state of the future - Azerbaijan Future Studies Society

Transcription

2007
STATE OF THE FUTURE
JEROME C. GLENN AND THEODORE J. GORDON
WFUNA Millennium Project
The State of the Future is an informative publication that gives invaluable insights into the
future for the United Nations, its Member States, and civil society.
Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations
The 2007 State of the Future report offers well-researched evidence of global trends and
challenges that are shaping the agenda of the United Nations.
Hans Blix, President, WFUNA, and Former Director-General, IAEA
The 15 Global Challenges updated annually continue to be the best introduction by far to the key
issues of the early 21st century.
Michael Marien, editor, Future Survey
The State of the Future is a unique all encompassing outlook for future global trends and issues.
It is both a bloody good read and a thought-provoking one.
Jérôme Bindé, Director of the Office of Foresight, UNESCO
This, the 11th edition of the State of the Future, continues the brilliant work over the last decade
by the Millennium Project and continues the outstandingly high standards of past editions.
Ambassador John McDonald, President, Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy
A unique contribution for all those interested in understanding globalization trends, positioning
institutions and governments to better transform themselves to protect public goods.
Carlos Lopes, Executive Director, UNITAR
Everyone assessing long-term risk for decisionmaking or building policy needs a tool like the
State of the Future report of the Millennium Project to inform and enrich global factors in
building their scenarios.
William Cosgrove, President, Bureau d’Audiences Publiques sur l’Environnement (Québec),
and co-author of World Water Vision: Making Water Everybody’s Business
The State of the Future is a valuable overview of global change and its discussion of the future
of educational possibilities has provided important ideas for our Ministry of Education.
Lee Young-tak, Chairman & CEO of the Korea Stock Exchange
The State of the Future wakes us up to the enormous scale of forced labor, and
organized crime getting more money than all military budgets worldwide.
Roger Plant, Head of Special Action Programme to Combat Forced Labour, ILO
Eight of the ten annual State of the Future reports were selected by Future Survey as among the
year’s best books on the future.
ISBN: 0-9722051-6-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 98-646672
© 2007 World Federation of United Nations Associations
and American Council for the United Nations University
4421 Garrison Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20016-4055 U.S.A.
by Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon
Cover by Darwin Foye, www.5th-Density.com
2007 State of the Future
ii
Print Section—Table of Contents
The 2007 State of the Future is composed of two parts: print and CD. This print book contains
the executive summary of each of the studies conducted in 2006–07. The enclosed CD of about
6,000 pages contains the cumulative work of the Millennium Project since 1996 and details of
the studies included in this print section.
NOTE: the page numbers indicated in this Table of Contents reflect the page numbers from the
print section of the State of the Future and not the ones of this word version.
Foreword
Executive Summary…………………………………………………………………………1
1. Global Challenges……………………………………………………………….………11
2. State of the Future Index……………………………………………………………….43
3. Education and Learning 2030…………………………………………………………53
4. Emerging Environmental Security Issues…………………………………………..79
Appendix
Millennium Project Participants Demographics………………………………..93
Acronyms and Abbreviations………………………………………………….………….96
List of Figures and Boxes…………………………………………………………………98
The Table of Contents of the CD section appears on the next page.
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CD Section—Table of Contents
See preceding page for Table of Contents of the Print Section
The enclosed CD of about 6,000 pages contains the cumulative work of the Millennium Project
since 1996 and details of the studies included in this print section.
Executive Summary (10 pages)
1. Global Challenges (1,100 pages)
2. State of the Future Index Section
2.1 Global SOFI (261 pages)
2.2 National SOFIs (89 pages)
2.3 Global Challenges Assessment (94 pages)
3. Global Scenarios
3.1 Normative Scenario to the Year 2050 (21 pages)
3.2 Exploratory Scenarios (41 pages)
3.3 Very Long-Range Scenarios—1,000 years (23 pages)
3.4 Counterterrorism—Scenarios, Actions, and Policies (40 pages)
3.5 Science and Technology 2025 Global Scenarios (21 pages)
3.6 Global Energy Scenarios 2020 (103 pages)
3.7 Middle East Peace Scenarios (91 pages)
4. Science and Technology
4.1 Future S&T Management and Policy Issues (400 pages)
4.2 Nanotechnology: Future Military Environmental Health Considerations (21
pages)
5. Education and Learning 2030 (59 pages)
6. Future Ethical Issues (69 pages)
7. Global Goals for the Year 2050 (24 pages)
8. World Leaders on Global Challenges (42 pages)
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9. Environmental Security
9.1 Emerging Environmental Security Issues (525 pages)
9.2 Environmental Security: Emerging International Definitions, Perceptions, and
Policy Considerations (42 pages)
9.3 Environmental Security: UN Doctrine for Managing Environmental Issues in
Military Actions (113 pages)
9.4 Environmental Crimes in Military Actions and the International Criminal Court
(ICC)—UN Perspectives (31 pages)
9.5 Environmental Security and Potential Military Requirements (44 pages)
10. Measuring and Promoting Sustainable Development
10.1 Measuring Sustainable Development (61 pages)
10.2 Quality and Sustainability of Life Indicators (9 pages)
10.3 Partnership for Sustainable Development (48 pages)
10.4 A Marshall Plan for Haiti (12 pages)
11. Factors Required for Successful Implementation of Futures Research in
Decisionmaking (55 pages)
Appendices (2,500 pages)
Appendix A: Millennium Project Participants
(list of names with affiliation and country)
Appendix B: State of the Future Index Section
Appendix C: Global Scenarios
Appendix D: Science and Technology
Appendix E: Education and Learning 2030
Appendix F: Global Ethics
Appendix G: Global Goals for The Year 2050
Appendix H: World Leaders on Global Challenges
Appendix I: Environmental Security Studies
Appendix J: Measuring and Promoting Sustainable Development
Appendix K: Factors Required for Successful Implementation of
Futures Research in Decisionmaking
Appendix L: Real Time Delphi Process
Appendix M: Annotated Bibliography of About 700 Scenario Sets
Appendix N: Other Annotated Bibliographies:
Ethics Related Organizations
Global Energy Scenarios and Related Research
Women/Gender Organizations
Appendix O: Reflections on the Tenth Anniversary of the State of the Future
and the Millennium Project
Appendix P: Publications of the Millennium Project
Acronyms and Abbreviations
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Millennium Project Node Chairs
The Millennium Project interconnects global and local perspectives through its Nodes (groups of
individuals and institutions).
Argentina
Miguel Angel Gutierrez
Latin American Center for Globalization and Prospective
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Australia
Charles Brass
The Futures Foundation
Melbourne, Australia
Azerbaijan
Reyhan Huseynova
Azerbaijan Future Studies Society
Baku, Azerbaijan
Ali M. Abbasov
Minister of Comm. & IT
Baku, Azerbaijan
Brazil
Arnoldo José de Hoyo and Rosa Alegria
São Paulo Catholic University
São Paulo, Brazil
Brussels-Area
Philippe Destatte
The Destree Institute
Namur, Belgium
Canada
Catherine Cosgrove
Futurist
Montreal, QC, Canada
David Harries
Alliance for Capitalizing on Change
Kingston, ON, Canada
Central Europe
Pavel Novacek
Charles University
Prague, Czech Republic
Ivan Klinec
Institute for Forecasting
Bratislava, Slovak Republic
Chile
Héctor Casanueva
Instituto de Globalización y Prospectiva (IGP)
University Miguel de Cervantes
Santiago de Chile, Chile
China
Rusong Wang
Academy of Natural Sciences
Beijing, China
Zhouying Jin
Academy of Social Sciences
Beijing, China
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Egypt
Kamal Zaki Mahmoud Sheer
Egyptian-Arab Futures Research Association
Cairo, Egypt
Finland
Juha Kaskinen
Finland Futures Academy, Futures Research Centre
Turku, Finland
France
Saphia Richou
Prospective-Foresight Network
Paris, France
Germany
Cornelia Daheim
Z_punkt GmbH The Foresight Company
Essen, Germany
Gulf Region
Ismail Al-Shatti
Office of the Prime Minister
Kuwait, Kuwait
Iran
Mohsen Bahrami
Amir Kabir University of Technology
Tehran, Iran
India
Anandhavalli Mahadevan
Madurai Kamaraj University
Madurai, India
Mohan K. Tikku
Futurist / Journalist
New Delhi, India
Italy
Eleonora Barbieri Massini
Gregorian University
Rome, Italy
Japan
Shinji Matsumoto
CSP Corporation
Tokyo, Japan
Mexico
Concepción Olavarrieta
Nodo Mexicano. El Proyecto Del Milenio, A.C.
Mexico City, Mexico
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Russia
Nadezhda Gaponenko
Russian Institute for
Economy, Policy and Law
Moscow, Russia
Renat Perelet
Institute for Systems Analysis
Russian Academy of Sciences
Moscow, Russia
Silicon Valley
John J. Gottsman
Clarity Group
Palo Alto CA, USA
South Africa
Geci Karuri
Human Sciences Res. Council
Pretoria, South Africa
Bob Day and JP Landman
Futurist Consultants
Gauteng, South Africa
South Korea
Youngsook Park
UN Future Forum
Seoul, Korea
Turkey
Alper Alsan
Siemens A.S., and All Futurists Association
Istanbul, Turkey
United Arab Emirates
Hind Almualla
Knowledge and Human Development Authority
Dubai, UAE
United Kingdom
Jonathan Carr-West
The Royal Society for the Encouragement of
Arts, Manufactures & Commerce
London, United Kingdom
Venezuela
José Cordeiro
Sociedad Mundial del Futuro Venezuela
Caracas, Venezuela
Experimental Cyber-Node
Frank Catanzaro
Arcturus Research & Design Group
Maui, Hawaii
EyE (Escenarios y Estrategia)
Eduardo Balbi
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The Millennium Project of the American Council for the United Nations University was
sponsored in its 2006–07 research program by:
•
Applied Materials
•
Army Environmental Policy Institute, U.S. Army
•
Deloitte & Touche, LLP
•
Foundation for the Future
•
Ministry of Communications, Republic of Azerbaijan
•
Ministry of Education and Presidential Commission
on Education, Republic of Korea
•
UN Future Forum (Korea)
with in-kind support from:
•
CIM Engineering
•
Smithsonian Institution
•
World Federation of United Nations Associations
•
World Future Society
This is the eleventh report in an annual series intended to provide a context for global thinking
and improved understanding of global issues, opportunities, challenges, and strategies.
The purposes of the Millennium Project are to assist in organizing futures research, improve
thinking about the future, and make that thinking available through a variety of media for
consideration in policymaking, advanced training, public education, and feedback, ideally in
order to accumulate wisdom about potential futures.
The Project is designed to provide an independent global capacity that is interdisciplinary,
interinstitutional, and multicultural for early alert and analysis of long-range issues,
opportunities, challenges, and strategies.
The Project is not intended to be a one-time study of the future but to provide an ongoing
capacity as an intellectually, geographically, and institutionally dispersed think tank.
Feedback on this work is welcome and will help shape the next State of the Future.
Previous State of the Future reports are available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Korean,
Persian, and Spanish. See www.acunu.org, “Books and Reports.”
Readers of the State of the Future may also be interested in the Futures Research Methodology
Version 2.0 CD, which is a collection of 27 chapters about how to explore the future.
<www.stateofthefuture.org>
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Millennium Project Planning Committee
Alper Alsan, Siemens A.S. and All Futurists Association of Turkey, Istanbul, Turkey
Ismail Al-Shati, Senior Advisor, Office of the Prime Minister, Government of Kuwait, Kuwait
Mohsen Bahrami, Amir Kabir University of Technology and Nat. Research Council of Iran,
Tehran, Iran
Eduardo Raul Balbi, Scenarios & Strategies (Escenarios y Estrategia -EYE),
Eleonora Barbieri Masini, Gregorian University, Rome, Italy
Jérôme Bindé, Director, Office of Analysis and Forecasting, UNESCO, Paris, France
Peter Bishop, Futures Studies, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA
Charles Brass, Futures Foundation, Melbourne, Australia
Jonathan Carr-West, The Royal Society for the Arts, Manufactures & Commerce,
London, United Kingdom
Frank Catanzaro, Arcturus Research & Design Group, Maui, Hawaii, USA
José Cordeiro, Sociedad Mundial del Futuro Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela
Catherine Cosgrove, Content Director, Liberal Party of Québec, Montréal QC, Canada
George Cowan, Founder, Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe NM, USA
Cornelia Daheim, Z_punkt GmbH The Foresight Company, Essen, Germany
Francisco Dallmeier, Biodiversity, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, USA
Philippe Destatte, Director General, The Destree Institute, Namur, Wallonia, Belgium
Elizabeth Florescu, Director of Research, WFUNA Millennium Project, Calgary AB, Canada
Nadezhda Gaponenko, Russian Institute for Economy, Policy and Law, Moscow, Russia
Jerome C. Glenn, Director, WFUNA Millennium Project, Washington DC, USA
Michel Godet, Conservatoire d'Arts et Métiers, Paris, France
Theodore J. Gordon, Senior Fellow, WFUNA Millennium Project, Old Lyme CT, USA
John J. Gottsman, President, Clarity Group, Atherton CA, USA
Miguel A. Gutierrez, Latin American Center for Globalization and Prospective,
Hazel Henderson, Futurist, Author, and Consultant, St. Augustine FL, USA
Arnoldo José de Hoyos Guevara, PUC-SP São Paulo Catholic University, São Paulo, Brazil
Reyhan Huseynova, Azerbaijan Future Studies Society, Baku, Azerbaijan
Zhouying Jin, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China
Geci Karuri, Chief Research Manager, Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria,
South Africa
Juha Kaskinen, Director, Finland Futures Academy, Finland Futures Research Centre,
Turku, Finland
Anandhavalli Mahadevan, Chair, Futures Research Program, Madurai Kamaraj University,
Madurai, India
Kamal Zaki Mahmoud Sheer, Secretary-General, Egyptian-Arab Futures Research Association,
Cairo, Egypt
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Shinji Matsumoto, President, CSP Corporation and Member, Japan Society for Future Studies,
Tokyo, Japan
Pavel Novacek, Palacky University, Olomouc, and Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Concepción Olavarrieta, Nodo Mexicano. El Proyecto Del Milenio, A.C., Mexico City, Mexico
Youngsook Park, President, UN Future Forum , Seoul, Republic of Korea
Charles Perrottet, Principal, The Futures Strategy Group, Glastonbury CT, USA
Cristina Puentes-Markides, Pan American Health Organization, Washington DC, USA
David Rejeski, Director, Foresight and Governance, Woodrow Wilson Center,
Washington DC, USA
Saphia Richou, President, Prospective-Foresight Network, Paris, France
Stanley Rosen, Futurist, Los Angeles CA, USA
Mihaly Simai, Director, World Institute of Economics, Budapest, Hungary
Rusong Wang, Chinese Academy of Natural Sciences, Beijing, China
Pera Wells, Secretary General, World Federation of UN Associations
Paul Werbos, National Science Foundation, Arlington VA, USA
Sponsor Representatives
Ali Abbasov, Minister of Communications, Republic of Azerbaijan
William Coplin, Applied Materials, USA
John Fittipaldi, Army Environmental Policy Institute, U.S. Army
Walter Kistler and Bob Citron, Foundation for the Future, USA
Youngsook Park, UN Future Forum, Republic of Korea
Michael Stoneking, Deloitte & Touche LLP, USA
xi
Acknowledgments
The 38 chairs and co-chairs of the 29 Millennium Project Nodes, plus their members who help select
participants, translate questionnaires, and conduct interviews, were essential for the success of the
research conducted in this and previous years.
Theodore Gordon, Jerome Glenn, and Elizabeth Florescu were partners in the research for this
volume, with research and administrative assistance from Hayato Kobayashi. Special acknowledgment is
given for Theodore Gordon’s quantitative and conceptual leadership in the further development and
assessments of the State of the Future Index in Chapter 2; for Jerome Glenn’s leadership on the
cumulative research on the 15 Global Challenges in Chapter 1; and for Elizabeth Florescu’s research
and organization of environmental security issues in Chapter 4. The Future Education and Learning
2030 study received input from 213 participants around the world. Chapter 3 is the distillation of the
results by Jerome Glenn; the full analysis by Theodore Gordon is in the CD Section 5 and Appendix E.
Principal members of the environmental security scanning team who prepared the monthly reports
summarized in Chapter 4 were Jerome Glenn, Elizabeth Florescu, John Young, Theodore Gordon,
Robert Jarrett, Peter Rzeszotarski, Gregor Wolbring, and Hayato Kobayashi.
