Mission:  The 2016 Report Card on International Cooperation evaluates multilateral efforts to address the world's most pressing global challenges, from mitigating and adapting to climate change, to preventing nuclear proliferation, to advancing global health.

Background: An initiative of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Council of Councils facilitates candid dialogue and consensus building among influential opinion leaders from both established and emerging nations, with the goal of injecting the conclusions of its deliberations into high-level foreign policy circles in its member countries. Based on a survey of the council's twenty-six member think tanks, the 2016 Report Card on International Cooperation assesses the state of international cooperation in five areas: (1) How did the world do over the past year in addressing specific challenges?; (2) How did it do overall in terms of international cooperation?; (3) How should the challenges it examines be ranked in terms of their relative importance?; (4) Which of these problems offers the greatest opportunity for a breakthrough in the coming year?; and (5) What one reform would do the most to improve international cooperation on each issue in 2016?

Outstanding Web Features: The report's well-thought-out navigation groups graded responses from the twenty-six think tanks with respect to ten of the most important issues of 2015. More in-depth information for each challenge is provided by backgrounders written by CFR staff, including relevant data, priorities in each area, policy prescriptions, and additional commentary. The ten areas examined in the report and their overall grades are:

• Mitigating and Adapting to Climate Change: A
• Preventing Nuclear Proliferation: A-
• Advancing Development: B+
• Promoting Global Health: B+
• Expanding Global Trade: B
• Managing the Global Economic System: B-
• Managing Cyber Governance: B-
• Preventing and Responding to Violent Conflict Between States: C
• Combating Transnational Terrorism: C-
• Preventing and Responding to Internal Violent Conflict: C-

In addition, the surveyed think tank leaders agreed that the three issues which received the lowest grades in 2015 — combating transnational terrorism, preventing violent conflict between states, and preventing internal violent conflict — are still the challenges most in need of being addressed in the years ahead; that efforts to address global challenges in general were on the upswing, with grades in nine of ten issue areas improving since last year’s survey; and that there appear to be opportunities for breakthroughs in some areas. Overall, survey respondents gave global cooperation efforts in 2015 a grade of B.