About Simpol

Simpol - the Simultaneous Policy - was launched in 2000 by businessman John Bunzl as a solution to solve the world’s global problems. It is run by the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO). Since it was founded, Simpol has been collaboratively developed with politicians, academics, psychologists and supporting citizens.

Why a Simultaneous Policy?

If problems like climate change, wealth inequality and insecurity are global, we believe the solutions to them should be too.

At the moment, we don’t have any truly global solutions. Instead, we rely on national governments to come up with solutions, but little is getting done. Why? Because any country acting alone to solve global issues takes a risk - to be an economic loser in a competition where winning is the only option.

The reality is that staying internationally competitive and solving global problems are fundamentally incompatible. So national governments are stuck in a cycle of having to keep their economies competitive while global problems are left to worsen.

This is how our problems get worse - leaders setting taxes and standards ever lower to attract borderless capital - all in a bid to stay ‘internationally competitive’. They race to the bottom, and our problems continue to grow.

To fix our world, we need to step forward together - simultaneously, starting today. 

Our solution is Simpol - the Simultaneous Policy - a range of multi-issue policy packages to solve global problems with each package to be implemented, at the same time, on the same date. That way, no nation loses out - everyone wins.

Simpol means we can tackle all our problems - climate change, tax regulation, wealth inequality - for everyone’s benefit. If countries act simultaneously, they can avoid being the loser who acts alone. If they work on solving multiple issues instead of just one, they can balance the costs of one issue with the gains from another.

Simpol is common sense. It's about going from destructive global competition to truly global cooperation.

To make it happen, we run campaigns in countries around the world that give citizens the power to compel their leaders to implement Simpol through the vote. You can support Simpol by signing on now, or read on to learn more about why Simpol is the answer.

Campaign Management

National Coordinator: Jaki Scarcello

Why I Support Global Cooperation for Global Issues

Let me tell you my story…A few years ago, I accepted a volunteer position as the USA Coordinator for Simpol.

Simpol is an international citizens’ campaign to solve global problems.

I quickly came to realize that my decision to do this work germinated within my professional life many years ago. At that time, I had the honor of arranging for Bill O’Brien, the former CEO of Hanover Insurance, to speak to the management team at a large financial services company. I was nervous. The responsibility of recruiting the keynote speaker weighted heavily on my shoulders. I was unaware that the evening was not about my performance as a conference organizer or about my ego. That evening Mr. O’Brien would teach me the most important thing I was ever to learn about leadership.

Mr. O’ Brien introduced me to the concept of legacy leadership. He described this as the final stage of leadership development, the stage at which a leader becomes more interested in what he/she can give back to those they lead than in what they personally get from the role. Legacy leaders understand the scope of leadership and the breadth of its impact generationally.

 It must be terrifying to look up and over from the comfortable peak that you have achieved and see what is required next. Very few leaders make that looming ascent.

I do not presume to be a true legacy leader, the sort of selfless visionary that Mr. O’Brien spoke about, but I was inspired by this possibility. This inspiration has motivated my search for a larger contribution to life, to look for the legacy I can create in the small realm of my personal leadership.

That search has expanded in my later years as my sense of purpose has become a favorite topic of the quiet hours of the morning. I suppose it is another one of those clocks that tick inside us, like the biological clock of my thirties. This clock measures out the time left not the time past and its vibration reminds me that my days are not infinite.

This legacy task, (Simpol coordination in the USA) seemed enormous at first but then I realized that much of what really matters today will not be solved or accomplished in my lifetime …and that is OK.  I realized I need to be part of this for the future, for my children, for my grandchildren.

Today we are in a stage of chaos created by our drive for ever more profit through relentless competition. In the last 45 years technology has pushed that drive across the globe and that pursuit of the winnings has trapped our corporations and our governments until they are unable to recognize the impact of the decisions they are making. Our current leaders cannot make the tough choices required to address the global problems which threaten to destroy our children’s futures, environmental issues, wealth inequality, immigration and migration, terrorism and more.

In my career I contributed to that relentless drive. I supported it and encouraged it and now I see clearly that what we believed to be the solution in the past has today become the problem. If I was part of creating the problem then it only makes sense that I spend the rest of my days committed to the solving it.

Ideas, models and processes and even beliefs have their moment but then as the context around them change, they can become outdated and eventually even dangerous. If we cling to time limited solutions then we also become dangerous. We fail to see that there is the possibility of doing things differently. The new way is often emerging organically from the old. It is all around us and just waiting for us to see it and to embrace a new future.

Supporting Simpol is free; it does not restrain you in any way. It simply says you see the common sense in Simpol policies, you see that leadership and human societies evolve and that you support an organization that has a strategy for that next level of development, global cooperation for global problems.

Whatever country holds your citizenship you can join the Simpol band and I invite you to stand with me in this legacy work. I know that wherever Bill O’Brien is today, he would heartily approve.

I want to hear your story, why would you support global cooperation?  jaki.scarcello@simpol.org

Political independence

To maintain strict political independence, Simpol organisations are not charities and nor are they permitted to accept funding from any for-profit entity. All funds are raised from private donations, membership fees or book sales.