>> We are seeing more and more megaphone diplomacy and less and less discreet diplomacy.

If we want to have results, we need to build confidence.

And that is only possible if you do it in a discreet, humble way, making sure that both sides can trust you, that you are not having a different objective.

But to solve the problem, we need to solve together.

♪♪ >> Hello and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer, and I'm coming to you today from the United Nations headquarters in New York.

And just as this year's General Assembly gets underway, bringing thousands of diplomats, ministers and heads of state together and in person, again, I'm going one-on-one with the man of the hour, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.

From the war in Ukraine to growing food insecurity and devastating impacts of climate change, there are no shortage of problems to discuss.

But Guterres has also been a personal force for hope and practical solutions.

And you'll hear from him in just a moment.

Then a behind-the-scenes peek inside the historic U.N. building.

Don't worry.

I've also got your "Puppet Regime."

>> I make the rules.

[ Laughter ] >> But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

>> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by... >> Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs for short.

The United Nations' best efforts to make the world a better place.

Because, let's face it, we face some daunting challenges at the moment.

The idea is a global blueprint for member states on 17 different areas of cooperation, including things like poverty eradication, climate change, equality and education.

They were outlined in 2015 with the eye towards achieving them by 2030.

But the world is nowhere near completing these goals.

And after two years of the pandemic, the ambitions of the before times are all on life support.

Just take a look at this recent New York Times headline.

The pandemic erased two decades of progress in math and reading.

Scores in reading for American 9-year-olds on the National Assessment of Educational Progress fell by the largest margin in more than 30 years after two years of school closures, remote learning and a diminishing access to education overall thanks to COVID-19 and not just in the United States, of course.

24 million students globally from pre-K to university are now at risk of never returning to school after prolonged closures.

That's according to the United Nations report on the status of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The pandemic has also undone more than four years of progress on poverty eradication, pushing 93 million more people into extreme poverty in 2020 alone.

It's a brutal blow to the United Nations' number-one goal, ending poverty in all its forms everywhere.

The number-two goal?

That's ending hunger, achieving food security and improving nutrition.

And we're behind on that goal as well.

One in ten people worldwide today are hungry.

One in three lack access to adequate food.

And the war in Ukraine continues to trigger global food shortages.

Climate change is what the United Nations has called a crisis multiplier.

The U.N. has linked increased droughts, floods and heat waves to rising poverty, hunger and instability.

And according to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, with the participation and endorsement of all 193 member countries, the world's window to avoid catastrophe is closing rapidly.

The world is also seeing the highest level of violent conflict since 1946, and a quarter of the world's population as of the end of 2020 live in conflict-affected areas, delaying SDG efforts to realize global peace.

As the United Nations convenes for this year's General Assembly, the first with some semblance of normalcy after years spent apart, rescuing the SDGs is top priority for UN Secretary-General António Guterres because he says we don't have a moment to lose.

I sat down with him at the United Nations to take stock on how our world is going to meet these targets with so little time.

Here's our conversation.

Secretary-General Guterres.

>> Great pleasure to be again with you.

>> Thanks for being here.

Absolutely.

So a year ago, you and I were sitting right here, literally right here.

And I remember you said that the world was standing at the edge of the abyss, and that was mostly about climate change we were talking about.

Of course, things have gotten a lot more challenging since then.

Are we starting to fall in?

I mean, how do we describe it now?

>> In relation to climate change, it reminds me of a Portuguese anecdote when someone is falling from a 10th floor and arriving at the level of the second floor.

So far, so good.

I think that's what happens.

With the war in Ukraine, climate change became a kind of a second-order issue.

It's not only much less discussed, but measures that are absolutely essential to be taken are being postponed.

And the result is a total disaster.

Emissions are growing, and when you have a war with nature and nature is striking back, you have situations like Pakistan -- 50 million people displaced, more than 1,000 people died.

One third of the country covered by water.

I mean, we are destroying our planet and we are not paying attention.

This climate change is being dealt now as business as usual, as if it was a small problem.

And all attentions are focused on the Ukraine and a few other things.

I mean, climate change is the defining challenge of our time.

It must be the first priority of any government and any international organization anywhere in the world.

