Your first choice is Ethics for the New Millennium by the Dalai Lama.

Yes, I think it is probably right to start with the new millennium of which we have now completed the first decade. A lot of the writing that I am talking about is focused on the idea that we need to do something new in our new millennium and our new century. The Millennium Development Goals are the most specific manifestation of that idea, the objective of really reaching a new level and a new understanding. The Dalai Lama wrote this book not specifically about the Millennium Development Goals but very much in the spirit of the need to create a new global understanding and global ethic, and to make what is now a global society work. 

Of course, I am very attracted to the Dalai Lama for many aspects of his wisdom and Buddhist ideas and overwhelmingly about the need to put compassion at the centre of our lives and at the centre of our global thinking. Not only to help those in need but actually to help ourselves, because it is the core principle of the Dalai Lama that the way to our own happiness is by attentiveness and compassion to others. It is something I believe and it is something which he says the most eloquently and insightfully of anyone in our time. That is the core message of his ethics.

You have travelled all over the world – do you see his teachings in practice on a daily basis or do you wish they were something there was more of?

Well, I have been to about 130 countries with my work over the years and of course I have seen great acts of compassion wherever I have gone. But I have also seen the opposite, in blinding cruelty and the astounding neglect of those in need. What I have seen with my own eyes is the capacity, if we have an open spirit and an empathetic approach, to bridge any of the gulfs that exist in the world, whether it’s racial, class, ethnic, linguistic or religious. I have seen co-operation of the most wondrous kinds that span the widest gaps imaginable in terms of the backgrounds of the people involved. 

For example, when I have had the chance to work in remote pastoralistic communities in the Horn of Africa the human connection that I have observed between my colleagues and the global pastoralists is wonderful. They might not have a lot of common background in life experience but the human connection is so powerful and palpable and so inspiring that for me it epitomises what we should be able to achieve anywhere. We are working in a lot of areas with a lot of conflict but I feel none of that tension or pressure or hate because in any part of the world when people are approached with respect and dignity I think the human connection is overpowering.

Your next choice is We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century.

We the Peoples is another great document by another great individual, Kofi Annan. It is the document that the former Secretary-General put before the world’s leaders at the start of the millennium. It is a powerful statement not only about the kind of world that we want to live in but that we can build. So it is a far-reaching document about economic development, human rights, political freedom, mutual respect and environmental sustainability. 

Of course, I am especially attracted to this powerful document because it is the place where the world leaders adopted the Millennium Development Goals. It’s in that context that Kofi Annan challenged the world leaders to adopt specific time-bound development goals. And they were adopted in the Millennium Summit in 2000 and that started this 15-year process of which we are now in the tenth year.

And how do you feel ten years on: are you hopeful about the progress or do you think there is still much to do?

Of course, one can’t be satisfied that we have done what we set out to do because the world proved so easily and tragically distracted by war and by short-term crises that it dropped the ball and the longer-term development possibilities. So the world lost a lot of time on the Millennium Development Goals during the last ten years, but there has also been tremendous progress in many, many areas in things like malaria control and the reduction of measles. There has been better coverage for immunisation and more children in school and improvements in agriculture in many places. 

Often what we are seeing is a breakthrough that shows how the goals can be achieved, but the breakthrough isn’t reaching the number of people that need to be reached. So when we come to this summit in New York, the good examples are very, very powerful and they span all eight of the Millennium Development Goals. They show what works, how fast progress is made, the breakthrough that we can have, but at the same time we know that certain of these achievements still only cover a small portion of the people in need and that is why the progress has been much less that it needs to be.

The reason for bringing world leaders together, of course, is both to help show them what should and can be done and secondly to get a renewed dedication to follow it through, and that is what we are hoping to accomplish now.

What about your next book, Manifesto: Global Economic Ethic by Hans Küng?

Hans Küng is a theologian who is one of the world’s leading theological scholars and someone who I greatly admire.