Linda Starke provided editing of the print section. John Young provided proofreading assistance for
several sections in both the print and CD sections. Elizabeth Florescu did the production and layout of
both the print and CD sections of this book under a very tight deadline. Darwin Foye designed the cover.
A special thank you to Susan Jette for her continued additions to the annotated scenario bibliography in
the CD; to Jose Cordeiro and Guido Núñez-Mujica for their contribution to the national SOFIs
development; to Peter Yim, President of CIM Engineering, Inc., for hosting the Project’s Web site and
internal email lists; and to Frank Catanzaro for experimental collaborative software applications.
The Interns who helped with the Millennium Project in general and updated and improved the
15 Global Challenges were Joyce M. Albert, Déborah Alimi, Evan Faber, Delanie Froystad, Laila
Hadad, Ayano Ioroi, Megan Kim, Anne-Charlotte Lagrandcourt, Anicka Lewis, Demetrios Panousakis,
Theodora Panousakis, Fouzia Seguer, and Felipe A. Zuluaga. We wish them all well in their future careers.
Special contributions to update and improve the descriptions of the 15 Global Challenges were
received from Janna Quitney Anderson, Margarita Arroyo, Dennis Bushnell, Ian Cairncross,
Catherine Cosgrove, Cornelia Daheim, Franci Demsar, Juan Eibenschutz, Roberto Eibenschutz,
Feng Hsu, David Fletcher, Elizabeth Florescu, Nadezhda Gaponenko, Theodore Gordon, Miguel
Gutierrez, Ana Jakil, Zhouying Jin, Hayato Kobayashi, Osmo Kuusi, JP Landman, Miriam Leis,
Eleonora Masini, Bernard Metais, Nicholas Minot, George Mueller, Tom Murphy, Concepción
Olavarrieta, Stan Rosen, Gustavo Paz Soldán, Julia Tagüeña, Gereon Uerz, Thomas Valone, Vanessa
Watkins, Gregor Wolbring, John Young, and Gina Zubludovsky.
Special thanks to the sponsors of the Global Millennium Prize and the Millennium Awards in
Mexico: Mexican Ministry of Education, Hewlett-Packard Mexico, Pfizer Mexico, Grupo Salinas,
Grupo Nestlé México, Grupo Imer, El Gallito Camp, Gobierno del Estado de México, Ibope-Agb,
Pandilla Telmex, and Once TV; and to the Ministry of Communications of Azerbaijan for
sponsoring the Millennium Awards in Azerbaijan.
xii
Foreword
The purpose of futures research is to systematically explore, create, and test both possible and
desirable futures to improve decisions. Decisionmaking is affected by globalization; hence,
global futures research will be needed to inform decisions made by individuals, groups, and
institutions.
Just as the person on top of the mast on old sailing ships used to point out the rocks and safe
channels to the captain below for the smooth running of the ship through uncharted waters, so
too futurists with foresight systems for the world can point out problems and opportunities to
leaders around the world. The Millennium Project is one such system.
Because the issues and solutions of our time are increasingly transnational, transinstitutional, and
trandisciplinary, the Millennium Project was created as a global participatory think tank of
futurists, scholars, scientists, business planners, and policymakers who work for international
organizations, governments, corporations, NGOs, and universities.
Futures research has had an uncomfortable relationship with most academic research. As the
latter advances, it tends to narrow its scope of study. In contrast, futures research tends to
broaden its scope of study as it advances, to take into account future possibilities. It is not a
science; the outcome of futures studies depends on the methods used and the skills of the
practitioners. Its methods can be highly quantitative (such as the State of the Future Index in
Chapter 2) or qualitative (such as the Delphi studies that produced the Education and Learning
2030 study in Chapter 3). It helps to provide a framework to better understand the present and to
expand mental horizons (such as the Global Challenges described in Chapter 1).
The 2007 State of the Future provides an additional eye on global change. This is the eleventh
State of the Future report. It contains the 11-year cumulative research and judgments of
approximately 2,400 thoughtful and creative people. About 350 people participated in last year's
studies. The institutional and geographic demographics of the participants can be found in the
Appendix, and full lists of participants are available in Appendix A on the CD.
The annual State of the Future is a utility from which people can draw information and ideas to
be adapted to their unique needs. It provides a global strategic landscape that public and private
policymakers may use to improve their own strategic decisionmaking and global understanding.
Business executives can use the research as input to their planning. University professors,
futurists, and other consultants may find this information useful in teaching and research.
Sections of previous reports have been used as university and high school texts.
The 2007 State of the Future comes in two parts: a CD with complete details of the Millennium
Project's research this year and over the past several years, and this print edition of a series of
distilled versions of the 2006–07 research. Consider each chapter of the print part as the
executive summary of the respective chapter in the CD. For example, the print Chapter 1 on the
15 Global Challenges allocates two pages to each Challenge, while the CD devotes over 1,000
pages to them.
xiii
The CD can also be used to search for the particular items needed in customized work. Regional
views on each of the 15 Challenges are also presented in Chapter 1. For example, all the African
sections on each of the 15 Challenges could be assembled into one paper by cutting and pasting
(and possibly adding to the content by searching for results on Africa in other chapters),
providing one report on Global Challenges and Issues for Africa.
The CD version of the report, which contains about 5,500 pages, is designed to serve as a
reference document. Users can search the document using key words and print specific sections
of interest. In the CD, for example, each Challenge has a comprehensive overview, alternative
perceptions about the challenges and additions to the overview, regional views, relevant
information from recent literature, and a set of actions from previous Global Lookout Panels.
Some of the information is derived from previous interviews with decisionmakers. The
descriptions of the challenges also contain ideas contributed in the past years, additional actions
and views about those actions, and suggested indicators to measure progress or lack thereof on
addressing the challenge.
The statements in the Global Challenges chapter do not represent a consensus because they are a
distillation of a range of views from hundreds of participants rather than an essay by a single
author. We sought and welcomed a diversity of opinions. Hence, some of the issues raised and
recommended actions seem contradictory. In addition, there does not appear to be a cause-andeffect relationship in some of the statements, and some sound like political clichés, but these are
the views of the participants that may be useful to consider in the policy process. Nevertheless, it
does present a more coherent overview of the global situation and prognosis than we have found
elsewhere.
The Millennium Project's Nodes are groups of individuals and organizations that interconnect
global and local perspectives. They identify participants, conduct interviews, translate and
distribute questionnaires, and conduct research and conferences. It is through their contributions
that the world picture of this report and indeed all of the Millennium Project's work emerges.
Through its research, publications, conferences, and Nodes, the Millennium Project helps to
nurture an international collaborative spirit of free inquiry and feedback for increasing collective
intelligence to improve social, technical, and environmental viability for human development.
Feedback on any sections of the book is most welcome at <[email protected]> and may help shape
the next State of the Future.
Jerome C. Glenn
Director
Millennium Project
Theodore J. Gordon
Senior Fellow
Millennium Project
Elizabeth Florescu
Director of Research
Millennium Project
xiv
What Is New in This Year’s Report
 Both the short and long versions of the 15 Global Challenges were updated.
 The State of the Future Index was reviewed using a Real Time Delphi, variables were
reassessed, and improvements were made. National SOFIs for Turkey and the Republic of
Korea were computed, and the process of comparing national SOFIs is being perfected.
 The Education and Learning 2030 study presented in Chapter 3 is a distillation of the views
of more than 200 participants from around the world. It presents 19 possibilities that could
influence future education and learning by the year 2030.
 The Real Time Delphi process for collecting expert opinions was further developed and
used in the Education and Learning 2030 study, in the process of improving the SOFI, and
in assessing Millennium Project priorities and improving decisionmaking; it is available in
Appendix L on the CD.
 More than 200 items related to environmental security were identified, assessed, and
organized over the past year. A distilled version is presented in Chapter 4 and the full text of
all the 700 items identified since 2002 is available in CD Chapter 9.1.
 Descriptions of about 50 scenarios were added to the Annotated Scenarios Bibliography on
the CD, for a total of over 700 scenarios and scenario sets.
 The CD includes details and research that support the print version; it also includes the
complete text of previous Millennium Project works:
•
Global exploratory, normative, and very-long range scenarios, along with an
introduction describing their development.
•
Three Middle East Peace scenarios based on a three-round Delphi study.
•
Science and Technology scenarios and the two-year supporting study.
•
Four Global Energy Scenarios and supporting study.
•
An analysis of the statements by world leaders delivered at the UN Millennium
Summit in 2000.
•
Environmental security definitions, threats, related treaties; UN military doctrine on
environmental issues; potential military environmental crimes and the International
Criminal Court; changing environmental security military requirements in 2010–25.
•
Two studies to create indexes and maps of the status of sustainable development,
conducted by the Millennium Project participants, and an international review of the
concept of creating a “Partnership for Sustainable Development,” a study initiated by
the Central European Node.
•
Study of factors required for successful implementation of futures research in
decisionmaking.
xv
Executive Summary
People around the world are becoming healthier, wealthier, better educated, more peaceful, and
increasingly connected and they are living longer, but at the same time the world is more corrupt,
congested, warmer, and increasingly dangerous. Although the digital divide is beginning to
close, income gaps are still expanding around the world and unemployment continues to grow.
The global economy grew at 5.4% in 2006 to $66 trillion (PPP). The population grew 1.1%,
increasing the average world per capita income by 4.3%. At this rate world poverty will be cut
by more than half between 2000 and 2015, meeting the UN Millennium Development Goal for
poverty reduction except in sub-Saharan Africa. Although the majority of the world is improving
economically, income disparities are still enormous: 2% of the world’s richest people own more
than 50% of the world’s wealth, while the poorest 50% of people own 1%. And the income of
the 225 richest people in the world is equal to that of the poorest 2.7 billion, 40% of the world.
More than half the 6.6 billion people of the world live in urban environments. The foundations
are being laid for cities to become augmented by ubiquitous computing for collective intelligence
with just-in-time knowledge to better manage them. Nanosensors and transceivers in nearly
everything will make it easier to manage a city as a whole—from transportation to security.
Although great human tragedies like Iraq and Darfur dominate the news, the vast majority of the
world is living in peace, conflicts actually decreased over the past decade, dialogues among
differing worldviews are growing, intra-state conflicts are increasingly being settled by
international interventions, and the number of refugees is falling. The number of African
conflicts fell from a peak of 16 in 2002 to 5 in 2005.
The prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Africa has begun to level off and could begin to actually
decrease over the next few years. Meanwhile it continues to spread rapidly in Eastern Europe and
in Central and South Asia. AIDS is the fourth leading cause of deaths in the world and the
leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa.
According to WHO, the world’s average life expectancy is increasing from 48 years for those
born in 1955 to 73 years for those who will be born in 2025. Global population is changing from
high mortality and high fertility to low mortality and low fertility. Population may increase by
another 2.8 billion by 2050 before it begins to fall, according to the UN’s lower forecast, after
which it could be 5.5 billion by 2100—which is 1 billion fewer people than are alive today.
However, technological breakthroughs are likely to change these forecasts over the next 50
years, giving people even longer and more productive lives than most would believe possible
today.
According to UNESCO, in 1970 about 37% of all people over the age of 15 were illiterate. That
has fallen to less than 18% today. Between 1999 and 2004 the number of children without
primary education fell by around 21 million to 77 million.
1
The increasing and overwhelming evidence for global warming, the success of Al Gore’s movie
An Inconvenient Truth, and China’s passing the United States in CO2 emissions have put global
climate change among the top issues in the world today. The IPCC reported that CO2 emissions
rose faster than its worst case scenario during 2000–04 and that without new government actions
greenhouse gases will rise 25–90% over 2000 levels by 2030. Applying data from BP, the U.S.
Geological Survey, and the International Energy Agency, the Netherlands Environmental
Assessment Agency estimated that China passed the U.S. in carbon emissions in 2006 by 8%.
China consumes 2 billion tons of coal each year, which could grow to 4 billion tons by 2016.
There are 28,000 coal mines in China. The United States actually decreased its CO2 emissions in
2006 by 1.4% from the previous year. Fossil CO2 emissions of the EU-15 countries remained
almost constant in 2006. Hence, there is some good news: the rate of increase of CO2 emissions
in 2006 from fossil fuel use was about 2.6%, while in 2005 it was 3.3%. But this good news
could be short-lived as China builds more coal plants and purchases more cars.
Approximately 800–1,000 coal plants are in some stage of planning or construction around the
world. If built, they will have expected production lives of 40 years. If these plants are
completed, then reducing GHG emissions is less likely. One impact of continued global warming
is raising sea levels that threaten more than 634 million people who live in coastal areas,
according to NASA. The Secretary-General of the United Nations called climate change a
“defining issue of our era.” U.S. Vice Adm. Richard H. Truly said that global warming is a
uniquely serious environmental security problem because it’s not like “some hot spot we’re
trying to handle… It’s going to happen to every country and every person in the whole world at
the same time.” According to the IPCC report Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and
Vulnerability, the most severe impacts of climate change will be experienced by people in the
poorest regions who have emitted the least amount of greenhouse gases. Richard Branson has
offered $25 million for a way to remove a billion tons of carbon dioxide a year from Earth’s
atmosphere, and he plans to invest $3 billion in fighting global warming.
There are increasing calls for an “Apollo-like” R&D program to solve the long-term problems of
energy and climate change. The world should pressure the United States and China to create and
lead a global strategy to create safer energy with fewer GHG emissions, which would reduce
climate change and continue economic growth. Initial U.S.-China cooperation has begun on
cleaner coal processing and biofuels. The energy alternatives to those that produce nuclear waste
or CO2 emissions are proliferating. The options to create and update global energy strategies
seem too complex and rapidly changing for decisionmakers to make coherent policy. Yet the
environmental and social consequences of incoherent policy are so serious that a new global
system for the identification, analysis, possible consequence assessment, and synthesis of energy
options is justified. Such a system has to be designed so that it can be understood and used by the
general public, politicians, and non-scientists, as well as by leading scientists and engineers
around the world.
When humans used up natural resources in the past, they just migrated to new areas with more
resources. This strategy will not work as well for the 40% of humanity who live in India and
China, as their water and soil resources are depleted. By 2025, 1.8 billion people could be living
in water-scarce areas desperate enough for mass migrations. We have to create more water, not
just pricing polices to redistribute resources. Massive desalinization will be needed as well as
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seawater agriculture programs along 24,000 kilometers of desert coast lines to produce biofuels,
food for humans and animals, and pulp for paper industries—all of which would free up fresh
water for other purposes while absorbing CO2.
According to Freedom House, the number of free countries grew from 46 to 90 over the past 30
years, accounting for 46% of the world's population, and for the past several years 64% of
countries have been electoral democracies. Since democracies tend not to fight each other and
since humanitarian crises are far more likely under authoritarian than democratic regimes, the
trend toward democracy should lead to a more peaceful future among nation states.
Unfortunately, massively destructive powers will be more available to individuals. Future
desktop molecular and pharmaceutical manufacturing and organized crime's access to nuclear
materials give single individuals the ability to make and use weapons of mass destruction—from
biological weapons to low-level nuclear (“dirty”) bombs. The IAEA reported 149 confirmed
incidents of illicit use of radioactive materials in 2006. Only 10% of the 220 million sea
containers that transport 90% of the world’s trade are inspected, giving organized crime and
terrorism easier supply lines.
Transnational organized crime continues to grow in the absence of a comprehensive, integrated
global counter strategy. Its total annual income could be well over $2 trillion, giving it more
financial resources than all the military budgets worldwide. The 13–15 million AIDS orphans,
with potentially another 10 million by 2010, constitute a gigantic pool of new talent for
organized crime.
According to the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the total
number of people affected by natural disasters has tripled over the past decade to 2 billion
people, with the accumulated impact of natural disasters resulting in on average 211 million
people directly affected each year. This is approximately five times the number of people
thought to have been affected by conflict over the past decade.
Increased acknowledgement of climate change and other forms of global interdependence, such
as financial links and communicable diseases, demonstrates the need for global systems for
resilience—the capacity to anticipate, respond, and recover from disasters such as tsunamis,
massive migrations due to water shortages, prolonged electric or Internet outages, financial
crashes, and conflicts. If much of the global complexity cannot be managed efficiently by current
systems, then new decisionmaking systems may emerge. The International Organization for
Standardization (with more than 16,000 ISO standards) and the Internet have proved effective
mediums for self-organized decisionmaking. Hence it would be wise to create self-organizing
global systems for resilience. Maybe countries should have a National Resilience Office as a
focal point for integration of diverse factors for improved national resilience. A different
transinstitution could be created for each of the 15 global challenges in Chapter 1 or for other
needs of society. Each transinstitution could improve global resilience as coalitions of the willing
composed of national resilience officers and their counterparts in corporations, NGOs,
universities, and international organizations.
