John W. McArthur
Director - Center for Sustainable Development
Senior Fellow - Global Economy and Development
John W. McArthur is senior fellow and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution. He co-founded and co-chairs the 17 Rooms initiative, a new approach to catalyzing action for the Sustainable Development Goals. Outside of Brookings, he is also a senior adviser to the United Nations Foundation, a member of Policy Horizons Canada’s Deputy Minister Steering Committee, and a member of the Novata ESG Advisory Council.
He was previously the chief executive officer of Millennium Promise Alliance, the international nongovernmental organization. Prior to that he served as the manager and then deputy director of the U.N. Millennium Project, Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s independent advisory body mandated to recommend an action plan for achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
He has also been a senior fellow with the Hong Kong-based Fung Global Institute, a faculty member at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, and policy director at the University’s Earth Institute. Earlier in his career he was a research fellow at the Center for International Development at Harvard University, where he supported the World Health Organization’s Commission on Macroeconomics and Health and co-authored the “Global Competitiveness Report.”
In 2006 he proposed a new form of graduate degree to provide rigorous cross-disciplinary training for a new generation of sustainable development practitioners. This led to him co-chairing, in 2007-08, the International Commission on Education for Sustainable Development Practice, sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation (no relation). He then co-founded the global network of Masters in Development Practice programs launched across five continents.
From 2016-22 he served as a Board Governor of the International Development Research Centre, the Canadian Crown corporation. He has also served as a member of the UNICEF Advisory Group, the Global Nutrition Report's Independent Expert Group, and Grand Challenges Canada’s Scientific Advisory Board. He has chaired Global Agenda Councils for the World Economic Forum and in 2016 was an adviser to the Business and Sustainable Development Commission. In 2009 he was recognized as a Young Global Leader. In 2021 he was named one of Apolitical’s 100 most influential academics in government.
He recently co-edited the books “Breakthrough: The Promise of Frontier Technologies for Sustainable Development” (Brookings Press, 2022) (see chapter 1 for an overview) and “Leave No One Behind: Time for Specifics on the Sustainable Development Goals” (Brookings Press, 2019). His research has been published in a variety of academic journals, including Journal of Development Economics, World Bank Economic Review, The Lancet, The British Medical Journal (BMJ), World Development, and Ecological Economics. His writing for more general audiences has appeared in venues such as Foreign Affairs, Project Syndicate, The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Sun, the South China Morning Post, Horizons, and Stanford Social Innovation Review.
McArthur grew up in Vancouver and is a Canadian citizen. He completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honors) at the University of British Columbia; a Master’s in Public Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government; and then an M.Phil. and D.Phil. (Ph.D.) in economics at Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar.
John W. McArthur is senior fellow and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution. He co-founded and co-chairs the 17 Rooms initiative, a new approach to catalyzing action for the Sustainable Development Goals. Outside of Brookings, he is also a senior adviser to the United Nations Foundation, a member of Policy Horizons Canada’s Deputy Minister Steering Committee, and a member of the Novata ESG Advisory Council.
He was previously the chief executive officer of Millennium Promise Alliance, the international nongovernmental organization. Prior to that he served as the manager and then deputy director of the U.N. Millennium Project, Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s independent advisory body mandated to recommend an action plan for achieving the Millennium Development Goals.
He has also been a senior fellow with the Hong Kong-based Fung Global Institute, a faculty member at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, and policy director at the University’s Earth Institute. Earlier in his career he was a research fellow at the Center for International Development at Harvard University, where he supported the World Health Organization’s Commission on Macroeconomics and Health and co-authored the “Global Competitiveness Report.”
In 2006 he proposed a new form of graduate degree to provide rigorous cross-disciplinary training for a new generation of sustainable development practitioners. This led to him co-chairing, in 2007-08, the International Commission on Education for Sustainable Development Practice, sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation (no relation). He then co-founded the global network of Masters in Development Practice programs launched across five continents.
From 2016-22 he served as a Board Governor of the International Development Research Centre, the Canadian Crown corporation. He has also served as a member of the UNICEF Advisory Group, the Global Nutrition Report’s Independent Expert Group, and Grand Challenges Canada’s Scientific Advisory Board. He has chaired Global Agenda Councils for the World Economic Forum and in 2016 was an adviser to the Business and Sustainable Development Commission. In 2009 he was recognized as a Young Global Leader. In 2021 he was named one of Apolitical’s 100 most influential academics in government.
He recently co-edited the books “Breakthrough: The Promise of Frontier Technologies for Sustainable Development” (Brookings Press, 2022) (see chapter 1 for an overview) and “Leave No One Behind: Time for Specifics on the Sustainable Development Goals” (Brookings Press, 2019). His research has been published in a variety of academic journals, including Journal of Development Economics, World Bank Economic Review, The Lancet, The British Medical Journal (BMJ), World Development, and Ecological Economics. His writing for more general audiences has appeared in venues such as Foreign Affairs, Project Syndicate, The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Sun, the South China Morning Post, Horizons, and Stanford Social Innovation Review.
McArthur grew up in Vancouver and is a Canadian citizen. He completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honors) at the University of British Columbia; a Master’s in Public Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government; and then an M.Phil. and D.Phil. (Ph.D.) in economics at Oxford University, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar.
Ultimately it’s about digitizing the ecosystems of the world in a way that allows us to understand [other species’] preferences, which is interspecies communication.
[Canada's] corporate leaders need to play a much bigger role in helping to drive change [on the SDGs].
On business as usual, no, the world will not meet its commitments [to the UN Sustainable Development Goals], that seems pretty clear. So, the question is, where can you change business as usual?