And the fact that we are not dealing with it seriously will have irreversible consequences very soon.

>> I mean, I'm sitting here talking to you in still very nice weather outside.

We know winter is coming to Europe.

And as you say, steps are being taken to ensure that the Europeans and of course, knock-on effects, the developing world is going to have enough energy to get through this crisis.

How bad a disruption are we seeing from the Russian war?

>> If you look at the developing countries, including many middle-income countries, they are facing a perfect storm.

So that -- the climate change impacts, as we all know, but they have the COVID and we know how vaccines were distributed and we know the problems that this caused.

Then the recovery from COVID.

We are in the U.S.

I am from the European Union.

Trillions of dollars have been mobilized to support the economies with the consequence, of course, that the populations were supported, but also that there was a contribution to the restart of a global inflationary process.

>> Yes.

>> Now, countries in the developing world, including middle-income countries, have not the capacity to print money, because if they print money, their currencies will completely fall.

They haven't received any special support.

There was no debt relief except the suspension for the least developed countries.

And we have a number of countries close to the verge of default with consequences that could be terrible for the world economy if we have a wave of defaults.

Then middle-income countries -- and all small island developing states are middle-income countries -- do not receive any kind of concessional funding, no grants and no concessional loans from international financial institutions.

And there is no debt relief for them.

Most of them are with high debt, paying more and more high interest rates.

And at the same time, without any fiscal space.

And now they have prices of food and prices of fuel extremely -- and energy in general, extremely high.

I mean, in many, many circumstances, we will face famine in the least developed countries, in the most dramatic situations in which climate change is contributing with drought, for instance, in the Horn of Africa.

In other situations, we will have a dramatic financial collapse with terrible consequences for the whole world.

And if countries have no fiscal space, how are they going to reorganize their educational systems that were devastated by COVID?

Are they going to have a minimum capacity to address the Sustainable Development Goals and the objectives of development?

How are they going to address inequalities?

Because one of the dilemmas is that this situation is increasing dramatic inequalities, inequalities among states and inequalities among people within each state.

>> Would you say that the world today is actually moving backwards on some of these issues?

>> Yes.

And there are divides that are becoming very dangerous.

>> The West-South divide?

>> It's the West-South divide.

Many people still call it the North-South divide, but it's becoming a West-South divide.

And one of the consequences of that is the lack of an international -- effective international solidarity in relation to the war in Ukraine.

>> Okay.

I'm going to turn you to something a little bit more hopeful for a second, because you've been pretty busy the last few months.

More than usual.

If I can say that.

As having brokered the deal to get food and fertilizer out of Ukraine and out of Russia in the middle of an active war zone.

How did you get that done?

>> Well, I went to see President Putin.

I went to see President Zelenskyy, and I told them, "Look, we have a situation that is absolutely dramatic in the world."

The food, energy and finance crisis is undermining completely the living conditions of most of the world.

And this is caused by this war.

On the other hand, Russia, even if the sanctions do not apply to food and fertilizers, the truth is that because of finance, because of insurance, because of shipping... >> It's stopped.

>> Russia has enormous difficulties in their exports.

The Ukraine has their silos full of grain.

They have a new harvest coming.

They don't -- They have no place to put that harvest, which means they will not cultivate the following year.

And this is creating an enormous problem for the Ukraine.

So the best solution is let's find an agreement in which the Ukraine is able to export safely.

And it was a very complex negotiation because of the problems of security in the Black Sea and the concerns that Ukraine had about the protection of their coast.

But let's find a way in which the Ukraine can export their grain and at the same time to negotiate with the Americans, with the European Union and with others the conditions to make sure that what was said that sanctions do not apply to food and fertilizers becomes a reality and that Russia is able to export the food and fertilizer the world needs.

By the way, fertilizers are extremely important not only for the present situation, for next year.

We are already seeing countries in the developing world where people are cultivating for the next season less than last year.

>> Because they don't have access.

>> Because fertilizers are too expensive or they are not available.

So if in 2022 we have enough food, it is not well distributed.

But in 2023, if we don't normalize the fertilizer market, we simply will not have enough food worldwide.

>> Of course, now, this is a success of diplomacy, despite the fact that the Russians and Ukrainians have no direct diplomatic engagement whatsoever.