If Moore’s Law continues, within 25 years a computer could possess the processing power of the
human brain; 25 years after that, it could have the total processing power of all human brains.
3
Imagine every individual having computer capability equal to all the human brains on Earth! In
the meantime, over a billion people (17.5% of the world) are connected to the Internet. The
digital divide is closing and may continue to do so as orders for the (XO-1) MIT-inspired $100
laptops (actually $178) have been requested in lots of 250,000 by Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil,
Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan, and Thailand. As the integration of cell phones, video, and the Internet
grows, prices will fall, accelerating globalization and allowing swarms of people to quickly form
and disband, coordinate actions, and share information ranging from stock market tips to bold
new contagious ideas.
As the world moves toward ubiquitous computing with collective intelligence for just-in-time
knowledge, decisions should improve. Decisionmaking will increasingly be augmented by the
integration of ubiquitous sensors, a more intelligent Web, and institutional and personal
intelligence software that helps us receive and respond to feedback for improving decisions.
The world is expected to produce more data in 2007 than it can store. According to the IDC, the
world produced 161 exabytes (billion gigabytes) in 2006 and had 185 exabytes of storage
capacity. With the increased use of multimedia systems like YouTube, the profusion of
surveillance cameras, and regulatory rules for corporate data retention, 988 exabytes (nearly 1
zettabyte) could be produced in 2010, but only 601 exabytes are expected to be available for
storage by 2010.
World trade grew 15% in 2006, according to the WTO. Higher oil and commodity prices
contributed to the 30% trade growth for the least-developed countries—a world record—and
their economies continued to exceed 6% for the third year in a row. The debt-to-GDP ratios
decreased in all developing regions, partly due to debt forgiveness. Excluding South Africa, subSaharan Africa averaged 4.5% growth, but poverty continues to grow due to high birth rates,
corruption, armed conflicts, poor governance, environmental degradation, poor health conditions,
and lack of education.
Since the world is short 2.4 million doctors, nurses, and midwives, according to WHO, telemedicine, biochip sensors for self-diagnosis, and other automated systems may be increasingly
necessary as people live longer. The threat of SARS has been eliminated by a well-managed
coherent human response. Now the world is preparing for genetic variations that could occur in
the avian flu H5N1 virus that could kill 25 million people, bringing air transportation to a halt
and throwing the world into a depression.
It is estimated that achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals could cost $135 billion; by
comparison, $600 billion has been spent and approved by the U.S. Congress for the war in Iraq
and another $140 billion may be requested for 2008.
The ILO reports that the legislative, senior official, or managerial positions held by women have
grown slowly from 25.6% in 1995 to 28.3% today. Although condemnation of any form of
discrimination against women is almost universal, progress is mixed. About 57% of women
work in the cash economy, but only 17% are national legislators. There are now 94 girls in
primary school for every 100 boys, up from 92 in 1999. Of the 181 countries with data for 2004
available, about two-thirds have achieved gender parity in primary education. However, only
4
one-third of the 177 countries with data available have achieved parity on secondary education.
Some 781 million adults lack minimum literacy skills; two-thirds are women. Violence against
women by men continues to cause more casualties than wars do today.
There are more slaves in the world now than at the highest point of the African slave trade.
Estimates vary from 12.3 million to 27 million, with the majority being women in Asia. The
World Bank estimates that more than $1 trillion is paid each year in political bribes, of which
$20–40 billion is received by public officials from developing and transition countries and $60–
80 billion in more developed countries. However, unethical decisions are increasingly exposed
via news media, blogs, mobile phone cameras, ethics commissions, and organizations like
Transparency International. Yet trivial news and entertainment floods our minds with unethical
behavior, and far too many seem more interested in winning debating points than seeking truth to
achieve integrity to improve our future.
The extraordinary impacts of S&T over the past 25 years will seem slight compared with what is
likely to happen in the next 25 years. The factors that accelerated the rate of innovation are
themselves changing at accelerating rates. Transistors are now smaller than light waves (65
nanometers). Intel has created the first programmable 1 Teraflop chip able to perform more than
1 trillion floating point operations per second. The brain-computer interface now lets thoughts
move software, nanoparticles and fibers stimulate neural growth, and mini-biocomputers help
treat specific individual cells. Photons have been slowed and accelerated, adult stem cells have
been regressed to repair damaged tissue, and microbial fuel cells have been demonstrated. China
plans to be the fourth country (after the U.S., Russia, and Japan) to orbit the moon later this year.
Some forecast that molecular manufacturing and 3D printing will eventually evolve to the point
when people can print high-tech objects previously shipped around the world. If that day ever
comes, then shipping bytes instead of atoms would dramatically alter industrial world trade.
According to Lux Research, $12.4 billion was invested in nanotech R&D worldwide in 2006,
and more than $50 billion worth of nano-enabled products were sold.
The world needs a process to focus government, corporate, and university scientific, engineering,
and medical resources to achieve the eight UN Millennium Development Goals and address the
15 Global Challenges described in State of the Future. We need transinstitutional management
and more serious public education through the media.
National decisionmakers have not been trained in the theory and practice of decisionmaking, and
few know how advanced decision support software could help them. Formalized ethics and
decision training for decisionmakers could result in a significant improvement in the quality of
global decisions. In addition to policymakers needing training in how to make decisions,
processes to set local, national, and international priorities need further development. We know
the world is increasingly complex and that the most serious challenges are global in nature, yet
we don’t seem to know how to improve and deploy Internet-based management tools and
concepts fast enough to get on top of the situation.
Drawing on his experience as Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan has identified five
principles to improve prospects for humanity: the security of everyone is the security of everyone
else; we are responsible for each others’ welfare (global solidarity); respect for each other should
5
be reinforced by human rights and rule of law; governments must be accountable both internally
and internationally (mutual accountability); and these four principles can be achieved through
multilateral institutions like the UN.
Although many people criticize globalization’s potential cultural impacts, it is increasingly clear
that cultural change is necessary to address global challenges. The development of genuine
democracy requires cultural change, preventing AIDS requires cultural change, sustainable
development requires cultural change, ending violence against women requires cultural change,
and ending ethnic violence requires cultural change. The tools of globalization, such as the
Internet, global trade, international trade treaties, and international outsourcing, should be used to
help cultures adapt in a way that preserves their unique contributions to humanity while
improving the human condition.
State of the Future Index
People have always wanted to know if the future is getting better or worse, where we are
winning and losing, and where resources should be focused to improve our prospects. It seemed
impossible to do this on a global scale. The World Bank does this in economics, WHO does this
for health, the International Energy Agency does this for energy, but how can it all be brought
together to see the prospects for humanity as a whole? One approach is the State of the Future
Index. This is a measure of the 10-year outlook for the future in general. It is constructed with
key variables and forecasts related to the global challenges that have emerged from probably the
largest on-going participatory futures process in history.
The State of the Future Index was first described in the Millennium Project’s 2001 State of the
Future. Since then the SOFI chapter in State of the Future reports has focused on improvements
in data sources and the method itself. This year Chapter 2 presents an overview of the SOFI
study conducted in 2006–07. Participants selected by the 29 Millennium Project Nodes around
the world were asked via an online Real Time Delphi to rate the variables, give worst and best
scenario estimates, suggest new variables to be included in the SOFI, and suggest sources that
could provide at least 20 years of historical data. The results were used to construct a new global
SOFI with 29 variables. It showed that the world is improving, but not as rapidly as it did over
the past 20 years. SOFIs have also been constructed for countries—most recently in South Korea
and Turkey—and could be put together for sectors, such as energy, or for individual
organizations.
Chapter 2 also reviews the evolution of the SOFI concept and suggests research for its further
development. Details on all six years of SOFIs and the analysis and supporting data of this year’s
SOFI are included in the CD Chapter 2.
Assessing the world’s key indicators over the past 20 years and projecting them for the next 10
gives us the basis for a report card for humanity’s future, showing where we are winning or
losing.
6
Box 1. Where Is Humanity Winning and Losing
Where we are winning:
Where we are losing:
• Life expectancy
• CO2 emissions
• Infant mortality
• Terrorism
• Literacy
• Corruption
• GDP/cap
• Global warming
• Conflict
• Voting population
• Internet users
• Unemployment
Figure 1. SOFI 2007
Future Education and Learning Possibilities by 2030
At the request of the Presidential Commission on Education and with support from the Ministry
of Education of the Republic of Korea, the Millennium Project explored future possibilities for
education and learning by the year 2030. A literature search produced a list of 19 possibilities.
Each was assessed by more than 200 participants selected by the Millennium Project Nodes
around the world in terms of the possibility of occurrence by 2030, what might make or prevent
it from happening, and some positive and negative consequences if it were to occur. The
possibilities were:
•
National programs for improving collective intelligence
•
Just-in-time knowledge and learning
•
Individualized education
•
Use of simulations
•
Continuous evaluation of individual learning processes designed to prevent people from
growing unstable or becoming mentally ill
•
Improved individual nutrition
•
Genetically increased intelligence
•
Use of global on-line simulations as a primary social science research tool
7
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Use of public communications to reinforce pursuit of knowledge
Portable artificial intelligence devices
Complete mapping of human synapses to discover how learning occurs and thereby
develop strategies for improvement of learning
Means for keeping adult brains healthier for longer periods
Chemistry for brain enhancement
Web 17.0
Integrated life-long learning systems
Programs aimed at eliminating prejudice and hate
E-Teaching
Smarter than human computers
Artificial microbes enhancing intelligence
The interrelation of these possibilities presents a dramatically different view of education than
dominates today. As noted earlier, by 2030 portable intelligent devices could have the processing
power of the human brain. Individuals would gain access to the world’s knowledge that has been
integrated by Web 17.0 for “just-in-time knowledge and learning,” using simulations with virtual
reality interfaces adapted to their unique needs throughout their lives. Continuous evaluation of
individual learning processes designed to prevent people from growing unstable or becoming
mentally ill, along with programs aimed at eliminating prejudice and hate, could bring about a
more beautiful, loving world.
In parallel, brain function should also be dramatically increased by improved personal nutrition
and brain enhancement pharmaceuticals. Insights from partial mapping of the human brain and
other methods could dramatically increase personal intelligence and longevity by 2030. More
remotely in the future, brains may be genetically enhanced, and designer micro-organisms could
make brain cells work more efficiently. With the use of public communications to reinforce the
pursuit of knowledge and the use of these learning innovations and educational concepts,
individual and collective intelligence could be improved. Full details, text from participants, and
additional suggestions are available in the CD Chapter 5.
8
Environmental Security
Environmental security continues to move up on the policy agenda around the world, even
reaching the Security Council of the United Nations for the first time. The Millennium Project
defines environmental security as environmental viability for life support, with three subelements: preventing or repairing military damage to the environment, preventing or responding
to environmentally caused conflicts, and protecting the environment due to its inherent moral
value.
Chapter 4 presents a summary of more than 200 emerging international environmental security–
related issues organized around this definition. The full text of the items and their sources can be
found in the CD Chapter 9.1, “Emerging Environmental Security Issues,” and in monthly
updated reports on the Millennium Project’s Web site, www.acunu.org (under “What’s New,”
select “International Environmental Security Issues”). More details and other Millennium Project
studies related to environmental security are included in Chapter 9 on the CD and are available at
www.acunu.org under “Books and Reports” (select “Special Studies”).
Although cooperation is increasing among a variety of institutions for better, more synergistic
environmental policy and activities, many environmental conditions continue to deteriorate.
Most conflicts are occurring in the least environmentally sustainable regions, thus reinforcing the
idea that environment and conflict should be addressed simultaneously and that one aggravates
the other.
There is no adequate international system or framework to cope with environmental refugees,
estimated to reach 50 million by 2010 and 200 million by 2050.
The increasing ratification of multilateral environmental agreements and the adoption of ISO
14001 standards are improving environmental management globally. The time between the
design of an MEA and its coming into force as well as the time it takes to reach a high
ratification level are shortening considerably. International attention is shifting from designing
new MEAs to improving the effectiveness of existing agreements.
MEAs often conflict with national economic or political interests, generating issues of
noncompliance with international treaties, lack of cooperation with international organs, and
deadlock in many international treaty–related negotiations. Matters of disagreement are mostly
related to strategies for greenhouse gas emission cuts, nuclear proliferation, security aspects of
environmental change, and outer-space security issues.
The costs are falling for nanotech environmental sensors, which can be connected to global
information systems via satellite, potentially making environmentally damaging actions known
instantaneously and worldwide.
Environmental security analysis should include the impacts of new kinds of weapons;
asymmetrical conflicts; increasing demands on natural resources; urbanization (which makes
more people dependent on vulnerable public utilities); impacts of environmental degradation and
9
climate change; continued advances in environmental law, with escalating environmental
litigation; and the globalization that is increasing interdependencies.
It has been considered ridiculous to try and achieve health and security for all people. Equally
ridiculous today is thinking that one day an individual acting alone will not be able to create and
use a weapon of mass destruction or that there will not be serious pandemics as we crowd more
people and animal habitats into urban concentrations while easy transborder travel exists and
biodiversity is diminishing. The idealism of the welfare of one being the welfare of all could
become a pragmatic long-range approach to countering terrorism, keeping airports open, and
preventing destructive mass migrations and other potential threats to human security. Ridiculing
idealism is shortsighted, but idealism without the rigors of pessimism is misleading. We need
very hardheaded idealists who can look into the worse and best of humanity and can create and
implement strategies of success.
There are many answers to many problems, but there is so much extraneous information that it is
difficult to identify and concentrate on what is truly relevant. Since healthy democracies need
relevant information, and since democracy is becoming more global, the public will need
globally relevant information to sustain this trend. We hope the annual State of the Future reports
can help provide such information.
The insights in this eleventh year of the Millennium Project’s work as reported in this year’s
State of the Future can help decisionmakers and educators who fight against hopeless despair,
blind confidence, and ignorant indifference—attitudes that too often have blocked efforts to
improve the prospects for humanity.
10
15 Global Challenges
The 15 Global Challenges provide a framework to assess the global and local prospects for
humanity. The Challenges are interdependent: an improvement in one makes it easier to address
others; deterioration in one makes it harder to address others. Arguing whether one is more
important than another is like arguing that the human nervous system is more important than the
respiratory system.
Readers are invited to contribute their insights to improve the overview of these 15 global
challenges for next year’s edition. Please use the online forms at www.StateoftheFuture.org
(select 15 Global Challenges).
11
1. Global Challenges
Chapter 1 presents two-page descriptions of 15 Global Challenges that have been identified and
updated through an ongoing Delphi process and environmental scanning since 1996. These
Challenges are transnational in nature and transinstitutional in solution. They cannot be
addressed by any government or institution acting alone. They require collaborative action
among governments, international organizations, corporations, universities, NGOs, and creative
individuals. Although listed in sequence, Challenge 1 on sustainable development is no more or
less important than Challenge 15 on global ethics. There is greater consensus about the global
situation as expressed in these Challenges and the actions to address them than is evident in the
news media.
More detailed treatments of the Global Challenges are available in the CD’s Chapter 1, totaling
over 1,100 pages. For each Challenge, there is a more comprehensive overview, alternative
views or additional comments from participants on the overview, regional perspectives and
relevant information from recent literature, a set of actions with a range of views from interviews
with decisionmakers to address the challenge, additional actions and views on those actions, and
suggested indicators to measure progress or lack thereof on each Challenge.
Both print and CD versions are the cumulative and distilled range of judgments from nearly
2,400 participants. See the Appendix for the demographics of the participants and see the CD’s
Appendix A for the full list of participants. Full details of the questionnaires and interview
protocols that have been used from 1996 to 2007 to generate both the short and more detailed
treatments of these Challenges are available at www.acunu.org/millennium/lookout.html.
Some of the Figures used to illustrate progress and prospects for the Challenges use the State of
the Future Index calculations explained in Chapter 2 and detailed in the attached CD Chapter 2.
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1. How can sustainable development be achieved for all?
The IPCC reports that CO2 emissions rose faster than its worst case scenario during 2000–04 and
that without new government actions greenhouse gases will rise 25–90% by 2030 over 2000
levels. The current absorption capacity of carbon by oceans and forests is about 3–3.5 billion
tons per year; human activities add 7 billion tons annually. Human consumption is 25% larger
than nature’s capacity to regenerate or to absorb our “ecological footprint.” An increase greater
than 2.54°C puts 20–30% of plant and animal species at risk of extinction; 60% of ecosystem
services are already gone or are being used unsustainably; disturbing changes in the
thermohaline circulation in the Atlantic have been measured; the Arctic and Greenland are
melting faster than expected; and 11 of the last 12 years rank among the 12 warmest years on
record, leading some to warn that climate change has reached the point of no return. As matters
get worse, the environmental movement may turn on the fossil fuel industries. The legal
foundations are being laid to sue for damages caused by greenhouse gases.
