Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus joined Adil Cader to discuss challenges in the post-Covid world and climate change, on the show ‘Talking Foreign Affairs’.

Professor Yunus opens up on the challenges of global warming, massive wealth concentration, and AI making human beings “redundant”. With regards to the existing system, he adds, “we don’t want to go back where this system was taking us. We have to build a new system which will take us to a world of three zeroes- zero net carbon emission, zero wealth concentration and zero unemployment”.

The host Adil Cader brings up a question on business actions across countries being controlled in the capitals and big cities. Professor Yunus agrees that cities are made the focal point of all economic activities, overshadowing villages. “The migration of people from the cities back to villages after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic brought about a painful realization of our mistakes.”  On education, Professor Yunus remarks, it should promote “imagination- what kind of world we want to build.” He discusses extensively on the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, the idea behind it and the work that it does. “We started as a social business and continued in the social business, not to make money but serve the people.”

Professor Muhammad Yunus further talks about how the system of micro-banks and social businesses should focus on those at the bottom of the socio-economic strata, adding that the existing banking systems have neglected women. Reflecting on the pandemic, Prof. Yunus says that the vaccines have created a very strange situation. “Instead of bringing countries together, they pushed them further apart.”

“Our education system should promote imagination – what kind of world do we want to build?”

Muhammad Yunus

Muhammad Yunus is a social entrepreneur, banker, economist and civil society leader who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering the concepts of microcredit and microfinance.

Talking Foreign Affairs’ has interviewed several World Leaders, from a UN Secretary-General to Heads of State, from Nobel Laureates to those who have led mission-critical organisations like the WTO, World Bank and NASA. It will operate as a non-partisan and non-profit initiative.

Adil Cader specialises in Australian Foreign Policy and Global Diplomacy. He is a Pacific Forum Young Leader and the Harvard Kennedy School Alumni Ambassador for Western Australia. He is a Board Member of the Australia-Pacific Youth Dialogue and actively involved with diplomacy education.