29 January 2026 – When Anders Wijkman assumed the co-presidency with Ernst von Weizsäcker in 2012, the Club of Rome was, in his words, “in a bit of a crisis”. Amid leadership transitions and internal tensions, Wijkman and von Weizsäcker strove to ensure the organisation’s survival. Nevertheless, the decade also saw a reconnection to the Club of Rome’s intellectual roots of systems thinking, with the publication of Jorgen Randers’ 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years in 2012, as well as the emergency of more specialised advocacy-focused work and the emergence of major new projects.
From European roots to a global shift
The Club of Rome began as a small circle of predominantly white European men. Even Donella Meadows —whose work shaped The Limits to Growth, one of the organisation’s most influential publications — was never a member. During Aurelio Peccei’s lifetime, female representation within the Club remained extremely limited. As recalled by Gianfranco Bologna, only two women were members during those early decades: Elisabeth Mann Borgese, a professor at Dalhousie University and key architect of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea; and Eleonora Barbieri Masini, a professor of long-term and social forecasting at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and President of the World Futures Studies Federation.
For decades, the organisation’s identity reflected a narrow understanding of expertise and belonging. But by the time the world entered the 2010s and beyond, that reality no longer aligned with the challenges the Club of Rome sought to address, nor with the world it aimed to influence.
A turning point came during the Club of Rome’s General Assembly in Rome in 2018, when Sandrine Dixson-Declève and Mamphela Ramphele were elected as co-presidents. It was the first time the organisation was led by two women, and the first time leadership represented both Europe and Africa. Their appointment was not merely symbolic, it signalled a deep transformation in mindset, governance and culture, aligned with the commemoration of the organisation’s 50th anniversary. The 2018 General Assembly itself culminated in a well-attended international conference featuring leading experts, where the report Transformation Is Feasible was presented and the Italian edition of the 50th-anniversary report Come On! was also launched, reinforcing the organisation’s renewed commitment to long-term systemic change.
A long road toward representation
According to Anders Wijkman, this moment continued a shift that had already begun. The Club of Rome, he reflects, had been “very much dominated by Europeans,” and increasing diversity especially through Ramphele’s leadership, marked a meaningful step toward global representation.
Anitra Thorhaug situates this change within a longer arc, noting, like Bologna, the lack of female representation in the organisation’s early years. Momentum accelerated when influential thought leaders like Wangari Maathai, Mona Makram-Ebeid, Ruth Bamela Engo-Tjega, Roseann Runte and Sirkka Heinonen joined. In the United States chapter, Hazel Henderson successfully pushed for 50% representation. This was an early signal to the eventual co-presidency of Dixson-Declève and Ramphele.
As Ramphele reflects, transformation was not only structural, it was cultural. “For the organisation to truly become global,” she explains, “it needed to move beyond Western framings and welcome a plurality of identities, worldviews and cultural wisdom traditions.”
During this period, membership expanded to over 150 active members and 35 National Associations supported by a strengthened Secretariat in Winterthur and a Brussels satellite office. Yet Ramphele emphasises that growth was never simply about numbers. “Expanding membership was never simply about demographics, it was about enabling a new kind of presence.” New members, especially from the Most of the World, were encouraged to walk proudly, not apologising for being who they are.
From crisis thinking to a planetary mindset
Under this evolving worldview, the Club of Rome embraced what Ramphele calls a planetary approach: a focus on cultivating long-term, systemic stewardship. “Firefighting may feel urgent,” she warns, “but it does not change underlying trajectories.” This focus aligned with the founding vision of the organisation as a forum for addressing global problems with long-term strategies.
This transformation was strengthened by Indigenous and historically marginalised perspectives. Ramphele frequently highlights a striking truth: although Indigenous peoples represent just 6% of the global population, they steward nearly 85% of global biodiversity. Their worldviews grounded in reciprocity, balance and responsibility helped shift the Club of Rome’s focus from advocacy to relational thinking and stewardship.
These evolving perspectives converged into a defining theme of the decade: Earth–Humanity Reconciliation. Rooted in values such as Maat/Ubuntu, this framing called for a renewed moral relationship between humanity and the living planet. This vision became public in November 2025 when the Club of Rome convened its first major international conference in China, an unmistakable symbol of a more distributed centre of gravity.
Towards organisational maturity
Aligned with this new planetary perspective, recent projects such as Earth4All and The Fifth Element mark a new stage of organisational maturity: large-scale initiatives fully led and implemented within the Club of Rome. For Wijkman, the Earth4All initiative and its best-selling accompanying book Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity, published as part of the 50th anniversary commemoration of The Limits to Growth in 2022, represents one of the organisation’s most successful contemporary initiatives. It has been translated into multiple languages and adopted in national strategies across countries such as Austria, Kenya, Germany, Argentina and Brazil. Its message also signaled a strategic shift: addressing poverty and inequality “upfront” as a prerequisite for solving ecological breakdown.
A new kind of leadership
With renewed energy, a more diverse membership, successful new initiatives and partnerships embracing both the material and cultural aspects of planetary transformation, what does the future hold? Looking ahead, Ramphele is clear: the next phase is not only about new reports or models. “It is about cultivating leaders who act from a deep respect for human dignity, confidence in a shared future and intergenerational responsibility.”
In the 2020s, diversity did not just reshape the membership of The Club of Rome, it reshaped its identity. The organisation shifted from an elite advisory circle into a pluriversal, planetary community. One that is capable not only of imagining a different future, but embodying it.
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