Some scientists have started exploring geo-engineering to combat climate change, such as adding
iron powder to the oceans to dramatically increase absorption of CO2 on a planetary scale and
using devices to suck CO2 from the air. Massive seawater agriculture along 24,000 kilometers of
coast deserts would be a carbon sink and a source for biofuels, paper products, and food.
Laboratory breakthroughs in solar energy promise to cut costs drastically, yet 800–1,000 coal
plants are planned with 40-year life spans. Carbon trading, including buying carbon offsets, is
gaining attention. Carbon capture and storage would help reduce emissions, but even if
emissions can be stabilized, heat generated by energy consumption could further the warming.
Environmental security, not just climate change, should be brought to the UN Security Council.
Massive urbanization and concentrated livestock production could trigger new global pandemics.
Climate change alters insect and disease patterns. Definitions and measurements will be needed
for commonly applied tax incentives, along with labels for more environmentally friendly
products and green accounting. Developing countries need to leapfrog unsustainable practices to
more sustainable ones; the World Bank estimates that adapting to climate change will cost
developing countries $10–40 billion a year. Large reinsurance companies estimate the annual
economic loss due to climate change could reach $150–300 billion per year within a decade. The
value of intact ecosystems far outweighs the cost of protecting them.
Government subsidies need to switch from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy (it is
estimated that industrial countries subsidize fossil fuels with $200 billion a year). Other
suggestions include: raising fuel efficiency standards 5% a year relative to GDP; an
environmental footprint tax for using more than 1.8 global hectares per person; a 1% tax on the
$1.5–2 trillion of international financial transactions per day; and mandating improved car
mileage one mile per year. Taxes on international travel, carbon, and urban congestion should be
considered. Such tax income could support an international public/private funding mechanism
for high-impact technologies. Massive public educational efforts via film, television, music,
games, and contests should stress what individuals and groups can do. The synergy between
economic growth and technological innovation has been the most significant engine of change
for the last 200 years, but unless we improve our economic, environmental, and social behavior
and close the gap between the rich and the poor, the next 200 years could be difficult. Next to the
13
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, unsustainable growth may well be the greatest
threat to the future of humanity. Yet without sustainable and equitable growth, billions of people
will be condemned to poverty and much of civilization will collapse.
We should promote ISO environmental standards and guides like the Natural Step and Equator
Principles, publicize “sustainability report cards” on company practices, declare key habitats offlimits for human development, establish a World Environment Organization with powers like the
WTO, create an international environmental crimes intelligence and police unit, and encourage
synergy between environmental movements and human rights groups to make clean air, water,
and land a human right.
Challenge 1 will be addressed seriously when the average calories per person per day exceed
2,000, the number of hungry people diminishes by half, the global acreage in forests increases
for five years, and GDP increases while greenhouse gas emissions decrease for five years in a
row.
REGIONAL CONSIDERATIONS
AFRICA: Africa will be hit hardest by climate change, though it contributes least to the problem.
Two-thirds of the forests in the Congo River Basin could disappear within 50 years. Forest loss
accelerates desertification and soil erosion, making the continent even more vulnerable to
climate change. Huge investments for sustainable infrastructure and productivity are necessary
for Africa. Natural resources management planning and training should be coordinated
continent-wide.
ASIA AND OCEANIA: China has passed the U.S. in CO2 emissions. Air pollution from ozone and
soot over Asia is twice the global average. China loses 12% of GDP due to SO2 pollution and
$2.6 billion due to farmland pollution. India loses over 10% of its GDP annually due to its
damaged environment. Increasing corn production for ethanol and animal feed may limit
availability of farmland, while China has to feed 22% of the world’s population with less than
7% of the world’s arable land.
EUROPE: The EU only reduced 0.9% of GHG emissions, far behind the 8% target by 2012, but is
showing some leadership with energy passports for buildings, the products/ecodesign directive,
car emissions cap of 130g CO2/km (to be enacted by 2012), and many environmental treaties and
initiatives. Iceland plans to become carbon-neutral by 2025. Climate change may benefit Russian
agriculture for two decades.
LATIN AMERICA: The annual net rate of forest loss in Latin America and the Caribbean is the
highest in the world. Although ethanol is a cleaner fuel than oil, its accelerated production from
expanded sugarcane fields in Brazil is degrading soil and deforesting the Amazonian rainforest.
Attacks on land tenure and the breakup of farms into smaller parcels are generating irreversible
ecological damage in most countries. Because transnational companies sought short-term
earnings that damaged the environment, a new model based on equity rather than just foreign
investments is sought.
14
NORTH AMERICA: The success of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has helped put climate
change on top of the UN agenda. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that CO2 is a pollutant. Local
governments and corporations are creating their own strategies to cut greenhouse gases;
California pledged to reduce emissions 25% by 2020. Canada’s CO2 emissions are now 30%
above 1990 levels. Technological efficiencies in nanotech and solar research from this region
should help sustainable development around the world.
Figure 2. Global Surface Temperature Anomalies (0C)
Source: NOAA National Climatic Data Center with Millennium Project estimates
15
2. How can everyone have sufficient clean water without conflict?
By 2025, 1.8 billion people could be living in water-scarce areas desperate enough for mass
migrations, and another 3 billion could live in water-stressed areas. Today about 750 million
people live below the water-stress threshold of 1,700 cubic meters per person per year and more
than 1 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. Water tables are falling on every
continent; 40% of humanity depends on international watersheds; agricultural land is becoming
brackish; groundwater aquifers are being polluted; and urbanization is increasing water demands
faster than many systems can supply. Water withdrawals from lakes and rivers have doubled in
the last 40 years. Agriculture accounts for 70% of human usage of fresh water, which needs
even more to feed growing populations. Nature also needs sufficient water to be viable for all life
support. Hence, more fresh water is needed—not just distribution agreements. Breakthroughs in
desalination, like pressurization of seawater to produce vapor jets, filtration via carbon
nanotubes, and reverse osmosis, are needed along with less costly pollution treatment. Seawater
agriculture on desert coastlines would reduce freshwater agriculture demand.
We need an integrated global water strategy, plan, and management system to focus knowledge,
finances, and political will to address this challenge. It should apply the lessons learned from
producing more food with less water via drip irrigation and precision agriculture, rain water
collection and irrigation, watershed management, selective introduction of water pricing, and
replication of successful community-scale projects around the world. The plan should also help
convert degraded or abandoned farmlands to forest or grasslands; invest in household sanitation,
reforestation, water storage, and treatment of industrial effluents in multipurpose water schemes;
and construct eco-friendly dams, pipelines, and aqueducts to move water from areas of
abundance to scarcity. Access to clean water and basic sanitation should become human rights.
Water can also be conserved by using animal stem cells to produce meat tissue (without the need
to create the animal) and by increasing vegetarianism around the world.
About 80% of diseases in the developing world are water-related. Many are due to poor
management of human excreta. About 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation. Many major
rivers now run dry during part of the year before they reach the ocean. UNICEF and WHO
estimate that developing nations need at least $11.3 billion a year to meet low-cost basic levels
of service for both drinking water and sanitation by 2015. However, the water sector receives
only 5% of development assistance today. If the world can meet the MDG goal for water, total
economic benefits will be about $38 billion per year, far greater than the costs.
Unless major political and technological changes occur, future conflicts over trade-offs among
agricultural, urban, and ecological uses of water are inevitable. Previously, water-sharing
agreements have occurred even among people in conflict and have led to cooperation in other
areas.
Challenge 2 will be addressed seriously when the number of people without clean water and
those suffering from water-borne diseases diminishes by half and when the percentage of water
used in agriculture drops for five years in a row.
16
AFRICA: Sub-Saharan Africa would have to triple its freshwater access to meet its MDG target
on water by 2015, but few African governments spend more than 0.5% of GDP on water and
sanitation. The IPCC warns that a 1–2°C increase in average temperature may leave 250–600
million Africans in water-stressed conditions. Africa has about one-third of the world’s major
international water basins but uses less than 6% of its renewable water resources. Since the
majority of Africa depends on rain-fed agriculture, upgrading rain-fed systems and improving
agricultural productivity will immediately improve the lives of millions of Africans.
ASIA AND OCEANIA: The Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, Ganges, and Indus are among the 10 most
polluted rivers in the world, and some of them could eventually dry up. In the best-case scenario,
the water situation in China is expected to get worse for the next eight years. China has only 8%
of the world’s fresh water to meet the needs of 22% of the world’s population. More than 12
million Chinese are short of drinking water, and 75% of the drinking water is polluted. China is
expected to desalinate 800,000 to 1 million cubic meters of seawater a day by 2010, a significant
increase from 120,000 cubic meters a day in 2005. It also plans to transfer water from Tibetan
highlands to the more-developed northeast. Forced migration due to water shortages has begun in
China, and India should be next. India’s urban water demand is expected to double and industrial
demand to triple by 2025. Diarrhea causes some 450,000 deaths annually in India.
EUROPE: Cyprus, Bulgaria, Belgium, Spain, Malta, FYR Macedonia, Italy, the UK, and
Germany can be considered water-stressed; 14% of the EU population has been affected by
water scarcity. Over 80% of the original floodplain area along the Danube and its main
tributaries has been lost as a result of dams, pollution, and climate change. The Belgian
government recognizes water as a human right, and its development aid will focus on water.
Water utilities in Germany pay farmers to switch to organic operations because it costs less than
removing farm chemicals from water supplies. Russia could supply fresh water to China and
Middle Asia.
LATIN AMERICA: Although the region has 28% of the world’s water resources, almost 80
million people do not have access to safe drinking water and 120 million lack sewage treatment.
Water crises will occur in megacities within a generation unless new water supplies are
generated, a culture of water stewardship is achieved, lessons from both successful and
unsuccessful approaches to privatization are applied, and legislation is updated for more reliable,
transparent, and consistent integrated water resources management policies among institutions
and countries. Water and sanitation problems cost the region an estimated $29 billion a year.
Policymakers should pay more attention to privatization’s best practices and to lessons from past
failures.
NORTH AMERICA: Each kilowatt-hour of electricity in the U.S. requires about 25 gallons of
water for cooling, making power plants the second largest water consumer in the country, after
agriculture. Over the past five years, municipal water rates have increased by an average of 27%
in the U.S. and 58% in Canada. Water consumption per capita has been lowered over 20 years,
yet 16 million Americans face water rationing. Water could become a class problem; poor people
will be the first victims in free market distribution. The EPA found that half of all streams in the
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U.S. are polluted. Government agricultural water subsidies should be changed to encourage
conservation. Innovations are increasing from atmospheric water generation to nanofiltration and
packets (sachets) for water purification.
Figure 3. Population Lacking Access to Improved Water Sources (percentage of population)
Source: World Health Organization and UNICEF, Meeting the MDG Drinking Water and Sanitation
Target, and Millennium Project estimate
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3. How can population growth and resources be brought into balance?
Global population is changing from high mortality and high fertility to low mortality and low
fertility. Half the 6.6 billion people today are urban; by 2050 two-thirds could be. About a third
of urban population live in “slums,” and the number of slum dwellers could double by 2030.
Some 25% of children worldwide have protein-energy malnutrition, which reduces cerebral
development. A quarter of the world (excluding Africa) will be over 60 years old in 2050. There
will be more people over 60 than under 15 by 2045 according to the UN medium forecast. Today
about 65% of the older persons live in developing countries; by 2050 nearly 80% will. The first
world got rich before it grew old, but developing countries will have a more difficult time
managing, even though they are not aging as fast. Retirement and health care systems and
culture will have to change. Population may increase by another 2.8 billion by 2050 before it
begins to fall, according to the UN’s lower forecast, after which it could be 5.5 billion by 2100.
However, technological breakthroughs are likely to change these forecasts over the next 50
years, giving people longer and more productive lives than most would believe today.
FAO estimates that the MDG target on hunger can be met. But this is largely due to increasing
population and not the reduction of hungry people per se. The absolute number of
undernourished people has declined by only 3 million since the early 1990s, while it decreased
37 million during the 1970s and 100 million in the 1980s. The number actually increased by 23
million from 2001 to 2003, offsetting gains during the 1990s. There are still 854 million
undernourished people worldwide. Climate change and monocultures undermine biodiversity,
which is critical for agricultural viability. The factors reducing population growth still need to be
reinforced. These include increased income, improved literacy, diminished infant mortality,
empowerment and education of women, urbanization, and family planning.
A quarter of all fish stocks are overharvested. FAO estimates that water for agriculture needs to
increase 60% to feed an additional 2 billion people by 2030, even as urban water requirements
are increasing. About 40% of agricultural land is moderately degraded and 9% is highly
degraded, reducing global crop yield by as much as 13%. Without sufficient nutrition, shelter,
water, and sanitation produced by more intelligent human-nature symbioses, increased
migrations, conflicts, and disease seem inevitable. UN-HABITAT says about one-third of the
urban poor are “environmental refugees” due to climate change.
Once thought to be a problem, urbanization is a key to improving the human condition due to its
many amenities and economies of scale. Creative financing models are being developed to meet
urban housing, water supply, sanitation, and other urban infrastructure needs that could double in
a generation. To reduce the economic burden on younger generations and to keep up living
standards, people will work longer and create many forms of tele-work, part-time work, and job
rotation. Nanotech reduces material consumption per unit of output, while increasing utility and
durability. ICT is more optimally matching needs and resources worldwide in real time. Better
rain-fed agriculture and irrigation management, plus genetic engineering for higher-yielding,
drought-tolerant crop varieties, will be needed. Currently, agriculture uses 80% of arable land in
developing countries, of which 20% is irrigated. Massive efforts are required to maintain fertile
cropland. Demand for animal protein may increase 50% by 2020, triggering massive investments
into genetically modified food, aquaculture, and stem cells for meat production without growing
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the animal. Seawater agriculture on desert coastlines could produce biofuels, pulp for the paper
industry, and food for humans and animal biofuels, while absorbing carbon and reducing the
drain on fresh water.
Challenge 3 will be addressed seriously when the annual growth in world population drops to
fewer than 30 million, the number of hungry people diminishes by half, the infant mortality rate
decreases by half, and new approaches to aging become economically viable.
REGIONAL CONSIDERATIONS:
AFRICA: Africa is the only region with a median age below 20 today, and in 2050 the share of
population aged 60 or above will still be slightly above 10 %. Much of the urban management
class is being seriously reduced by AIDS. This pandemic has reduced life expectancy in
Botswana from 67 in 1985 to 35 today. Conflicts continue to prevent development investments,
ruin fertile farmland, create refugees, compound food emergencies across the continent, and
prevent better management of natural resources.
ASIA AND OCEANIA: China’s 144 million persons aged 60 or over in 2005 are expected to
increase to 438 million by 2050. There were 118 boys to every 100 girls born in China due to
wider use of ultrasound, easy availability of abortions, and a traditional preference for boys.
China may face a labor shortage as early as 2010. India will have more people than China by
2050 and today has more malnourished children than sub-Saharan Africa. Japan has the oldest
population in the world, with a median age of nearly 43 years that could reach 55 by 2050. This
will force Japan to change its immigrant worker policies and add a robotic labor force. Asians
earning more than $7,000 annually outnumber the total population of the United States, Canada,
and Europe—laying the foundation for unprecedented consumption. New concepts of
employment may be needed to prevent political instability among the 60% of Arabs who are now
under 25 and face poor prospects for conventional employment. Singapore plans to add 2 million
immigrants over the next 40–50 years to counter aging trends.
EUROPE: Europe’s aging population, stagnant growth, a projected population loss of 70 million
by 2050, and the dearth of young people will force changes in pension and social security
systems, incentives for more children, and increases in immigrant labor, affecting international
relations, culture, and the social fabric. The UK’s population increased 0.6% in 2005 due to
migration from new EU countries and aging. Forecasts that Russian working-age population may
fall by 50% in 10 years and its total population by a third by 2050 caused Russia to offer $10,000
for a second child and improved maternity health care. Shrinking population does not
automatically lead to less drain on resources if per capita use continues to rise. Animal diseases
like BSE and various food scandals have triggered increasing consumer demand for organic
food.
