is the balance between the environment, social welfare aspects and the economic aspects that come out really very clearly in the report. I wondered if you could share with our listeners some of the most interesting debates you and the commissioners had while writing the report?
Brundtland We went through a process of learning and sharing knowledge and experience because we were seeking evidence across the world from every institution and person with knowledge, and we were assembling, analysing and discussing it. So of course, we had also tough discussions. As we were approaching our recommendations and our writing of the report, yes, there were some issues that led to big discussions. One of them was in the reproductive health area, where the empowerment of women, the right to be part of decision-making, democracy, unless you have participant democracy, there’s no way to deal with all of these issues in an inclusive way. So the question of the right to family planning became an issue because we had commissioners with different religious backgrounds. And I remember, “I am a catholic, how can I advice that every woman should have access to family planning?” So this issue was hard. Because people were afraid to be standing behind. They understood it, but they were afraid to be quoted as having said something against the church. And the same happened partly also by one of the Muslim participants. However, in the end, we had learnt so much together, we were so agreeing on how things are linked together, that both of them decided to step down and agree and be part of that consensus. Which was wonderful to see because they were in their hearts convinced about what the world needed. The other big difficult issue was nuclear energy. We knew how important the climate issue was because part of the whole recommendation, and since nuclear energy is not fossil fuel, it helps in a broad global context. However, there are risks involved. So that balance was difficult. And we had to be critical about the risks, but had to find a balanced assessment of nuclear energy. And this is where the world is today, on nuclear energy. Many have not continued developing it because there are risks, and there are solar and other alternatives to use.
Banik Gro, just one final question to round off our discussion. Given all the setbacks that the world has faced, how can the SDGs be achieved nine years from now? And I was reading that in a report you had argued recently that it would cost less than 5 dollars per person to take the necessary measures to prevent future pandemics. So the question is, are we talking about money, is it about finance, is it about the lack of political enthusiasm, what is it that you would recommend in the next decade or so that we should be really looking at to not just prevent pandemics but also achieve these very ambitious SDGs?
Brundtland Well, first of all, we have to be begging, praying and hoping that the US sorts itself out under Biden. We are in the middle of having had the run on the Capitol, in the world's most influential country, so the internal strife and polarisation in the US, illustrates many of the problems we are really facing today. It’s worse than I really though. I mean, what’s happening in the US is worse than I thought. Hoping that when Biden takes over, we will have a different international atmosphere. Certainly, we know that, and countries are looking forward to the 20th of January to have somebody else in the White House. But at the same time, there is so much internal opposition and so much lack of trust of authorities, not only in the US, but in so many countries, and I’m starting to really worry about the way that social media is making this happen. it’s so easy to spared negative messages through the media, through the social media, and make people believe in conspiracy theories. Scientific method of sharing knowledge, and then using the knowledge to help each other move forward is the way the world can go forward, and when it is being countered by a lot of false spreading of lies, it doesn’t make it easier because we need the people to be working together, people to be trusting their authorities, and the authorities to deserve that trust. And so I really am thinking that we have to take seriously the digital age and what it means in an inclusive world where we have to be supporting each other and moving towards shared experiences and shared responsibilities instead of pulling each other down and spreading false information in the way that’s now happening. So it’s a kind of negative message at the end here, but I believe that people are now more aware of the dangers and we have to work on how it’s going to be done and the big firms have now had a very tragic lesson about what they can lead to and they are taking some action. So I think the action there in dealing with some kind of important regulation about what’s happening in our common area of the internet and social media is certainly essential. We need knowledge to be shared and solidarity to be built.
Banik Gro Harlem Brundtland, it’s always such a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you so much for coming on my show today.
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Thank you for listening to In Pursuit of Development with Professor Dan Banik from the University of Oslo’s Centre for Development and the Environment. Please email your questions, comments and suggestions to inpursuitofdevelopment@gmail.com.