Robert Muggah

Activist, Brainstormer, Business adviser, Change agent, Concerned citizen, Connector, Entrepreneur, Global soul, Idea generator, Parent, Social entrepreneur, World traveler, Writer/Editor

In 2010 I co-founded the Igarapé Institute – an award-winning global think and do tank - to accelerate citizen, digital and climate security, including in cities. A few years ago, I co-founded the SecDev Group, a cyber security and digital risk group. I advise national and city governments, tech companies like Google and Meta, and international organizations like the UN, IMF, and World Bank. More recently, I co-founded a start-up called Bioverse, a forest intelligence company and joined an urban design lab called SuperNature. Inspired by Sebastao Salgado, my partner and I have also started a new restoration and agroforestry project in the Mata Atlantica with the idea of creating a green corridor spanning several thousand square kilometers. And I”m also an adviser to Emerald Technology Ventures AG. Over the past few years I've led initiatives to track nature crime in the Amazon, deployed mobile apps to forecast urban crime, combined satellites, drones and machine learning to expand NTFP supply chains, and designed digital tools to help migrants access services. I’m also interested in how to align AI so that it is safe, reduces bias and discrimination and amplifies social impact. I've been a visiting lecturer or fellow at New York University, Princeton, the University of British Columbia, the University of Oxford, the University of San Diego, the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Singularity University, and the Graduate Institute in Switzerland. I completed a doctorate at Oxford in the 2000s. I’ve written or edited 8 booked and the most recent is Terra Incognita: 100 Maps to Survive the Next 100 Years, published by Penguin/Random House in 2020). I also contribute regularly to outlets like the Atlantic, CBC, CNN, Fast Company, Financial Times, Foreign Policy, Folha do Sao Paulo, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, LA Times, Le Monde, New York Times, TED Ideas and others. I’ve given talks in places like the Global Smart City Expo, the Pritzker Forum on Cities, the World Economic Forum´s summits in Davos, Dubai, and Dalian, and TED in 2015, 2016 and 2017, 2019, 2021 and 2024. I'm an associate at the World Economic Forum´s Council on Cities and Urbanization (fellow) and the Global Risk Report (advisor), Chicago Council for Global Affairs (fellow), Canadian Global Affairs Institute (fellow), Global Parliament of Mayors (co-chair), a senior adviser to McKinseys and other networks. Best of all, in 2025, my team is partnering with TED Countdown to co-host Countdown House (with TedxAmazonia) at COP30 in Belem. My team is also supporting multiple COP30 envoys and ambassadors to make sure Brazil delivers a high ambition and successful event!

Building smarter and greener cities, accelerating climate and nature action, and designing data visualizations to drive social impact.

Cities offer among the best platforms to scale safety, opportunity and climate and nature resilience. But to do so, they need more political leverage, urban financing, and networks. Some ways to do this at https://ideas.ted.com/why-cities-rule-the-world/, https://ideas.ted.com/opinion-why-the-actions-of-cities-not-nations-will-be-the-key-to-our-survival-on-earth/; and https://ideas.ted.com/one-way-to-cure-americas-murder-epidemic/.

algorithmic transparency, climate action, crime prevention, cyber security, data visualization, digital economy, digital risk, future trends, geopolitics, globalization, migration and displacement, new technologies, peace and security, predictive analytics, relief and recovery, smart cities

TED taught me to multi-task. In 2014, my wife (Ilona Szabo) and I were invited to speak at TED Global. The timing was a little challenging, coming as it did just a few months after our first-born arrived. We like to say we had a few babies that year - Yasmin Zoe and our two talks. In the fog of first-time parenthood we could barely remember our own names much less our talks. Needless to say, it was all a (mostly) pleasant blur. Since my first TED talk it's been all uphill. What I love is the way it brings together people who are passionate about collaboration, sharing ideas without reservation, and fired-up about social change. I've had some great partnerships with fellow speakers, curators and translators over the years. For example, between 2014-2017, I worked closely with (the late) Benjamin Barber to stand-up a Global Parliament of Mayors. We had our inaugural meeting in The Hague in 2016 and now have almost 100 global mayors onboard. He taught me about the power and potential of city networking to change the world - and then made we worked together to make it happen. From 2017-2019 I've also worked with other TED fellow travellers like Steven Pinker, Gary Slutkin, Misha Glenny, Justin Kosslyn, Lisa Choi, and so many others on projects big and small. We've written about how to reduce violence, written film scripts about the Amazon Basin, held salons on climate action and so much more. It´s been quite a ride so far and I owe an immense debt of gratitude to Bruno Giussani, Kelly Stoetzel and Chris Anderson for giving me a platform not just to think big, but to get stuff done.