LATIN AMERICA: The population is expected to grow from 550 million today to about 800
million by 2050 and become 85% urban by 2030, requiring massive urban and agricultural
infrastructural investments. Median age of the region’s population could increase by nearly 20
years by 2050, according to the UN low estimate. Migratory policies could be adopted as an
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equilibrium factor for spatial population distribution. Huge income gaps could drive political
unrest.
NORTH AMERICA: New immigration policies are needed in the United States. About $100
billion worth of food is wasted every year in the United States. Biotech and nanotech are just
beginning to have an impact on medicine; hence dramatic breakthroughs in longevity are
inevitable in 25–50 years. Reducing “throw-away” consumption in favor of knowledge and
experience could change the population-resource balance.
Figure 4. Food Availability (calories per capita)
Source: World Resources Institute, with Millennium Project estimates
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4. How can genuine democracy emerge from authoritarian regimes?
Although there is no international consensus on how to measure democracy, one composite
definition is that democracy is a relationship between responsible citizens and a responsive
government that encourages participation in the political process and guarantees basic rights.
This kind of relationship has been increasing and improving worldwide. According to Freedom
House, the number of free countries grew from 46 to 90 over the past 30 years, accounting for
46% of the world’s population, and for the past several years 64% of countries have been
electoral democracies. Since democracies tend not to fight each other and since humanitarian
crises are far more likely under authoritarian regimes than democratic ones, the trend toward
democracy should lead to a more peaceful future.
While the number of partly free countries grew from 49 to 59, about 2.4 billion people live in 45
countries with authoritarian regimes. About 5.4 billion people do not have access to free media,
and more than 80 journalists were killed in 2006. Nevertheless, the emergence from authoritarian
to more democratic regimes is being aided by the growth of civil society, media access for prodemocratic actors, long-term economic stability, a focus on citizen participation, transparent
judicial systems, e-government with Internet access, increasing literacy, improved quality of
governance assessment systems, international interdependence, and the development of a global
consciousness. Although making development assistance dependent on good governance has
helped in some countries, genuine democracy will be achieved when the people—not external
actors—demand government accountability. International protocols are needed to assist failed
states or regions within states, and intervention procedures are needed when a state constitutes a
significant threat to its citizens or others.
The World Bank’s governance indicators show correlations between a free press, government
transparency, and effectiveness, as well as between democratic accountability and a less corrupt
government. The Bank estimated that one standard deviation improvement in governance results
in a threefold increase of income per capita. It also estimates that more than $1 trillion was paid
in political bribes in 2006, roughly equivalent to all military budgets combined. Despite a decade
of progress in establishing anti-corruption regulations, 71 countries of 163 surveyed show
rampant corruption. The World Bank’s new technical assistance programs and the UN
Convention Against Corruption are initial steps to reverse increasing political bribery, as are the
many ways the Internet is increasing the opportunity for citizen feedback on public issues.
Governments are expected to become more accountable, transparent, and responsive to their
citizens. However, democratic e-government also requires e-access, which today is unavailable
to the majority of the world, although the success of the $100 laptop might rapidly change this in
poorer countries.
The Internet allows self-organization around common ideals, independent of conventional
institutional controls, regardless of nationality or languages to improve the future. Injustices in
different parts of the world become the concern of thousands or millions of people who then
pressure local, regional, or international governing systems to find solutions. This unparalleled
social power is reinventing citizens’ roles in the political process and changing institutions,
policymaking, and governance. However, the development of methods to counter information
22
manipulation, as well as increased freedom of information transmission, will be important for
continued democratic consolidation. Organized crime, methods to tamper with election results,
information warfare, and the potential of individuals to make and use weapons of mass
destruction are not being addressed seriously enough today to ensure the future of democracy. It
is daunting to consider potential synergies among these threats to democracy, but the sooner
countermeasures are developed and implemented, the better.
Challenge 4 will be addressed seriously when strategies to address these threats are in place,
when less than 10% of the world lives in nondemocratic countries, when the number of armed
conflicts (those with 1,000 or more deaths per year) diminishes by half, and when voter
participation in most democracies exceeds 60% in most elections.
AFRICA: After several years of democratic improvements, sub-Saharan Africa suffered more
setbacks than gains in 2006. Freedom House rated just 11 of the 48 countries in the region
“free,” 22 “partly free,” and 15 “not free.” The Charter on Democracy, Elections and
Governance adopted by the African Union in 2007 sets democratic standards to be met by
African governments and provides a framework for judging their success. More than 15 elections
will be taking place across Africa in 2007. There are proposals to create an African states union
and to invest the Pan African Parliament with legislative power.
ASIA AND OCEANIA: India is the largest democracy in the world and elements of democracy are
emerging in China. Freedom House rates 16 of Asia’s 39 countries as “free”, 12 “partly free,”
and 11 “not free.” Only 7% of the region’s population had access to free media in 2006. ASEAN
is preparing a new Charter to foster integration and democracy (similar to the EU). Many
countries in the Middle East have made some progress on women’s right to vote and hold office,
although Israel remains the only country rated “free” in the Middle East, with 6 “partly free” and
11 “not free.”
EUROPE: The EU is a champion of public participation in policymaking. All 27 EU countries are
rated “free,” with the newest members––Romania and Bulgaria––still having to upgrade in press
freedom. Currently 7 million illegal immigrants are estimated to be in the EU, with an additional
500,000 arriving each year. New regulations are intended to strengthen the legal system for
international migration and immigrants’ integration. Of the former Soviet Union and Central and
Eastern Europe (non-EU) countries, 4 are rated “free,” 8 “partly free,” and 7 “not free.” In some
of these countries, the tendency toward autocracy, corruption, and lack of progressive institutions
hinder the democratization process.
LATIN AMERICA: Latin America has the highest level of inequality in the world, and many
countries face corruption and few civil liberties. Yet there were many competitive and fair
elections in 2006. Since free-market democracies have not made sufficient progress toward
social justice and equity, new and increasingly autocratic populist leaders have received support
and are increasing the nationalization of industry. A stronger integration of the region’s countries
could help consolidate democracy (as it has done in the EU), improve trade, and fight corruption
and autocracies.
23
NORTH AMERICA: National Security Presidential Directive 51 and the Patriot Act have raised
concerns about the future health of democracy in the U.S., as have powerful lobbies, increased
corruption, and centralization of media. Yet the region’s economic and political freedoms attract
immigrants from around the world. Canada is still lacking democratic reforms, especially with an
unelected senate and the poor representation of women and minorities in Parliament. Direct
voting via the Internet versus representative democracy is being discussed.
Figure 5. Global Trends in Freedom
Source: Freedom in the World 2007, Freedom House
24
5. How can policymaking be made more sensitive to global long-term
perspectives?
Increased acknowledgement of climate change and other forms of global interdependence such
as financial and communicable diseases demonstrates the need for global systems for
resilience—the capacity to anticipate, respond, and recover from disasters such as tsunamis,
massive migrations due to water shortages, prolonged electric or Internet outrages, financial
crashes, and conflicts. New technological and social innovations present opportunities too often
missed by policymakers. The status of every country’s futures research and strategy unit’s
capacity should be identified, upgraded where needed, and linked with similar units around the
world, including the UN Secretariat and other international bodies like WHO and the World
Bank. Best practices could be shared, research compared, assumptions verified, and long-range
understandings communicated. Initial efforts in this direction have been taken by UNIDO, the
EU, and international futurist organizations. A checklist of ways to better connect futures
research to decisionmaking is available in Chapter 11 of the attached CD.
We need more future-oriented educated publics to elect more future-oriented global-minded
politicians. Forecasts of ozone depletion led to the timely decisions in the Montreal Protocol.
Human rights forecasts by the KGB led to perestroyka. Population forecasts led to family
planning. Forecasts in books such as Silent Spring and Limits to Growth stimulated many
environmental protection programs. Daily complexities of current problems compete for time to
consider the bigger picture. Corporate stockholders want quick profits, forcing corporate leaders
to focus on actions that can improve the next quarter’s results; government leaders give priority
to immediate issues to retain power; NGO leaders who may look at the longer term often tend to
do so only from the perspective of a single issue; leaders of international organizations also tend
to focus on one issue and can be overwhelmed by the difficulty of addressing multiple
interdependent issues on a global basis; and news executives are driven by daily deadlines and
the need to keep people’s attention by emphasizing the negative dramas of the moment. As a
result, decisionmakers feel little pressure to consider global long-term perspectives.
Nevertheless, attaining long-range goals like landing on the moon or eradicating smallpox that
were considered impossible inspired many people to go beyond selfish, short-term interests to
great achievements. An international assessment of such future goals is found in Chapter 7 on the
CD. The UN Millennium Development Goals for 2015 have become benchmarks for progress,
focusing international cooperation and increased sensitivity to global long-term perspectives.
International negotiators struggle each day to reach agreements that reflect long-term and global
thinking. There is an increasing recognition that accelerating change requires longer-term
perspectives.
National legislatures could establish standing “Committees for the Future,” as Finland has done;
an International Committee for the Future could focus global futures research for policymakers;
governments could establish future-oriented inter-agency teams with high-level guidance to
coordinate policy using executive information management systems and dashboard software that
reinforces global long-range thinking. Foresight studies that have been done by many countries
25
should be continually updated, improved, and conducted interactively with other national longrange efforts.
Government budgets should consider 5–10 year allocations attached to rolling 5–10 year
scenarios and strategies. Decisionmakers and policy advisers should be trained in systematic and
integrated use of futures research. A system should be created to document and share scientists’
views on the long-term implications of their research. Each of the 15 Global Challenges in this
chapter and the 8 UN Millennium Development Goals could be the basis for transinstitutional
coalitions composed of governments, corporations, NGOs, universities, and international
organizations that are willing to commit the resources and talent to address a specific goal. The
world has become too complex to be managed by nation-state hierarchies alone; new patterns of
governance are emerging to better manage global long-term decisionmaking. Since the global
State of the Future Index (see Chapter 2) is based on indicators that relate to progress on global
challenges, a 10-year positive forecast could imply that deci-sionmaking is increasingly taking
global long-term perspectives into account. If national SOFIs were constructed and used in
evaluating policymakers’ performance, decisionmakers would be more inclined to pursue
policies that address the longer term. The World Bank could use it in loan decisions.
Efforts to increase the number and quality of courses on futures concepts and methods should be
supported, as well as augmenting standard curricula with futures methodologies converted to
teaching techniques that help future-orient instruction. Communications and advertising
companies can create memes to help the public become more future-oriented. Prizes should be
given to recognize the best examples of global long-term decisionmaking. We also need to create
participatory policymaking processes informed by futures research, organize data for easier use
in foresight and policy analysis, and develop software for note-taking in strategy action formats.
Challenge 5 will be addressed seriously when foresight functions are a routine part of most
organizations and governments, when national SOFIs are used in at least 50 countries, when the
consequences of high-risk projects are routinely considered before they are initiated, and when
standing Committees for the Future exist in at least 50 national legislatures.
AFRICA: Nigeria announced plans to have most government services available online by 2008.
For 10 years UNDP/African Futures worked with governments to incorporate long-term
perspectives into mid- and short-term planning. Since the early 1980s, when some African
countries had to launch structural adjustment programs, the issue of orienting policymaking
toward a global long-term perspective has continually been raised.
ASIA AND OCEANIA: China is emerging as a global long-range decisionmaker in the international
arena. Japanese corporations and the Keidanren are famous for long-term planning. South Korea
is a world leader in broadband penetration, on-line banking, ubiquitous computing, and cloning
research due to its long-range planning and decisionmaking.
EUROPE: The 7th Framework Programme of the EU expands foresight support, the Institute for
Prospective Technological Studies provides futures studies for EU decisionmaking, and Europe
26
is creating the Health Early Warning System. Foresight was included in the Russian Federal
Program 2007–12 and will use Delphis and scenarios to set S&T priorities. Global long-term
thinking is being stimulated by public finances for social and health services for an aging
population, restructuring energy systems, changing ethnic demographics, and geopolitical shifts
such as the emergence of China.
LATIN AMERICA: The Global Millennium Prize was initiated in Mexico for secondary students
worldwide who have the best ideas for addressing the global challenges presented in this chapter.
The shift toward left-wing, more socialist politics is motivating futures thinking throughout the
region.
NORTH AMERICA: New interactive and analytical mechanisms can promote foresight, if citizens
expect and demand it. A collection of high-impact cases should be developed in which foresight
leads to demonstrable benefits or when the lack of futures thinking proves costly. (See
CD Chapter 11 for examples).
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6. How can the global convergence of information and communications
technologies work for everyone?
If Moore’s Law continues, within 25 years a computer could equal the processing power of the
human brain; 25 years after that, it could equal the total processing power of all the human brains
on Earth. In the meantime, over a billion people (17.5% of the world) are connected to the
Internet, the digital gap is beginning to close, and orders for the $100 MIT wireless laptop
(XO-1) are coming in from developing countries—making the One Laptop per Child dream a
step closer to reality and stimulating related efforts in Macedonia, Venezuela, and India. The
Internet is moving from a system to find and read pages to users contributing and interacting
with multimedia. YouTube sold for $1.65 billion just 21 months after it was founded; businesses
are building offices in Second Life and other cyber worlds that compete with conventional reality
for the attention of millions around the world; and Wikipedia is becoming a global collective
intelligence. Most countries are creating e-government systems. The Internet will also support
very low-cost nanotech sensors, cameras, and transceivers that are being put in buildings and
other objects for marketing, security, and environmental management. Some suggest that a new
Internet may have to be created to eliminate growing problems due to overwhelming new
demand on the existing system. An additional billion users are expected by 2011.
There are 70 million blogs, and 120,000 more are added each day. Search engines now retrieve
multimedia material, satellite imagery, and multiple languages with translation options. People
are beginning to manage more of their data and software applications on the Web, as they did
only on their personal computers previously, hence eliminating worries about software updates
or file backups, but adding data privacy issues.
The Internet is already one of the most powerful forces for globalization, democratization,
economic growth, and education in history, and now a planetary collective intelligence is
emerging. The Web will become more intelligent, interconnecting different software,
understanding terms in different contexts, and seeming more like a partner than a servant.
Cyberspace is providing a global framework of data, images, and ideas, transcending national,
linguistic, religious, and other boundaries and allowing the free exchange of opinions, thoughts,
and aspirations. We already see countless thousands of far-flung beneficial projects proceeding
around the world, unhampered by limitations of distance and time that would have made them
impossible two decades ago.
E-commerce is helping to close the rich-poor gap. One billion mobile phones were shipped in
2006 and it is estimated that there will be 3 billion in use by the end of 2007. The iPhone and
related devices are blurring the distinctions among phones, computers, iPods, and televisions.
On-line business in China increased 50% in 2006 to $127.5 billion; at the other end of the
economic spectrum, a Kinshasa entrepreneur is making $100 a month from three public cell
phones.
These benefits do bring many complex problems. Gartner estimates U.S. users lose $2.8 billion
from the theft of personal data (“phishing”). Spam’s primacy as a menace is declining as cyber
crime becomes a thriving international business whose targets are large companies and massive
data theft. On-line rogue pharmacies offer illegal or counterfeit drugs, and the Web is now the
28
major recruitment and training tool for violent extremists. No economic model satisfactory to all
players has been devised for a world in which users freely interchange valuable intellectual
properties like musical recordings. Broadband carriers are fighting the concept of “net
neutrality,” which would prevent them from charging on the basis of user or content type. Social
networking sites provide a bonanza for sexual predators. The architecture of the Net itself has
come under criticism for being outdated and highly insecure. All these difficulties need to be
solved by applying to them the Web’s own capabilities for global “collaboratories,” embodying
worldwide collective intelligence and rapid and flexible project management. Massive
investments in educational software and multilanguage voice recognition and synthesis will be
necessary for the poor majority. We should invent incentives to provide training for all, use televolunteers to help poorer regions, and improve hardware and software barriers to attacks and
security breaches.
Challenge 6 will have been addressed seriously when Internet access and basic tele-education are
free and available universally and when basic tele-medicine is commonplace everywhere.
AFRICA: Internet users in Africa increased by 41% in 2006, but penetration is still only 3.6%,
and Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, and South Africa make up 59% of the total. Nigeria has launched a
communications satellite, to be followed shortly by one from South Africa. E-learning Africa
2007 was held in Kenya, attracting four times as many participants as last year’s meeting. Teleeducation, tele-medicine, and e-government will become more important as African
professionals die of AIDS in increasing numbers.
