Jakob von Uexkull

Bio & resources

“It's an unlikely place to start a revolution,” I think to myself as I stop in front of the nondescript office building at Eleven Waterloo Place, just down from London's Piccadilly Circus. Before I open the large glass doors, I glance up the street toward Trafalgar Square. I can just make out Nelson's column with its statue of one of Britain's most famous heroes, his shining countenance overlooking the tour buses below. Two hundred years ago, when Europe ruled the world, Lord Nelson made sure that the British navy ruled the seas. But I've come to London in search of a more contemporary hero. His name is Jakob von Uexkull, and he has a plan that is as simple as it is revolutionary: to band together one hundred global leaders—heroes of our own age—and turn them into a political force like no other in history. He calls it the World Future Council: an international body of carefully selected and deeply respected individuals, formed at this critical period in human development to help mobilize the conscience of the world on behalf of our common future.

This council, as von Uexkull envisions it, would consist of one hundred of the most capable and courageous men and women alive today. Their specific task would be to look beyond the interests of nations, governments, corporations, and ideologies to the broader interests of the planet itself and to the well-being of its six billion citizens. They would seek to influence world governments, lobby world leaders, and add their collective weight to issues of planetary import—political, economic, ecological, religious, and humanitarian. Von Uexkull's hope is to create an unprecedented X factor in global politics, with the moral authority to be heard and the political legitimacy to promote more enlightened policy. And the guiding principle of this council would be the quality of our common future and the legacy we leave to those who will inherit this ever-smaller planet we all share. It is a bold vision and I'm curious to meet the visionary.

Von Uexkull seems an unlikely if affable hero, as he warmly greets me at the elevator door and ushers me into his small office. Tall and lanky, with an accent that betrays his Scandinavian origins, he might easily pass for a college professor, his graying beard, glasses, and reserved demeanor giving off an intellectual aesthetic. But as we begin to speak about his vision for changing the world, his voice takes on a quiet passion and moral authority that seems more in keeping with his activist reputation.

“Politicians today are timid,” he declares. “They lack courage; they are short-sighted and in many cases corrupt. Winston Churchill once said that the politician thinks of the next election and the statesman thinks of the next generation. But there are very few statesmen or stateswomen around today.”

It was concern about the legacy we are leaving future generations that inspired this soft-spoken Swede to take up a project as ambitious as the World Future Council promises to be. As a former Green Party member of the European Parliament and founder of the highly respected Right Livelihood Awards (often referred to in the press as the alternative Nobel Prizes), von Uexkull is no stranger to the unforgiving complexity of international politics. He has firsthand experience observing the interactions of short-sighted governments, powerful corporate interests, well-intentioned NGOs, and passionate activists as they struggle to respond to the burgeoning array of issues affecting our global village—north and south, east and west. Good ideas, he tells me, are not in short supply, but they often languish for years in reports or commissions or nonbinding declarations and are rarely implemented. And therefore, many of the fundamental changes that we desperately need to ensure a thriving human future seem to get further and further away, even as they grow more and more urgent. Sometime in the late 1990s, von Uexkull's frustrations came to a head.

“In 1998, I sat on a UNESCO commission to draft what was called 'The Declaration of Human Duties and Responsibilities,'” he remembers. “I realized that here was this very positive event that had been called together by UNESCO, but in the end, it was still just a short-term meeting with a nonbinding resolution. And so I began to think about how to build on all the good work and idealism that are out there and bridge this growing implementation gap.”

The seeds of what would become the World Future Council Initiative (WFCI) were first planted in the public mind during a German radio interview later that year, when von Uexkull began to speak extemporaneously about a vision that had been slowly forming in his mind. On that radio show, he called for a global council of “wise elders, thinkers, pioneers, and young leaders” that could influence and lobby parliamentarians around the world. He suggested that such a celebrated assembly could act as a sort of high-profile, carefully coordinated, globally oriented special interest group that could focus the world's attention on the truly important issues facing humanity. It was a far-reaching proposal, and von Uexkull knew even then that bringing it to life would require a long-term commitment and deep-pocketed funders. It would mean finding the best and brightest leaders, individuals who had the moral weight to represent the world's collective aspirations for a brighter future. And someone would have to organize the whole venture. “I was already responsible for one underfunded global project named the Right Livelihood Awards,” he explains. “This was obviously much larger, so I thought there was no way that I could take it on.”

Whatever von Uexkull's hesitations, fate was one step ahead of him. The response to his proposal was immediate. Television stations began talking to him about broadcasting the sessions of the council, people approached him with names of philanthropists, and he was showered with positive feedback. And the resistance he expected to find in the often-entrenched and territorial world of activists, nonprofits, and NGOs simply never materialized.

“We thought that the high officials in the UN would say, 'The UN is already doing this,' remembers von Uexkull. “Instead, we got an enthusiastic endorsement from Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the former UN Secretary-General. Then I thought that futurists were going to say, 'Why are you trying to create a new futurist organization?' Instead, we got letters from heads of major futurist organizations asking, 'When can we start working with the council?' Then I thought the NGOs would tell us that the idea was too top-heavy. Instead, I was invited to speak at one of their conferences, and the response was very positive. There's a feeling that this is something that is missing in the international global governance structure, which we need to build up as soon as possible.”

Victor Hugo once observed that nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. The WFCI, it seemed, was one of those rare visions whose arrival in this world somehow included an already passionate constituency. And von Uexkull realized that he had an obligation to respond. Without knowing it, he had sealed his own fate that day on the radio. For a globally minded activist with a deep concern about the state of the world, who had for too long watched the inefficiency and impotence of so many of the better angels of world politics, there was nothing left to do but sign up for the revolution he had set in motion.