>> But this was only possible because it was done very discreetly.

For three months, I never mentioned publicly what we were doing and we heard all kinds of things, but we kept silent and worked slowly to build confidence to allow it to be possible.

And this is what the present situation in the world makes more and more difficult.

We are seeing more and more megaphone diplomacy and less and less discreet diplomacy, and people even joke -- "discreet diplomacy doesn't make any sense anymore" with all the social media and all these things.

It's not true.

There are still a number of things in which if you want to have results, we need to build confidence.

And that is only possible if you do it in a discreet, humble way, making sure that both sides can trust you, that you are not having a different agenda or a different objective.

But to solve the problem, we need to solve together.

>> The United Nations is doing a lot to the extent that things are getting done in trying to facilitate better outcomes in this horrible war.

What's the additional support, resources, architecture, institutions that the UN needs to be more effective at these kinds of roles going forward, not just around Russia and Ukraine, but around the world?

>> Well, the geopolitical divides that exist today creates an environment in which every middle-size power feels that it can do whatever it wants because there is full impunity.

Nothing will happen.

The capacity of deterrence that would exist if the whole powers with the Security Council will be able to say, "This cannot be done" is not there.

So we see a multiplication of small conflicts with different kinds of actors, and each one of them not paying any attention to what the Security Council decides or even what are the positions of the superpowers because they can play with the divisions among the superpowers.

And this makes the system of security, governance in the world today largely bankrupted.

And we need to do everything we can to, sooner rather than later, restore some capacity to be able to have mediation working and to make people understand that if they misbehave, they will be punished.

>> NATO is stronger today than it was a year ago.

It's expanded its capabilities.

It's getting more resources.

It's added two members.

They have to be ratified.

Also in the last summit, you had the Japanese, the South Koreans showing up in Madrid at the head of state level.

Is that -- It's not global, but it is a lot of powerful countries around the world.

Do you see an expanded and maybe even more global NATO as part of a solution?

Is it a useful step or is it more problematic given how divided the world is geopolitically?

>> It is one element that is there, but obviously in a divided world it is on one side.

And the question is how to create the mechanisms of dialogue between the different sides.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has changed what looked like a new trend for the balance of power in the world, and the new trends for the balance of power in the world was essentially between the U.S. and its allies and China with a growing influence in the developing world.

What you have many times written that it was a G-2 that led to a G-Zero.

Now, Russia has shaken this because it's not entirely clear that Russia and China represent the same kind of approach to the world problems.

But at the same time, the dialogue between China and the U.S. has always been completely undermined.

So in the present situation, we are witnessing an increasing division and not a reduction of division.

And the fact NATO is stronger doesn't mean that divide has been reduced.

>> Okay, another hopeful piece.

I'll drive you back to something more positive.

The United States was doing virtually nothing in terms of new climate legislation, and then they pull the rabbit out of the hat with this misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, but still the biggest climate bill that's ever been passed historically in the U.S.

Does this give the Americans more credibility at the upcoming COP27?

Do other countries around the world see this and say, "Okay, we actually see progress on climate"?

Or is it way too little, way too late?

The Americans have lost their moral authority on the issue?

>> I think it is a very important contribution.

I'm not sure it is enough, but it's a very important contribution, especially because it came in a moment in which the climate problems seemed to be forgotten.

And finally someone woke up.

And here it is, a program of action aiming, among other objectives, but aiming at strengthening the climate action in the United States.

And that was a very important thing.

But at the present moment, we need to do much more.

I mean, emissions should be reduced by 45% until 2030.

If we would be able to reach carbon neutrality in 2050 and not to allow temperatures go above 1.5 degrees in relation to the historic levels.

Now, emissions are growing and the risk is if nothing different happens in relation to what has been promised until now, the risk is that we will have an increase of emissions in 2030 of 14% instead of a decrease of 45%.

If this happens, a lot of tipping points will be reached and it will be irreversibly impossible to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.

It will be irreversibly impossible to reach carbon neutrality in 2050, which means that what we are seeing today in Pakistan will be the new normal of a world that is facing destruction everywhere.