ASIA AND OCEANIA: Asia has the largest percent of the world’s Internet users, but only 11%
penetration; hence Internet growth there has just begun. Chinese is the second most common
language on the Internet, even with only 10% penetration (144 million users by April 2007), and
China has 20 million blogs and 843,000 Web sites. China has the world’s largest cable TV
network, which combines television, telephony, and broadband Internet access over a single
network. The Chinese government continues its strong controls to prevent reception of “harmful”
information, and controversy has erupted over the ethics of foreign companies’ cooperation with
them. India expects software and services exports to reach $31 billion by 2007, up 33% from
2006, and growing to $60 billion by 2010. Japanese is tied with English in blogosphere usage.
Ubiquitous computing is a national goal for South Korea, which leads the world in broadband
penetration.
EUROPE: Europe has 319 million Internet users, with 39.4% penetration. French candidates
campaigned in Second Life’s virtual reality. Estonia was the object of what may have been the
first example of cyberwarfare directed at a whole nation. Russia merged its media and
telecommunications/Internet/Web regulatory agencies.
LATIN AMERICA: Only Argentina and Chile have greater than 30% penetration, with most of the
continent falling in the 10–20% bracket. Brazil is bringing the Internet to 150 communities in the
Amazon region. Joint partnerships made possible by the Internet are crucial for the region’s
development.
29
NORTH AMERICA: MIT has opened a Center for Collective Intelligence. Natural disaster
planning is creating an information infrastructure for collective intelligence applied to
environmental monitoring, educational development, energy management, and other global
challenges. The U.S. Senate ratified the Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime. The
Web is expected to play a major role in the politics leading up to the 2008 U.S. presidential
election.
Figure 6. Regional Internet Population Growth
Source: internetworldstats.com
30
7. How can ethical market economies be encouraged to help reduce the gap
between rich and poor?
The global economy grew 5.4% in 2006, to $66 trillion (PPP). The population grew 1.1%,
increasing the average world per capita income by 4.3%. At this rate world poverty will be cut
more than half between 2000 and 2015, meeting the UN MDG, although probably not in subSaharan Africa. Although the developing world produces half of world annual economic growth
and it grew at 7% during 2006, income disparities are still enormous: 2% of the world’s richest
people own more than half of the world’s wealth and the poorest half of the world owns only 1%
of the wealth. The World Bank reported that 2004 was the first year in which the number of
people living on less then $1 a day fell below 1 billion, and it estimated that the share of world
population living in extreme poverty could decline to 10% by 2015. Yet almost half the people in
the world live on less than $2 a day, although that is expected to decrease to nearly a third by
2015.
Official development assistance from OECD DAC members fell 5.1% to $103.9 billion in 2006,
while private finance for developing countries reached a record $647 billion. According to
UNDP, all agricultural subsidies by industrial countries cost developing countries $72 billion per
year. The WTO has agreed to eliminate agriculture export subsidies by 2013. This, plus
improved fair trade, increased economic freedom, and successful Doha Round negotiations, is
expected to boost growth in developing countries substantially. Carbon emissions trading might
soon reach $200 billion a year, with half flowing to the developing world. The Index of
Economic Freedom, the Corruption Perceptions Index, and the Bribe Payers Index show that
reducing corruption and increasing freedom correlates with improved economic development. A
World Bank study found that bribery may have passed $1 trillion in 2006. The UN Convention
against Corruption entered into force in December 2005.
According to WTO, China’s exports totaled $969 billion in 2006, compared with $1,037 billion
from the U.S. If trends continue, China will pass the U.S. during 2007. Its high tech–low wage
condition plus the increasing development of India will make it very difficult for other
developing countries to compete. Hence, it would be wise for most developing countries to
rethink their export-led growth strategies and to create alternative development strategies that not
only build on their agricultural and industrial domestic markets but leapfrog into new activities
via the Internet as a key means of production in the information, service, and knowledge
economies. Policies should support individuals seeking markets via the Internet rather than
seeking non-existent jobs. Doing Business reports 43 countries in 2005–06 made it easier for
individuals to start businesses.
A strategic plan for a global partnership between the rich and poor should be created and
implemented that uses the strength of free markets and rules based on global ethics to reduce the
disparities that otherwise might grow enough to increase migration of the poor to richer regions,
increasing conflicts. The strategy should also include massive investments into tele-education
and tele-work, replacing welfare attitudes with entrepreneurial spirit, reinforced by expanded
microcredit mechanisms coupled with technical assistance, while using state welfare in states
with not much of a private sector.
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Ethical market economies require a “level playing field” guaranteed by an honest judicial system
and by governments that provide political stability, a chance to participate in local development
decisions, business incentives to comply with social and environmental goals, fair trade, a
healthy investment climate, and access to land, capital, and information.
Challenge 7 will be addressed seriously when market economy abuses and corruption by
companies and governments are intensively prosecuted and when the development gap—by all
definitions—declines in 8 out of 10 years.
AFRICA: In 1997 only one African country had a sovereign credit rating; now 20 have, giving
Africa far better credit access to invest into future-oriented activities rather than commodity
exports. Excluding South Africa, sub-Saharan Africa averaged 4.5% growth, but poverty
continues to grow due to high birth rates, corruption, armed conflicts, poor governance,
environmental degradation, poor health conditions, and lack of education. Africa now accounts
for 30% of the world’s extreme poor, compared with 19% in 1990 and only 11% in 1981. The
New Partnership for Africa’s Development gives focus for development cooperation to promote
private-sector activity, improve ICT, diversify production and exports, foster environmental
stewardship, encourage small businesses, and fight corruption. Government budgets should be
tied to local self-help, as in Egypt; cultures should become more scientifically and
entrepreneurially oriented.
ASIA AND OCEANIA: The extraordinary economic growth of China and India—lifting millions
from poverty, led by 200 million entrepreneurs—is threatened by increasing water and energy
shortages, widening rural-urban income gaps, and general environmental conditions. The region
produces about a third of world output and has two-thirds of the world’s poor. ASEAN plans to
accelerate integration among its members and to establish an ASEAN Community by 2015. The
keys to economic growth in the Middle East are greater economic freedom, resolution of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the rule of law, increased literacy, gender equality, and small
business development.
EUROPE: The combination of high unemployment, aging population, and expensive public
services is not sustainable without increasing numbers of immigrants and more teleentrepreneurs among the next generation of retired Europeans. EU enlargement continues to
expand ethical markets and harmonize legal systems, yet the rich-poor gaps widen, social
services are cut, and work migrates to lower-wage countries.
LATIN AMERICA: Latin America and the Caribbean economies grew 5.6% in 2006, and 4.7%
growth is expected for 2007. The region has a long way to go to close the largest rich-poor gap in
the world and to pull more than 100 million people out of extreme poverty. Some free-market
leaders did not make serious progress improving economic development and social justice for
the poor majority. This opened the way for new leftist governments to move toward more statecentered policies, with some nationalizing resources. Distribution of the means of production and
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land tenure must change, with the participation of lower-income people in all phases of
development projects, reinforced by an educated middle class and an active civil society.
NORTH AMERICA: The U.S. negative balance of trade reached historic highs—helping
employment overseas but threatening its economy at home—while U.S. national debt is
approaching $9 trillion, promising future inflation. The small businesses that employ half of all
private-sector workers and create two-thirds of the net new jobs in the U.S. should prepare for
these uncertain economic conditions. The income gap in the U.S. continues to widen: income
during 2005 for the top 300,000 Americans equaled the bottom 150 million. The richest 10% of
Canadian families earned 82 times more than the poorest 10% in 2004.
Figure 7. Share of People Living on Less than $1.08 a Day (%)
Source: Global Monitoring Report 2007, World Bank
33
8. How can the threat of new and reemerging diseases and immune
microorganisms be reduced?
Since the world is short 2.4 million doctors, nurses, and midwives, according to WHO, telemedicine, biochip sensors for self-diagnosis, and other automated systems may be increasingly
necessary as people live longer. The threat of SARS has been eliminated by coherent human
response. Now the world is preparing for genetic variations that could occur in the avian flu
H5N1 virus that could kill 25 million people with untold effects on airlines, tourism, and other
economic sectors. So far no sustained human-human transmission has occurred. Asian poultry
farmers should get incentives to replace their live-market businesses with frozen-products
markets. Avian flu has moved westward among birds in more than 63 countries, including
Europe and scattered cases in the U.S. As of June 2007, WHO had confirmed 317 human cases
of avian flu in 13 countries, with 191 deaths—an increase of 15% between 2005 and 2006
compared with a 55% increase from 2004 to 2005.
About 30% of all deaths are caused by infectious diseases. The most common infectious disease
in the world today is hepatitis B virus, which affects 2 billion people. AIDS is the fourth leading
cause of deaths in the world: 25 million people have died from AIDS, with 2.9 million deaths in
2006; 34.1–47.1 million people have HIV, of which 3.6–6.6 million were new cases during 2006.
An estimated 7.3 million girls have HIV/AIDS compared with 4.5 million boys. About 28% of
those with AIDS in low- and middle-income countries now receive drugs—a 54% increase over
2005—but for every person who begins this therapy, six more become infected with HIV/AIDS.
The Clinton Foundation has helped reduce the annual cost of a range of AIDS drugs to nearly
$100 and the daily one-pill to $1/day. Although AIDS is the leading cause of death in subSaharan Africa, it is spreading more rapidly in Eastern Europe and in Central and South Asia.
Global funding has increased to $12 billion in 2006, and the cost of self-AIDS testing is
beginning to fall to $15 per test. No significant positive vaccine results are yet available, but new
genetic-based vaccines and microbicides are in trial, while studies show that up to 50% of HIV
can be avoided in males through circumcision.
The responses to avian flu and SARS have shown that even without a vaccine it is possible to
control a disease by early detection and accurate reporting, prompt isolation, and ongoing global
awareness. WHO averages 200 outbreak investigations every year, and around 50 will require an
international response. More than 30 new and highly infectious diseases have been identified in
the last 20 years. Furthermore, 20 known strains of diseases have developed resistance to
antibiotics, while old diseases have reappeared, such as cholera, yellow fever, plague, dengue
fever, meningitis, hemorrhagic fever, and diphtheria. Viral incidence in animals is being mapped
in Africa, China, and South Asia to divert epidemics before they reach humans. Future uses of
genetic data, software, and nanotechnology will detect and treat disease at the genetic or
molecular level. Meanwhile, hand washing may be the most cost-effective way to reduce
communicable disease.
Global health is affected by poverty, migration, trade, human encroachment in natural habitats,
environmental damage, deforestation, international travel, armed conflicts, and concentrations of
increasingly large numbers of people in cities in unsanitary environments. Bioterrorism has
34
increased R&D for bio-sensors and general vaccines that could be placed around the world like
fire extinguishers. Better trade security will be necessary to prevent increased food- or animalborne disease. Other problems may come from synthetic bacteria from gene laboratories and
unknown nano-organisms.
WHO’s eHealth systems, new regulations to address SARS-like threats, immunization programs,
and the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network are global responses to this challenge,
along with the $7 billion contributed through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and
Malaria, which has negotiated lower drug prices and delivered 30 million insecticide-treated
bednets to reduce malaria. Scientists are working to develop a genetically modified mosquito that
would not carry the malaria parasite. One day medicines may temporarily boost our immune
systems to prevent infection by known and unknown causes, and one vaccination could become
permanent and heritable to future generations.
AFRICA: With 24% of global disease, Africa has only 3% of the world’s health workers and less
than 1% of world health expenditures. Adult prevalence of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is
beginning to decrease: 2004 prevalence was 5.3–6.8% and 2006’s was 5.2–6.7%. Yet an
additional 2 million people got HIV during this period, making a total 21.8–27.7 million,
reducing life expectancy as much as 15 years in Southern Africa. AIDS death rates among
professionals are high enough to threaten development in many countries. Some 90% of the 1
million annual deaths from malaria occur in sub-Saharan Africa, costing the region $12 billion
per year. Trials for an experimental vaccine for malaria are expected in Africa within two years.
ASIA AND OCEANIA: About 8.6 million people have HIV in the region, including 5 million in
India and 2 million in China. Within five years the number infected in the region could grow to
20 million. Malaria is endemic, outbreaks of dengue are common, and even in modern, sanitized
Singapore there has been a resurgence of TB. Southeast Asia has the highest rate of TB infection
in the world, with 3 million new cases annually. Indonesia now has the world’s highest human
toll from avian flu. Promotion of hand washing among low-income children in Karachi
decreased impetigo by 34%, diarrhea by 53%, and pneumonia by 50%.
EUROPE: An estimated 84,000 Europeans died of AIDS during 2006. Russia has the highest
HIV/AID rates in Europe and has launched an initiative to stop its spread. TB is also on the rise
in Eastern Europe. The prevalence of HIV in Western and Central Europe has stabilized around
0.3%, as have new HIV infections at 22,000 per year and AIDS deaths at 12,000 per year.
LATIN AMERICA: Brazil began offering free combination antiretroviral therapy to all citizens
with AIDS in 1996, which has saved the country an estimated $2.2 billion in hospital costs
between 1996 and 2004 and has inspired similar efforts elsewhere. Treatment coverage in
countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Cuba now exceeds 80%. The bulk of the 1.8
million people living with HIV/AIDS in Latin America are in Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia.
Latin America provides AIDS treatment to 72% of those who need it.
35
NORTH AMERICA: Biotech companies are developing many new mechanisms for diagnosis and
treatment; greater incentives will increase investment in R&D for disease eradication that might
not be very profitable but is important to the poor majority. Over a million people in the U.S. are
now HIV-positive, as are 58,000 people in Canada. Antiretroviral medications keep AIDS death
rates low. Increased food imports raise vulnerability to infections from overseas.
Figure 8. Physicians (density per 1,000 population)
Source: World Health Organization, Core Health Indicators
36
9. How can the capacity to decide be improved as the nature of work and
institutions change?
The world is moving toward ubiquitous computing with collective intelligence for just-in-time
knowledge to inform decisions. Vast peer-reviewed data banks are being interconnected so that
composites of data from many sources can present the best facts available for a given decision.
Judgmental information was most often the view of single individuals or very small groups, but
now decisionmaking benefits from the increasing use of open systems that invite broad and
transparent participation of groups of experts and individuals from around the world.
Meanwhile, too much time is wasted going through useless information. Ubiquitous computing
will increase the number of decisions per day, constantly changing schedules and priorities. This
will require new software to manage such decisions. If Moore’s Law continues over the next 25
years, individual computers will have the processing power of the human brain; hence, much
decisionmaking can be automated, just as the autonomous nervous system manages basic bodily
decisions. Meanwhile, the sheer number and intricacy of choices seem to be growing beyond our
abilities to analyze and make decisions. Open systems, democratization, and interactive media
are involving more people in decisionmaking, which increases complexity—making continuous
modifications of decisions more likely than achieving closure. As decision-making becomes
more complex, it may appear chaotic until new systems emerge.
The amount of data is exploding—sensors imbedded in products, in buildings, and in living
bodies, and with more data from transactions, communications, security, and diagnostics. Future
forms of analysis and simulations will use these data to provide insight into correlations in fields
as diverse as social behavior, epidemiology, and nanobiology. More user-friendly, powerful, and
flexible simulation and modeling software will eventually find its way into decisionmaking, as
have spreadsheet software and search engines.
Decisionmaking will be increasingly augmented by the integration of ubiquitous sensors, a more
intelligent Web, and institutional and personal intelligence software that helps us receive and
respond to feedback for improving decisions. Such future capacities might help identify
attractors of responsible decisionmaking and network them for improved decisions. One new
example is the Real Time Delphi that provides decisionmakers with rapid access to an ongoing
synthesis of experts’ judgments enabling rapid response to feedback. Self-organization of
volunteers around the world via Web sites is another new strategy to increase transparency and
expand participation in decision processes.
However, these and e-government systems that are automating administrivia and also improving
decisionmaking create new vulnerabilities to manipulation by organized crime, corruption, and
cyber-terrorism. To counter the annual $1 trillion in bribes affecting political decisionmaking,
the Parties to the UN Convention against Corruption have begun implementing procedures to
prevent and criminalize corruption. Media attention to the World Bank’s new comparative
measures of governance and Transparency International’s corruption index should pressure
governments to improve. Although UN organizations are the only trusted decisionmaking system
for many people around the world, they were designed for decision-making among governments.
Today’s challenges cannot be addressed by governments, corporations, NGOs, universities, and
37
intergovernmental bodies acting alone; hence, transinstitutional decisionmaking has to be
developed and common platforms created for transinstitutional strategic decisionmaking and
implementation. Foresight and environmental scanning draws attention to future opportunities,
too often missed today.
