Macroscope | As multilateral bank leaders meet, where is the wisdom the world needs?

If wisdom has a place at all, it should be within above-the-fray institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. Yet there is often scant sign of it

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A man looks out of his home at a flooded street in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on April 16 as Pakistan floods again. The world is drowning in information amid challenges from climate change, geopolitical tensions, outright war, artificial intelligence and more. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 4:30pm, 27 Apr 2024Updated: 7:31pm, 27 Apr 2024

The late poet T.S. Eliot once asked: “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” We need to ask these questions again, at a time of information overload, when we have an abundance of knowledge but a deficit in wisdom.

The question begs to be answered whenever there is a coming together of “the wise and the good” from multiple disciplines and nations, such as at the recent meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington. These were held against a backdrop of growing geopolitical tensions, global economic fragmentation and mounting antagonisms, where wisdom seemed to have little place in the debate, for all its length and intensity.

Multilateral institutions like the IMF and World Bank, along with the global family of multilateral development banks, have a special responsibility and prerogative in this regard. They are supposedly free of the narrow nationalism that has come to dominate views and dictate the actions of governments in our fractionating world. If wisdom has a place at all, it should be within these institutions.

Yet there is often scant sign of it among the millions of words spoken and written during international meetings, despite the multilateral development banks having acted recently to consolidate their power.

Last month, 10 of them, including the Asian Development Bank, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank, agreed to collaborate more closely and “work as a system”.

The leaders of 10 multilateral development banks announced on April 20, in a Washington meeting, joint steps to work more effectively as a system and increase the impact and scale of their work to tackle urgent development challenges. Photo: Asian Development Bank handout

At such multilateral development bank meetings, government leaders, officials, business leaders, academics, journalists and others all appear anxious to improve their knowledge of what is happening today, but with seemingly little thought for tomorrow.