Jean-François Rischard will be a keynote speaker at the RI Convention in Birmingham, June 21-24, 2009. He is the author of High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them, a book that expresses his personal views on the future and documents what he sees as the most urgent global issues of the decades to come-from climate change through contagious diseases to the global financial architecture.  He served as the World Bank Vice President for Europe from 1998 to 2005, acting as the Bank's chief spokesman both to the European Union and to individual European countries.
1) Sharing our planet: Issues involving the global commons
- Global warming
- Biodiversity and ecosystem losses
- Fisheries depletion
- Deforestation
- Water deficits
- Maritime safety and pollution
2) Sharing our humanity: Issues requiring global commitment
- Massive step-up in the fight against poverty
- Peacekeeping, conflict prevention, combating terrorism
- Education for all
- Global infectious diseases
- Digital divide
- Natural disaster prevention and mitigation
3) Sharing our rule book: Issues needing a global regulatory approach
- Reinventing taxation for the 21st century
- Biotechnology rules
- Global financial architecture
- Illegal drugs
- Trade, investment and competition rules
- Intellectual property rights
- E-commerce rules
- International labour and migration rules
I wrote it because I am convinced that our planet faces a whole new generation of global issues which need solving in the next two or three decades at most, and which the existing worldwide set up is not very well organised to deal with.