Decisionmakers training programs should bring together research on why irrational decisions are
made, lessons of history, futures research methods, forecasting of intended and unintended
consequences, insights from cognitive science, data reliability, utilization of statistics,
conventional decision support methods (e.g., cost/benefit, PERT, etc.), ethical considerations,
goal seeking, risk, the role of leadership, transparency, accountability, and participatory
decisionmaking. It should also include the current state of e-government, ways to identify and
better an organization’s improvement system, and decision-support software, including
knowledge visualization, prioritization processes, and collaborative decisionmaking with
different institutions. Just as efficiency is a key criterion in decisionmaking in industrial
economies, wisdom based on global ethics will be a criterion in decision-making in successful
knowledge economies, along with an emphasis on partnership and participation between
decisionmakers and stakeholders.
Challenge 9 will be addressed seriously when the State of the Future Index or similar systems are
used regularly in decisionmaking, when national corporate law is modified to recognize
transinstitutional organizations, and when at least 50 countries require elected officials to be
trained in decisionmaking.
AFRICA: The New Partnership for Africa’s Development has begun improving collaborative
decisionmaking. The main problem in Africa is a lack of good leadership and the ability to
transfer power from one leader to the next. African civil society needs development to pressure
for freedom of the press, accountability, and transparency of government. If the brain drain
cannot be reversed, expatriates should be connected to the development processes back home
through Internet systems.
ASIA AND OCEANIA: China is developing massive e-government systems. Korea is exploring
collective intelligence capabilities. Japan’s hierarchical deci-sionmaking is being affected by
NGOs. Regional dialogue and cooperation are needed to create a regional development plan.
Europe: Bureaucratic complexity, lack of transparency, and proliferation of decision heads
threatens clear decisionmaking in the EU. Tensions between the EU and its member
governments and among ethnic groups are making decisionmaking difficult. A global
observatory and advanced information technology may facilitate public participation in direct
democracy.
LATIN AMERICA: In addition to improved efficiency and transparency, the modernization of
state decisionmaking requires the design of new agencies and functions to attend to new aims of
the political policies, with increasing civil control. Latin America has to improve political
educational awareness and the involvement of the people and to reduce corruption.
38
North America: North Americans need to move from cause-effect, single-issue problem analysis
to more integrated, holistic visions and problem solving, using futures research, systems
thinking, and technology assessment. Self-organizing groups on the Internet are becoming de
facto decisionmakers in the region, with decisions made at the lowest level appropriate to the
problem. Decisionmaking responsibility is being diffused through a complex workforce.
Figure 9. Growth of International Organizations (NGOs and IGOs)
Source: Union of International Associations with Millennium Project estimates
39
10. How can shared values and new security strategies reduce ethnic conflicts,
terrorism, and the use of weapons of mass destruction?
Since 44% of countries affected by conflict return to war within five years of a cease-fire,
“winning a war” is only a precondition to “winning the peace,” which requires deconstructing
structures of violence and establishing structures of peace—an honest government, a sound
economy, and a fair judiciary. The UN has established a Peacemaker Web site containing a
wealth of information. The UN has 83,000 uniformed personnel and 15,000 civilians from 115
countries who serve in 18 UN peacekeeping operations today.
Future desktop molecular and pharmaceutical manufacturing and organized crime’s access to
nuclear materials give single individuals the ability to make and use weapons of mass
destruction—from biological weapons to low-level nuclear (“dirty”) bombs. The IAEA reported
149 confirmed incidents of illicit use of radioactive materials in 2006. Much of urban civilization
depends on the Internet; hence, cyber weapons can also be considered a WMD deployable by an
individual. In addition to ubiquitous sensors and security systems, we have to apply cognitive
science to improve and connect education and mental health systems to detect and treat
individuals who might grow up to use such weapons. Most terrorism is no longer centrally
directed by groups such as Al Qaeda but is carried out by self-organizing actors inspired and
trained by Web videos. There are 13 international agreements to counter terrorism, including the
International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, which entered into
force in July 2007. The UN General Assembly adopted the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy in
2006. Anti-terrorism has to focus more intensively on reaching out ideologically to those who
would otherwise join these forces. It is less expensive and more effective to attack the root
causes of unrest than stop explosions of violence. Conflicts are less likely to involve armies on
battlefields than individuals or small groups in urban areas. The distinctions among war, civil
unrest, terrorism, and crime have become increasingly blurred, making conventional industrialage military force less effective. At least 75% of those killed or wounded in armed conflicts are
non-combatants. Climate change and falling water tables are expected to create migrations that
could lead to future conflicts.
According to the Center for Defense Information, there were 15 wars (1,000 or more deaths) in
2007—the same as in 2006. In addition to the “global war on terrorism,” the wars in each region
were: Africa 5, Asia 4, the Americas 2, the Middle East 2, and Europe 1. Meanwhile, there are
over 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world with approximately 1,700 tons of highly enriched
uranium and 500 tons of separated plutonium that could produce over 100,000 nuclear weapons.
Military expenditures are about $1.3 trillion per year, of which $30 billion are sales to
developing countries. The UN estimated that more than 250,000 children were actively involved
in more than 30 armed conflicts during 2006.
Even though the news is filled with conflicts, the vast majority of the world is living in peace,
conflicts actually decreased over the past decade, dialogues among differing worldviews are
flourishing, and intra-state conflicts are increasingly being settled by international interventions.
The probability of a more peaceful world is increasing due to the growth of democracy,
international trade, global news media, the Internet, satellite surveillance, world travel, better
40
living standards, and the evolution of the UN. Massive public education programs are needed to
promote respect for diversity, equal rights, and alternatives to violence. Backcasted peace
scenarios should be created through participatory processes, as was done for the Middle East (see
CD Chapter 3.7). UN early warning systems could be strengthened by involving NGOs and the
media to generate the political will to act before massive disasters; advanced communications
could be parachuted to local citizens so that local realities could be broadcast to the world.
Sanctions should target elite criminals rather than innocent populations. New approaches to
covering terrorism by the media are necessary for reducing “copy cat violence.” Governments
should destroy existing stockpiles of biological weapons, create tracking systems for potential
bioweapons assets, establish an international audit system for each weapon, and increase the use
of nonlethal weapons to reduce future revenge cycles. The Global Peace Index produced by The
Economist rated 121 countries in 2007 for their peacefulness via 24 indicators. A network of
CDC-like centers will be needed to counter impacts of bioterrorism. We need to share research
on conflict resolution and consensus building that focuses on the common ethical values and
oneness that underlie human diversity.
Challenge 10 will have been addressed successfully when arms sales and violent crimes decrease
by 50%. The “new security threats” should be integrated into a comprehensive, standardized, and
quantitatively based global security index.
AFRICA: The horrors in Darfur are forcing African nations to develop their regional
peacemaking forces. Millions of AIDS orphans may fuel a new generation of violence. Beset in
Asia, Al Qaeda is attempting to increase its influence in Muslim areas from Mauritania to
Somalia. Coups, unrest, and uprisings continue to plague the continent, but cooperative efforts
by the African Union and others increase hope for the region’s stability.
ASIA AND OCEANIA: No solution has yet been found for the nuclear threats from Iran and North
Korea. India is experiencing increased unrest from Marxist and separatist forces. China is
increasing its military capabilities and is projecting its economic power into Africa and Latin
America.
EUROPE: The large numbers of migrant laborers entering the EU and Russia will require new
approaches to integrate them better into society if increased conflicts are to be prevented. The
number of arrests of suspected terrorists increased in 2006 to 706 in 15 countries; half were
Islamic extremists.
LATIN AMERICA: Tensions in the region are increasing with the rise of leftist regimes led by
Venezuela and Cuba, the continued struggles with drug cartels, and the potential for conflicts
between governments and indigenous peoples. Islamic extremists in the tri-border region of
Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay are influenced by international factors such as the U.S. invasion
of Iraq and Israel’s continued actions in occupied territories. All this could lead to a new arms
race in the region.
41
NORTH AMERICA: Intelligence technology and military power have never provided security in
asymmetrical warfare without genuine cross-cultural understandings and better multilateral
cooperation. The knowledge of how to bring about mass destruction through emerging
mechanisms such as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence could have
more potential to destroy civilization than nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. It is
estimated that the cost to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals is $135 billion; by
comparison, $600 billion has been spent and approved by the U.S. Congress for the war in Iraq
and another $140 billion may be requested for 2008.
Figure 10. Global Trends in Armed Conflict, 1946-2006
Source: Global Conflict Trends, Center for Systemic Peace, 2007
42
11. How can the changing status of women help improve the human condition?
The ILO reports that the share of legislative, senior official, or managerial positions held by
women has grown slowly from 25.6% in 1995 to 28.3% today. Although condemnation of any
form of discrimination against women is almost universal today, progress is mixed. Some 56.6%
of women are employed in the cash economy. UNESCO reports that 94 girls are in primary
school for every 100 boys, up from 92 in 1999. About two-thirds of the 181 countries with
available data have achieved gender parity in primary education, but in secondary education,
only one-third of the 177 countries with data available have achieved parity.
WHO reports that after diseases and hunger, violence against women is the greatest cause of
death among women; one in five women will be a victim of rape or attempted rape in her
lifetime. Elementary and secondary school systems should stress martial arts and other forms of
self-defense in physical education programs for girls. According to Plan International, childhood
malnutrition has stunted development of an estimated 450 million women; 62 million primary
school-aged girls are not in school; 96 million females from 15 to 24 are illiterate (almost double
the number for males); unsafe abortions and birth complications are the leading causes of death
for girls 15 to 19; and over 100 million girls, some as young as 12, are expected to marry over
the next decade even though international treaties outlaw early marriages. About 80% of the
600,000–800,000 individuals trafficked each year are female, in the “largest slave trade in
history.” Progress has been accomplished in girls’ access to education, women’s membership in
parliaments, their participation in the cash economy, the use of condoms, and women’s access to
medical facilities. As of May 2007, women accounted for 17.1% of parliamentary membership,
compared with 16.6% in 2006. Girls’ secondary school enrollments are now about 90% of boys’
enrollments. Women earn on average two-thirds to three-fourths as much as men for the same
work.
Improving the political, economic, and educational status of women is one of the most costeffective ways to address the 14 other Global Challenges in this chapter. Since there are more
women than men in universities in many countries that limit women’s professional work, the
“female brain drain” could become an issue in countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia and Japan.
Women can cut through cultural hierarchies via Internet access to S&T and financial information
denied them in the past. Although research is lacking, diplomatic and peace-builders in the field
agree that women find common ground for peaceful resolutions more easily than men.
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women should be
implemented, as should UN Security Council Resolution 1325, by creating national action plans
as well as a UN system-wide implementation. Establishing truth and reconciliation commissions
on violence against women in armed conflict would help end impunity. It should be a
requirement that 30% of the board of companies with state participation consist of at least 30%
of each sex.
Gender-based Gini coefficient and other gender parity indexes should be encouraged, as should
women’s education for political responsibilities, fostering solidarity instead of competition,
guaranteeing the legal rights of women (such as access to credit, land, technology, training,
health care, and child care), and establishing women’s political and economic networking
43
organizations. This is of particular importance to rural, migrant, refugee, internally displaced,
and disabled women. Such an effort includes educating men to fully respect women and directly
working with the media, which too often perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes.
Challenge 11 will be addressed seriously when there is gender parity in school enrollment,
literacy, and access to capital, when discriminatory laws are gone, and when there are essentially
equal numbers of men and women in parliaments and cabinets.
AFRICA: The percent of women in sub-Saharan African parliaments is 17.5%, above the world
average. Rwanda continues to have the world’s largest percent of women in parliament (49%). In
sub-Saharan Africa, one in six women is likely to die as a consequence of pregnancy, compared
with 1 in 2,800 in industrial countries. The dropout rate for adolescent girls in Africa is very
high. Uganda eliminated school fees to help close the educational gender gap.
ASIA AND OCEANIA: In Asia, 16.4% of national legislators are women. Intimate partner violence
in Thailand is the leading cause of death for women and girls between the ages of 15 and 24. At
least 60 million girls are “missing” in Asia due to the abortion of female fetuses, female
infanticide, and deliberate neglect and starvation of baby girls. China funds pension plans for
parents with daughters to counter male-only child preferences. Some 40% of Internet users in
China are women. Arab women are the majority of students in many universities in the Middle
East but only account for 8.9% of the parliaments in Arab countries.
EUROPE: Women account for 30.6% of legislative and management positions in the EU and
19.2% of legislators in OSCE countries (with 24% average in EU countries). Norway requires
that the boards of all companies registered at its stock market consist of at least 40% of each sex.
About 57% of EU women work, but average 15% less pay for equal work than men. Since few
men are taking more family responsibilities, women want improved public and private
infrastructures allowing mothers to continue their professional careers, yet they worry about
reduced quality time for family life. About 700,000 East European women are sex slaves in
Western Europe. The new EC-funded European Institute for Gender Equality should also
educate men about women’s contributions to all parts of society, leading to better policies. As
many as 50,000 women were raped during the war in Bosnia.
LATIN AMERICA: Women account for 35% of legislative or management positions in the region.
While women in Latin America and the Caribbean have seen enormous progress in the
protection of their human rights over the past few years, unsafe abortion is a serious public
health problem and continues to be one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in the region.
Some states in Mexico now protect women who want an abortion within the first 12 weeks.
Governments should change laws about rape, sexual harassment, and equal pay for women. One
of the greatest challenges to the region is changing male “machismo” attitudes.
NORTH AMERICA: Women account for 41.2% of legislative or management positions in North
America. The U.S. performs particularly well on women’s educational attainment and only
slightly less so on economic participation and political empowerment. However, it ranks poorly
44
on maternity leave and related maternity benefits and child care. Canada is ranked seventh in the
world by the World Economic Forum’s Women’s Empowerment measurements, while the U.S.
is seventeenth. U.S. has not yet ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women. State corporate boards by law in Quebec will have to be 50%
female by 2012.
Figure 11. Women in National Parliaments (percentage)
Source: Inter-Parliamentary Union
45
12. How can transnational organized crime networks be stopped from becoming
more powerful and sophisticated global enterprises?
Transnational organized crime continues to grow in the absence of a comprehensive, integrated
global counter strategy. Havocscope.com estimates world illicit trade to be about $1 trillion per
year, with counterfeiting and piracy at $521.6 billion, the global drug trade at $321.6 billion,
trade in environmental goods at $55.7 billion, human trafficking at $43.8 billion, consumer
products at $37.5 billion, and weapons trade at $10.1 billion. Higher estimates are available for
illegal drugs and weapons. This does not include extortion or organized crime’s part of the $1
trillion in bribes that the World Bank estimates was paid last year or its part of the estimated
$1.5–6.5 trillion in laundered money. Hence the total income could be well over $2 trillion—
about twice all the military budgets in the world. Estimates for TOC are also difficult because the
increasing use of cash couriers, diamonds, and anonymous Internet banking hides its gains.
According to the UN, there are 27 million people held in slavery today, far more than during the
peak of the African slave trade. The vast majority are found in Asia. The Global Initiative to
Fight Human Trafficking was launched this year and the UN Protocol Against Trafficking in
Persons has been ratified by more than 110 countries, but with little effect. Since the World Bank
estimates that just $20–40 billion of the total paid in bribes went to developing and transitional
countries, the vast majority of bribes are paid to people in richer countries. These countries can
be understood as a series of decision points that are vulnerable to vast amounts of money.
Decisions could be bought and sold like heroin, making democracy an illusion.
The government of North Korea is reported to derive $500 million to $1 billion annually from
criminal enterprises, and many Afghan government officials are allegedly in the illegal drug
trade. Daily international transfers of $2 trillion via computer communications make a tempting
target. Internet crimes such as mass identity theft have now become a substantial activity of
TOC. The 13–15 million AIDS orphans, with potentially another 10 million by 2010, constitute a
gigantic pool of new talent for organized crime. Meanwhile, prescription drug abuse has
outstripped the use of conventional illegal drugs in many areas, and counterfeiting of these
compounds is a new line of business for TOC.
OECD’s Financial Action Task Force has made 40 recommendations to counter money
laundering, and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has created the Global Program against
Money Laundering. There is also the International Narcotics Control Board, the World Customs
Organization, the International Group for Anti-Corruption Coordination, Interpol, and the
International Criminal Court. Nevertheless, TOC continues to grow and has not surfaced on the
world agenda in the way that poverty, water, and sustainable development have. It is time for an
international campaign by all sectors of society to develop a global consensus for action against
TOC, which has grown to the point where it is increasingly interfering with the ability of
governments to act. The head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has called on all states to
develop a coherent strategy to deal with the problem. One global strategy has been informally
endorsed by several countries in Europe and Latin America. An international body would use a
priority system for collaboration for arrest and prosecution of one TOC leader at a time based on
the volume of money laundered rather than specify categories of crimes.
