The 21st Century has collapsed North and South, East and West into one global project.

Sustainable development is every nation’s challenge.

A view of our tiny blue planet travelling through the vast expense of space reminds us how exceedingly rare life is, anywhere in the universe.

At the same time, a long view of human history suggests that we have achieved an unprecedented level of knowledge, material progress and global interdependence. While we have not yet eliminated the scourges of conflict, disease and hunger, the post-war period has seen substantial gains.

The dividends of relative peace are substantial, enabling the lifting of people out of poverty and limiting destructive forces in society.

We have also discovered that our planet is more complex and fragile than previously understood. Our capacity to engage in activities that harm the planet has overtaken our willingness to protect it. As a result we have increased demands on our own life support system that cannot be sustained. We urgently need to identify what forces are pressing the economic accelerator to the floor as we approach a cliff.

One of the most harmful structural problems we face is runaway wealth concentration that has had the effect of appropriating the incomes, assets and opportunities of ordinary citizens. Where this is done through complicity with public institutions, either through abdication or abuse of power, it becomes a form of expropriation devoid of public purpose.

It will require imagination, insight and effort to protect and nurture our environment while advancing human society and lifting people out of the scourge of conflict, poverty, disease.

Unless we transform the economic and political choices now being made, then for the first time in human history the eradication of all higher forms of life on Earth will have shifted from mere possibility to probability.

Whether by precipitating a nuclear exchange, triggering a climate tipping point, allowing human values to be uprooted by indifferent technology or failing to respond effectively to health emergencies, the governance principles we embrace now will determine our future. It is no exaggeration to suggest that either we put systems and rules in place to ensure responsible decisions, or else more species will become extinct until it finally will be our turn.

If humans drive themselves over that cliff, it will be because those in power have failed to meet their most fundamental obligations, aided by citizens who have empowered them without due regard for the impact of their choices on others, including future generations.

How we organise ourselves, how we relate to one another, how we make use of our resources and how we allocate the benefits of society all come down to human decision-making.

Cambridge Governance Labs was created to understand governance deficiencies and failures by focusing on the causes and effects of suboptimal decision-making, and then to develop tools to promote a more responsible and sustainable way of understanding and organising society.

It is our contention that this is not a matter of ideology or culture but universal principles.