From the UN Global Compact stage to a Danish Consulate evening, Andrea Bonime-Blanc returns from UNGA81 and Climate Week with her personal takes on climate, tech, and geopolitics.
By Andrea Bonime-Blanc | All opinions presented here are Andrea’s alone. This article was originally published on Andrea’s Substack.
For our Athena Alliance / GEC Risk Advisory LLC Ripped from the Headlines (RFTH) September 2026 Salon, we did something a little different and held a special edition in which I shared my key takeaways from UNGA81 and Climate Week based on my direct involvement as a speaker and participant in a variety of events, conversations with friends and colleagues attending various events and media reports. Disclaimer: unlike other RFTH blog posts here, this one represents only my personal opinion.
Shared below is the Post I made to my new #GoverningPandoraSubstack shared with the RFTH Salon participants reproduced here verbatim (including photos I took used to illustrate and explain the week). Here’s the direct link to that Post: https://bit.ly/4hgkQsS
Enjoy, comment, share and subscribe to both RFTH and the #GoverningPandoraSubstack.
By Andrea Bonime-Blanc, Governing Pandora Substack
This post is about my key climate, tech and geopolitical takes on UNGA81 / Climate Week last week in NYC. Before I go there, let me share some explanatory photos.
As my readers know, photography is a key way I express myself – and increasingly so via this medium.
As I was walking purposefully to my meetings and engagements all over Manhattan this past UNGA81/Climate Week, I snapped a lot of photos. Above is one I caught of an ad plastered on the side of an empty lot at Hudson Yards asking: What Holds Us?
And then I happened upon the so called “Vessel” at the center of Hudson Yards. See below trio of angles on this fascinating structure.
Thus, the words in the ad inspired the title of this post – “What Holds Us” and the Vessel made me think about our planet earth as the one and only vessel of life we all share and must “ride” through this universe together.
That led me to query:
What holds us in a world filled with fear and anxiety about wars, climate catastrophes and out of control AI?
My answer is simple – what holds us is the fact that we – humans – actually do come together even when we don’t agree with each other on the challenges of our times.
We come together despite the headwinds of powerful forces bent on disagreement, disruption, disconnection, destruction, corruption and, yes, even carnage.
We come together because separately we will not be able to solve the great global challenges – like mitigating climate damage, guardrailing exponential technology and finding solutions to too many wars and conflicts.
And the UN and UNGA and Climate week all provide I would argue powerful means to do this.
As my readers have come to know, I like to relate the themes I write about here back to the 5 Global ESGT Megatrends of the coming year (current series link: https://bit.ly/4wFET8X).
Below is a snapshot of the 3 relevant Megatrends for today’s discussion: Geopolitics, Technology & Socioecology.
SOCIOECOLOGY: Everything, Everywhere, All at Once – Now
As much as people talked about AI and technology, about doom-sayers crawling out of frontier AI companies, about a 10% chance of the end of humanity in 10 years, there was no escaping the bigger, more pervasive, more inclusive, more evasive planetary storm system hovering over all of us – climate change.
My “Climate” takes from this week:
· Climate Work Continues & Intensifies. Climate change, the transition from carbon, the need to adopt and deploy renewables continues to be purposeful, focused and real despite (or maybe more so because of) the multiple intertwining energy crises occasioned by the US/Israeli war on Iran, the Russian war on Ukraine, and all of their reverberations, repercussions and intended and unintended consequences. Check out Carolyn Kissane’s brilliant “Energy Common Sense” Substack here: https://substack.com/@carolynkissane157206
· There are Climate “Positive Tipping Points” (in addition to Polyrisks and Polycrises). With an El Nino that climate scientists are describing as the fiercest ever (plus other climate catastrophes such as the recent Nepal disaster tied to glacial melting), we are only seeing the beginning. I heard an amazing keynote at the UN Global Compact’s Leaders Summit from climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe who provided an astonishingly simple and powerful message – that simply talking about climate can help us significantly move the global needle.
· Resilience is the New “It” Word. I love the word “Resilience”. I have used it forever including extensively in my book Gloom to Boom: How Leaders Transform Risk into Resilience and Value (Routledge 2020). Fittingly I delivered a closing keynote at the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit with resilience at its core (see below).
Put resilience together with the promise and reality of climate tech and we can indeed do this. To underscore this point, below is a Table of the top 5 High-Impact Climate Tech Products. And this is the tip of a really good iceberg, if I dare say.
While some would argue that the UN is broken and that UNGA81 meeting is much ado about nothing, I would strongly beg to differ especially recently on the tech front. The UN has been especially good at convening a multi-sector global dialogue on governing exponential technologies – check out the Table below and my takes.
My “Tech” takes:
· AI Silicon Royalty “Occupies” UNGA. In addition to wise voices like Yoshua Bengio, the likes of Sam Altman (OpenAI’s CEO) and Dario Amodei (Anthropic’s CEO) also spoke at UNGA. This is unprecedented and reflects the urgency of now when it comes to the global governance efforts to catch up with the unbridled AI. All of this in the face of strenuous objections to global AI governance by Trump’s administration.
· The UN as a Force for Tech for Good. Over the past decade, various efforts at the UN have focused hard on frontier tech and making sure it is developed safely and inclusively. Much of that work appeared throughout the week. Above is a summary Table of the main UN efforts in this space over the past 5 years.
· The Mobilizing Effect of Data Centers. AI data centers are taking center stage – tech stewards (as I call them in my book Governing Pandora) are being buoyed by a broadening global social and public awareness of data center ESG effects locally everywhere. Erin Brockovich who followed me on stage for a closing keynote at the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit provided a populists’ rallying cry on this topic and a new organizational vehicle for communities to fight back that she’s spearheading.
My “Geopolitical” takes:
· China – the Constant Influencer. Through its careful, strategic and long term planning posture, China has in effect becoming the 2d more or less equal world power. Nothing made it clearer than Trump’s receiving Xi in lavish splendor on his DC state visit while China continues to support Iran, Russia and North Korea against US and EU national interests, and keeps planning for some form of Taiwan control.
· Trump’s “Global Domination” Speech at the UN. Trump gave a “Global Carnage” speech at the UN threatening for the umpteenth time to annihilate Iran and extolling the virtues of an unbridled, unfettered race to win the global AI race (or what he now calls the “super-intelligence” race).
· The Rise of the Middle Powers? With Canada, the EU and others now scrambling to deal with major global challenges like the Iran war, energy crunch, the Ukrainian/Russian war, plus the competition for resources for the exponential tech revolution, there were many signs of discontent and maneuvering but not of a clear or feasible plan.
For a great resource on ongoing and cutting edge geopolitical issues, check out the Council on Foreign Relations website and newsletter. Link: https://www.cfr.org/
Below are 2 more Postcards from Pandora – one from running to meetings to moderate an evening at the Danish Consulate in NYC at Hudson Yards (see “Melting Skies” photo below).
The shot below is about the setting sun on Thursday on my way to my last UNGA81/Climate week meeting which was the most delightful of all – dinner with 3 amazing women who all worked at the UN Global Compact at one point or another and continue to do amazing socioecological, technological and geopolitical work all with the purpose of “holding us” together. I posted about it on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7509687724686131200/
Until the next one, wishing you peace, togetherness and purposeful productivity!
Onward, upward, forward 🚀🚀🚀
Andrea