And this is the last moment -- The two or three years we have in front of us are the last moments to reverse this trend.

If not, irreversible consequences will take place that will have irreparable damage in our world as we know it.

>> I mean, and this is not primarily an East-West, a U.S.-Russia, U.S.-China.

This is a West-South divide that is growing.

>> It is also something in which it's essential to bring the emerging economies.

The emerging economies, from the point of view of production, are the largest emitters.

If you look at the consumption side, it's still the developed world that is the largest emitter based on the products that they import.

But we need to have a solid agreement between the developed countries and the emerging economies in order to be able to allow those emerging economies to reduce emissions because if not, and we see now with the consequences of the war in Ukraine, new investments are making -- are being made in coal, that new investments are being made in oil and gas.

And these will have consequences that will take decades.

>> António Guterres.

>> Great pleasure to be here with you.

>> Always a pleasure to see you.

Thank you.

♪♪ That conversation came to you from inside the Dag Hammarskjold Library at the United Nations headquarters.

Right now, I'm standing in the Hall of Flags, which displays the flags of all 193 member nations.

These same flags also fly in a row outside the building, and they're arranged in alphabetical order from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, A to Z, and the flag of the United Nations itself, which sits higher than all other flags on display.

Before these halls of global cooperation were built, the site was occupied by a series of slaughterhouses, and the area was actually known for its distinctly foul smell.

This land was purchased back in 1947, using money from an $8.5 million donation from John D. Rockefeller.

It's the equivalent of about $130 million today.

Importantly, it's now an extraterritorial zone, meaning it doesn't belong to any state or any country.

The United Nations even has its own police force, its own fire department.

11 architects were hired to build the UN's headquarters and they affectionately became known as the Workshop for Peace.

The tallest building of the group, the Secretariat, stands at 550 feet and has 39 floors above ground.

It was also one of the first skyscrapers in the city with an all-glass facade.

Perhaps the most famous of rooms, that's the General Assembly.

It's here where all 193 members meet every fall to discuss the world's biggest challenges.

It's also, you may remember, where K-Pop sensation BTS filmed that music video back in 2021.

>> ♪ Ain't nothing that can stop how we move, yeah ♪ >> Though they actually did need permission to dance from the Secretary-General.

The UN's art collection is also top rate and all of it is donated by its members.

One of its prized possessions -- a mosaic of Norman Rockwell's 1961 painting Golden Rule, which contains more than 22,000 glass tiles assembled by Venetian artists and gifted by the United States' First Lady Nancy Reagan back in '85.

It depicts people of every race and creed and touches on the theme of human rights with the writing "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Words for all UN member states to live by.

♪♪ And now to "Puppet Regime" where it's back to school, even for our little felt friends.

Roll that tape.

>> In a world where politicians act like teenagers, "Puppet Regime" proudly takes you to World High, starring Joe Biden as a headmaster with a problem.

[ School bell rings ] >> All you rascals, listen up.

This is the headmaster speaking.

America is back.

[ Laughter ] >> Emmanuel Macron as the wannabe peacemaker.

>> To stop you from bullying, I brought you a fresh croissant.

>> Slim Jong-un as the jock.

>> I slim down over the summer just by eating what most of my people eat -- not much!

>> Angela Merkel as just over it.

[ Cellphone rings ] >> Hi, this is Sharon from the alumni committee.

Giving Tuesday is coming up and I wanted -- [ Cellphone beeps ] >> At World High, there will be rivalries.

>> Hey, Volodymyr, you have something on your shirt.

[ Laughter ] >> Of course, there will be detention.

>> Detention is great.

All my friends are here.

No one loves us but us.

>> All: Yay!

Super friends.

>> And there will be revenge.

>> I was, as you know, the best student at World High until they, of course, very unfairly kicked me out.

>> Didn't you get caught cheating and then convince a bunch of people to storm the principal's office?

>> At least I didn't get kicked out for partying on school grounds.

>> Yours is worse.

>> I'm going to get back in there, BoJo, just wait.

>> "Puppet Regime"!

>> That's our show this week.

Come back next week.

And if you like what you see, just want to come and join us at the United Nations, make yourself a delegate, wear the light blue, who knows, check us out at gzeromedia.com.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by...