About the Global Challenges Foundation

Visit Global Challenges Foundation (www.globalchallenges.org)

The Global Challenges Foundation, based in Stockholm, Sweden, was founded in 2012 by the former financier Laszlo Szombatfalvy. The origin was the ideas he proposed in his book The Greatest Challenges of Our Time (Ekerlids Publishing House, 2010) where he expounded his view on risk and risk management and expanded this perspective to also include global risks.

The former EU Commissioner Margot Wallström, the Professor of Environmental Science Johan Rockström and the Financiers Björn Franzon, Christer Jacobson and Sven-Ivan Sundqvist were recruited to the Foundation's Board of Directors. Later, when Sundquist deservedly retired from the Board and Wallström was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, their positions were filled by Mats Andersson, then CEO of The Fourth Swedish National Pension Fund, and Professor of Practical Philosophy at Uppsala University, Folke Tersman.

The goal of the Foundation is to reduce the risk of large global catastrophes that could threaten humanity and to facilitate solutions to mankind's big, new problems. To achieve this the Foundation works in two parallel ways:

• partly by increasing knowledge about the great global risks and problems among decision makers, media and the general public in order to raise awareness of their true dimensions. This work is performed in part through a yearbook which summarizes the latest expertise regarding catastrophic global risks and in part via periodic publications which focus on current events and new insights.
  
  
• and partly by stimulating research and discourse regarding a functioning, global governance model – global governance – which in a more effective, rational and equitable way can manage the great global risks and problem than the current system can do.

Thanks to a collaboration with and the support from the Global Challenges Foundation, the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) now launches a new track – Global Challenges at the Stockholm School of Economics – to be included in the Bachelor program in Business and Economics.

The collaboration between the Foundation and SSE, will continue for ten years and will include approximately 3,000 students. The Foundation has great expectations that this concept – in addition to educating corporate decision-makers about completely new insights regarding the world we all operate in – will spark interest and create followers at other leading institutions around the world.

Consequently, the Foundation seeks to examine old and new models for the development of the United Nations, and to initiate new ideas for effective global governance.