New Governance Institutions for Pandemic Risk
- Date: July 28, 2026
Pandemic threats are rising, yet the world still lacks a global mechanism to assess and anticipate risk. Understanding the scale of these risks is essential for prevention through policy and financial instrument development. As of 2025, no institution produces forward-looking, synthesized pandemic risk assessments. In this vacuum, debate over how to institutionalize such a mechanism is intensifying.
Future pandemics represent one of the most pressing planetary-scale risks to human life and livelihoods – on par with climate change in their potential for economic and social disruption. Yet the governance infrastructure for monitoring, assessing, and responding to pandemic risk remains deeply fragmented.
In response, the Berggruen Institute’s Planetary Program and PAX sapiens convened 20 systems thinkers and practitioners to explore the creation of a scientific body with a standing mandate to track and assess pandemic drivers overtime to inform pandemic risk and financing.
Addressing this challenge requires actors with long-term orientation and cross-disciplinary reach that neither governments nor market actors can fully provide. The Planetary program brings deep expertise in reimagining political and institutional architecture at a planetary scale, precisely the kind of systems-level thinking this problem demands. PAX sapiens contributes to a growing commitment to pandemic prevention and a track record of catalyzing coordination across philanthropic, private, and public sectors. Together, this collaboration occupies a rare position to bring fresh institutional thinking to pandemic prevention - independent of existing mandates and committed to the long-term design work the moment requires.
The mismatch between the scale of pandemic threats and the capacity of existing governance systems is stark. Despite growing consensus on the need for preparedness, global architecture still lacks mechanisms to synthesize scientific evidence and provide ongoing risk assessments. Research communities remain siloed, quantitative tools limited, and knowledge gaps around how drivers evolve have left the field underdeveloped compared to climate science. This fuels the perception that pandemics are random and rare, undermining political urgency and delaying investment.
The idea for such a scientific body, similar in function (though distinct in structure) to the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), was endorsed by the G20 High Level Independent Panel in 2021 and is actively under discussion in global health and policy circles.
Building on recent proposals such as the G20 High-Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, this joint convening explores how a new scientific body could systematically assess changes in pandemic drivers, synthesizing evidence and providing timely risk assessments to decision-makers worldwide.
Through a facilitated two-day workshop, 20 experts in pandemics and global health, institutional design, political science, evidence synthesis and assessment processes, and international law assessed historical institutional models and prototyped new forms capable of operating effectively under current geopolitical conditions.
The convening underscored the need for long-term vision and systems thinking that integrated responsive knowledge infrastructures that can translate research into shared global understanding.
This collaboration marks the beginning of a broader effort among non-state actors to design durable institutions capable of governing pandemic risk at a planetary scale.
About the Planetary program
The Planetary program addresses the political, philosophical, and institutional challenges of an interconnected Earth system, recognizing that issues such as climate change, technological systems, and ecological breakdown exceed national borders and require a fundamental rethinking of politics, responsibility, and interdependence at a planetary scale. To learn more about the program.
About PAX sapiens
PAX sapiens's mission is to prevent predictable global catastrophes through the creation of new systems of collective coordination that promise a more peaceful world. PAX launched a 15-year, $200 million global pandemic prevention programming in 2021 to support mechanisms to address gaps in coordinated pandemic prevention. PAX catalyzes collaboration and collective action across the philanthropic, private, and public sectors.