World’s trust barometer is reading red amid growing global challenges

Global crisis in trust in governments, the media and even NGOs means mounting difficulties in garnering public support for economically important innovation and often-controversial social change

David Dodwell

Published: 7:30pm, 21 Jan 2024

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“Unfortunately, the new year has begun with fresh turmoil and long-standing suffering. Geopolitical tensions have reached dangerous levels,” said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, addressing the UN Security Council. He added that “conflicts that no one is winning grind on and on”.

Noting that turbulence had been rising and trust falling within and between nations, he complained of a deepening “trust deficit” that was challenging the work of the United Nations and creating a grave test for multilateralism.

Most troublingly, these comments were not made recently, but on January 9, 2020 – before the World Health Organization had declared the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s war on Gaza and 2023 became the hottest year on record. If there was a global trust deficit then, where are we today? The short answer is: in a very bad place.

US survey data suggests Americans trust each other less than 40 years ago. Trust in the government in the US has fallen to historically low levels from over 70 per cent in 1958 to around 20 per cent in 2022, according to Pew research.

Even in the health sector, where doctors normally attract high levels of trust, the editor of Britain’s Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine reported that “the global crisis of trust, accelerated by the pandemic and the cost of living crisis, is so entrenched that it has begun to weaken the bond of trust between patients and doctors”.

“Trust is a barometer of the state of our world and the barometer is reading red,” the editor concluded.

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Communications group Edelman reached similar conclusions in its 24th annual Trust Barometer report, released at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. Worse, Edelman concludes in its 28-country survey that as trust in governments, the media and even NGOs declines, difficulties mount in garnering the public support needed for economically important innovation and often-controversial social change.

Edelman argues that businesses, as the only institutions still widely trusted in most countries, will need to play a critical role in driving the understanding of – and support for – innovation. Today, this ranges from the development of green energy and new gene-based vaccines, to the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and genetically engineered food.

Setting aside how much we trust Edelman’s methodology, which identified high trust in businesses (63 per cent of their 32,000 respondents trust businesses, compared with around 50 per cent for governments and the media), it is surely right to be concerned that the innovation needed to force through changes that may be indispensable for future economic growth will be next to impossible as trust in our institutions crumbles. This is even more true if we are to effectively manage climate change or address pandemic threats.

It is also surely right that steady declines in trust will create big obstacles to “innovation” imperatives as we enter a bumper election year, culminating in the nail-biting US presidential election in November. Edelman finds that 49 per cent of low income respondents neither trust their electoral system, nor believe their government has been fairly elected.

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Of the 28 countries surveyed, most respondents in 17 of them distrusted their government. Significant majorities believe their governments lack the competence to regulate new technologies – worrisome not just for AI regulation but also our urgent need to adopt gene-based medicines, or switch to electric vehicles and clean energy.

Edelman’s respondents still generally trust our scientists on innovation – but are concerned about increasing government interference, or control of scientists and scientific institutions, and that scientists “do not know how to communicate” with ordinary people.

Edelman also discovered a deepening politicisation of attitudes to scientific innovation. In the United States, for example, 53 per cent of those on the political right are opposed to innovations linked with climate change, AI or the gene-based medicines that played such an important role in the pandemic, compared with 12 per cent on the left. This sharp contrast is echoed in Germany (47 per cent on the right vs 27 per cent on the left) and Australia (37 per cent vs 14 per cent).

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When innovation is seen as poorly regulated, 82 per cent of respondents say it benefits the rich and 57 per cent say capitalism is doing harm. Respondents in general frequently voiced concern that they are being purposely misled, or fed false information or gross exaggerations. This has led to friends and neighbours being as highly trusted on scientific or technological issues as scientists.

The Edelman team says the restoration of a semblance of trust in scientific information or on technical issues will require more transparency, simpler, clearer explanations, and for executives to address the worries people have about the ethical use of technology, impact of automation and the training needed for future jobs. Institutions “must listen rather than assume, engage in dialogue rather than talk down, and cooperate rather than compete”.

All of which seems to lead us to our government’s astonishing blunders in efforts to introduce waste charging as we try to reduce the rubbish we dump in our landfills. Not quite the challenges that trouble Guterres, but one can only marvel at the incompetence. Edelman’s respondents must strongly resonate with this – and it goes a long way to explaining why there is in Hong Kong such low trust in government competence. If they can’t properly regulate rubbish disposal, what chance they can properly harness AI or take action against global warming?

David Dodwell is CEO of the trade policy and international relations consultancy Strategic Access, focused on developments and challenges facing the Asia-Pacific over the past four decades