46
The UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime came into force in September 2003.
It calls for international cooperation to help fight organized crime. Possibly an addition to this
convention could establish the financial prosecution system as a new body to complement the
related organizations addressing various parts of TOC. In cooperation with these organizations,
the new system would identify top criminals by the amount of money laundered, prepare legal
cases, identify suspects’ assets that can be frozen, establish the current location of the suspect,
assess the local authorities’ ability to make an arrest, and send the case for immediate action to
an appropriate court. When everything is ready, all the orders would be executed at the same
time to apprehend the criminal, freeze the assets and access, open the court case, and then
proceed to the next TOC leader on the priority list. Courts could be deputized like military forces
for UN Peacekeeping, via a lottery system among volunteer countries. Countries would have to
give up some sovereignty, as the global system would set the location for prosecution, preferably
outside the accused country (extradition is accepted by the UN Convention against Transnational
Organized Crime). After initial government funding, the system would receive its financial
support from frozen assets of convicted criminals rather than depending on government
contributions for continued operations.
Challenge 12 will have been successfully addressed when money laundering and crime income
sources drop by 75% and when law enforcement organizations are effectively integrated across
all countries.
AFRICA: The hashish trade in Morocco is being used to support terrorism in both Europe and
North Africa. Links between African rebel factions, organized crime, and terrorism may be
increasing, which is potentially exacerbated by millions of AIDS orphans with few legal means
to make a living. Corruption has permeated much of African society and is now perhaps the
greatest limit to growth in many countries.
ASIA AND OCEANIA: Heroin production and trafficking in humans provide huge sources of
income for the region. It is reported that Chinese organized crime gangs are spreading their
activities into Russia. China has enacted a strong new anti-money laundering law.
EUROPE: European coalitions based on national politics cannot address global organized crime.
Russia’s now more porous border adds to the security problems caused by the EU’s integrated
economic territory, and the human trafficking problem from the accession countries of Eastern
Europe will be exacerbated by the open frontiers. Corruption has fallen in the transition countries
of Europe and Central Asia.
LATIN AMERICA: UNODC says crime is the single largest issue impeding Central American
stability, where drug-related violence has risen sharply. The U.S. Plan Colombia, lasting six
years and costing almost $5 billion, has left cocaine availability, price, and quality unchanged. It
is estimated that 5% of Mexican GDP is laundered, and its drug cartels are moving into Peru,
where coca output is up about 40%.
47
NORTH AMERICA: The U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security has opened a Human Smuggling and
Trafficking Center. Organized crime and its relationship to terrorism should be treated as a
national security threat. Countries must be held accountable for corporations that are involved in
criminal activities in their own and other countries. Intellectual property loss in just the U.S. is
estimated at $200–250 billion. The use of radio frequency and other forms of identification tags
will help trace legal materials into illegal transactions. About half of the 17,500 foreigners
trafficked into the U.S. in 2006 were for the commercial sex business, and some 200,000 people
are considered to live in slavery in the United States.
Figure 12. World Illicit Trade
Source: Havocscope.com
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13. How can growing energy demand be met safely and efficiently?
The options to create and update global energy strategies are too complex and rapidly changing
for decisionmakers to make coherent policy. Yet the environmental and social consequences of
incoherent policy are so serious that a new global system for collective intelligence is justified.
Such a system has to be designed so that it can be understood and used by the general public,
politicians, and non-scientists, as well as by leading scientists and engineers around the world.
As the two great energy consumers and CO2 producers, the U.S. and China should lead an
“Apollo-like” global energy R&D program with a full range of possibilities—from a solarelectric economy that is both land- and space-based to massive biofuels and tele-work
efficiencies cutting demand. Initial U.S.-China cooperation has begun on cleaner coal processing
and biofuels. Energy efficiencies will increase and will lower demand in richer areas—it takes
33% less energy today than in 1973 to produce a unit of GDP in IEA countries, but demand in
other areas like China and India will push global demand over 50% from 2003 to 2030,
increasing fossil fuel consumption to 81% of primary energy demand unless alternatives
succeed. In the meantime, large-scale carbon capture, storage, and reuse should also be a top
priority. Over $70 billion was invested into renewable and low-carbon technology in 2006, up
43% since 2005; 1,500 clean tech companies opened; and 4,093 U.S. patents focused on clean
tech, with solar and biofuels leading.
Research is increasingly showing that solar energy can become a major source of electricity and
that biomass could increasingly replace petroleum if environmental pollution and food prices are
not raised too much. Massive seawater irrigation employing halophyte plants and algae on
coastal deserts could annually produce 190,000 liters of biofuels per hectare. Cogeneration using
waste heat can also make contributions to energy production. Meanwhile, approximately 1,000
coal plants, with production lives of 40 years, are in some stage of planning or construction
around the world without CO2 capture. Emissions from coal-fired power plants projected to be
built over the next 25 years are greater than total emissions during the last 250 years.
Environmental movements may try to close down fossil fuel industries, just as they stopped
growth in nuclear energy 30 years ago. For nuclear energy to replace the greenhouse gas
emissions from fossil fuels, about 2,000 nuclear power plants would have to be built—two to
three a week for 15 years. Another Chernobyl-type accident could halt expansion of nuclear
power.
Nanotubes may replace wire to conduct electricity better. Solar farms can focus sunlight atop
towers with sterling and other generators. Plastic nanotech photovoltaics printed on buildings
and other surfaces could cut costs and increase efficiency. Estimates for the potential of wind
energy continue to increase. The transition to a hydrogen infrastructure may be too expensive
and too late to affect climate change, while plug-in hybrids and flex-fuel vehicles, falling battery
costs, and compressed air cars may provide alternatives sooner to petroleum-only vehicles.
Learning how C hydrogenoformans bacteria convert water and carbon monoxide to hydrogen
could lead to a breakthrough in sustainable hydrogen production. Space solar power satellites
could manage base-load electricity on a global basis, improving efficiencies and beaming energy
to electric grids, providing sustainable abundant electricity for the world. Agreement on
49
scientific measurements will be necessary for energy pricing policies and carbon taxes to reflect
the impacts of energy production and use. All these may require the creation of a World Energy
Organization.
Challenge 13 will be addressed seriously when the total energy production from environmentally
benign processes surpasses other sources for five years in a row, with atmospheric CO2 additions
also dropping for at least five years, and when the worldwide expenditures for energy R&D
increase by a factor of five from today’s expenditures.
AFRICA: Africa produces 30% of China’s imported oil. It has substantial renewable energy
resources, with more than 3,140 terawatt-hours of exploitable technical hydropower potential,
more than 9,000 megawatts of geothermal potential, abundant biomass potential, substantial
solar potential, and in some countries significant wind potential. Nevertheless, renewable sources
contribute less than 1% of the region’s primary energy supply.
ASIA AND OCEANIA: Low-cost Chinese batteries may make electric cars affordable very soon.
Even though China has reduced the energy per GDP by 50% since 1991, its CO2 emissions
passed the U.S. in 2006. China is the second largest oil consumer and plans to nearly quadruple
its nuclear capacity by 2020. Two-thirds of China’s energy comes from coal—making China a
critical player in any carbon sequestration strategy. The Philippines gets 27% of its electricity
from geothermal sources. Japan and South Korea import nearly all their energy. Japan is
studying how to process solar energy in orbit and beam it to electric power grids on Earth, and it
plans to have 5 million fuel cell cars by 2020. Australia plans to outlaw incandescent light bulbs
by 2010 in favor of compact fluorescent bulbs.
EUROPE: The EU plans that biofuels will account for 10% of its fuels by 2020 and that the
region will bring GHG emissions at least 20% below 1990 levels. A U.S.-EU summit agreed to
establish a network of 12 carbon-capture-and-storage demonstration plants by 2015. Wind is
expected to deliver 23% of Europe’s electricity by 2030. Europe’s increasing dependence on
Russian energy gives Russia a new diplomatic tool. Sweden aims to become a fossil-fuel-free
economy by 2020. Germany produces half the world’s solar electricity, is Europe’s largest
biodiesel producer, and plans to cut CO2 emissions by 40% by 2020, making Germany the
world’s most energy-efficient country.
LATIN AMERICA: Brazil is the world leader in ethanol production; 70% of its car purchases were
flex-fuel vehicles in 2006; its ethanol exports could be $1.3 billion in 2010. Bolivia and
Venezuela continue to nationalize their oil and gas industries. Mexico is unwilling to have
foreign investment develop its natural gas but lacks the domestic funds to do it. Venezuela’s
heavy oil reserves could use today’s technologies, giving it larger reserves than Saudi Arabia.
NORTH AMERICA: Given 15-year car-fleet turnover, half the new cars in the U.S. by 2012 have
to be gasoline-independent to cut Middle East oil dependence over the next 20–30 years, which
could be done by flex-fuel plug-in hybrids. Space solar power could supply all electric car
requirements worldwide. For nuclear energy to replace CO2-emitting U.S. power plants, about
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350 nuclear plants would have to be constructed—a new plant every two or three weeks for 15
years. The U.S. Department of Energy finds that “off-peak” electricity production and
transmission capacity could fuel 84% of the country’s 220 million vehicles if they were plug-in
hybrid electrics. Currently the U.S. wastes 2.3 billion gallons of gas per year in traffic jams. The
U.S. plans to build a demonstration “zero-emissions” coal-fired power plant and hydrogen
production facility with integrated carbon capture and sequestration. Gasoline tax in the U.S. is
roughly one-seventh as much as in Europe.
Figure 13. World Total Primary Energy Supply
Source: IEA, Key World Energy Statistics 2006
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14. How can scientific and technological breakthroughs be accelerated to
improve the human condition?
The extraordinary impacts of S&T over the past 25 years will seem slight compared with the
next 25 years. The factors that accelerated the rate of innovation are themselves changing at
accelerating rates. Intel has created the first programmable 1 teraflop chip able to perform more
than 1 trillion floating point operations per second. The brain-computer interface now lets
thoughts move software; nanoparticles and fibers stimulate neural growth; and minibiocomputers help treat specific individual cells. Photons have been slowed and accelerated;
adult stem cells have been regressed to repair damaged tissue; faint magnetic signals from a
single electron buried inside a solid sample have been detected; organic transistors with a singlemolecule channel length are now visible; and microbial fuel cells have been demonstrated.
Accelerating S&T advances make far more things possible than most people are willing to
believe; hence opportunities to apply scientific breakthroughs to improve the human condition
are continually missed. Just as lines of code were written to create software, genetic code is
being written to create new life forms. Artificial organs may be constructed in a manner similar
to 3-D prototyping; surgical robots are now MRI-compatible; and the cellular and genetic
abnormalities responsible for medical problems are being identified and treatments designed.
Ten-gigabyte hard drives for cell phones are coming soon. Genetically modified viruses can coat
themselves with electrically conducting metals to form nano-wires that self-assemble into battery
components. Millions volunteer their computer’s excess capacity to help find cures for cancer.
The future synergies among nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and
cognitive science will change the prospects for civilization. We need a global information system
to track advances so that politicians and the public can understand potential consequences of new
S&T. The risks from acceleration and globalization of S&T are enormous (see CD Chapter 3.5
for global 2025 S&T scenarios) and give rise to future ethical issues. For example, do we have
the right to clone ourselves, to create thousands of new life forms, and to claim scientific
sovereignty in basic research? (See CD Chapter 4, Science and Technology Management Issues.)
In 2006, according to Lux, $12.4 billion was invested in nanotech R&D, over $50 billion of
nano-enabled products were sold, international patent filings grew 31%, and the private sectors
in the U.S. and Japan outspent government in R&D. However, nanotech environmental health
impact studies are proliferating that will lead to standards that will change unregulated
production. A science roadmap is being produced for new atomically precise nanoscale building
blocks, components, and devices. Nanobots the size of blood cells may one day enter the body to
diagnose and provide therapies and internal VR imagery. For the longer range, quantum
phenomena and entanglement are being probed. Quantum physicists are experimenting with
teleporting individual photons and demonstrating a method that may ultimately teleport two
near-identical copies of the original. Astronomers are probing the possibilities of dark energy, a
cosmological force in opposition to gravity.
Challenge 14 will be addressed seriously when the funding of R&D for societal needs reaches
parity with funding for other purposes and when an international science and technology
organization is established that routinely connects world S&T knowledge for use in R&D
52
priority setting and legislation. Such a system could make political and media decisionmakers
more S&T-savvy by bringing together the world’s knowledge in a more user-friendly fashion to
illustrate risks, opportunities, and a range of speculation on items on a cumulative basis. It could
facilitate transparent international scientific assessments of controversial areas such as
bionanotech and, wherever they are found feasible and desirable, make it clear how these would
improve the human condition. Currently the InterAcademy Panel, a worldwide network of 90
science academies, is increasing access to S&T information and cooperation around the world;
all should support basic R&D of new theoretical principles to provide the growing pool of
knowledge from which applied science draws its insights to improve the human condition.
AFRICA: S&T funding in Africa is still lower than 1% of GDP. Results from the African S&T
policy leaders’ meeting in Egypt in October 2007 should feed NEPAD’s policy and work on
science, technology, and innovation indicators for national decisionmaking. ICSU has opened an
office in Africa to focus on health and human well-being, hazards such as pollution and
deforestation, sustainable energy, and global climate change.
ASIA AND OCEANIA: China is now the second largest R&D system in the world, surpassing
Japan, and could account for 23% of world R&D expenditures by 2010. After the U.S., China is
the second largest producer of articles on nanotech, with Japan in third place. China designed
and launched a satellite for Nigeria and plans another for Venezuela. There are more IT
engineers in Bangalore than in Silicon Valley. Japan launched the first test Furoshiki satellite as
an experimental method to make and maintain space solar satellites.
EUROPE: Advances in medical-, bio-, and neurotechnology could reduce many European
problems with aging societies. Many research institutes in Europe, especially in Germany, are
working on Artificial Vision Systems, computer-guided prosthesis, and brain-computer
interfaces. By 2010, the EU plans to increase R&D expenditures to 3% of GDP and to attract an
additional 700,000 researchers. More than 500,000 scientists have left Russia over the past 15
years; it is now making large investments into nanotech R&D. The Slovenian government is
making its research program publicly available for comment to improve transparency and public
understanding.
LATIN AMERICA: The region averages 0.4% of GDP for S&T development but hopes to increase
that to 3% by 2010 and should improve its public-private R&D long-term cooperation, regional
research networks, national strategic R&D planning, basic research, S&T literacy of benefits and
risks, and incentives for private investment in local R&D.
NORTH AMERICA: MIT offers free online S&T courses. The U.S. now imports more hightechnology products than it exports, according to the National Academy of Sciences. Clean
energy tech innovations are accelerating—there were more than 4,000 U.S. related patents in
2006. The U.S. Patent Office plans to place patent applications online for public comment.
Falling numbers of students in S&T, religious fundamentalist politics, and the imposition of
other political points of view are threats to the continued excellence of U.S. science. Prizes can
speed the distribution of technology that benefits humanity, such as the Tech Awards from the
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Tech Museum in San Jose, California, or Richard Branson’s prize to remove a billion tons of
carbon dioxide a year, as can tech sports like MIT’s robot competitions.
Figure 14. Estimated R&D Expenditures (percentage of GDP)
in OECD and Cooperating Non-member Countries
Source: OECD Factbook 2007 - Economic, Environmental and Social Statistics
54
15. How can ethical considerations become more routinely incorporated into
global decisions?
Unethical decisions are increasingly exposed via news media, blogs, mobile phone cameras,
ethics commissions, and organizations like Transparency International. Trivial news and
entertainment floods our minds with unethical behavior, while over $1 trillion are paid in
bribes, $2 trillion goes to organized crime, and the proliferation of terrorism cries out for global
ethical leadership. It is estimated that 300,000 children in 30 conflicts are solders, sex slaves,
porters, and sentries. How can more ethical decisions be reinforced like Brazil’s on AIDS? Or
new ones stimulated like a U.S.-China alliance to cut CO2 emissions?
Public morality based on religious metaphysics is challenged daily by growing secularism,
leaving many unsure about the moral basis for decisionmaking. The speed at which the fabric of
life has begun to change seems beyond the ability of most people and institutions to comprehend,
leading to ethical uncertainties. Do we have the right to rewrite genetic codes, creating thousands
of new life forms, or genetically change ourselves and future generations into new species? Is it
right for humans to merge with technology, as one way to prevent technological hegemony over
humanity? Is there a balance between supporting free inquiry and making information available
that could cause significant catastrophes? Could the technical means to prevent terrorism lead to
e-fascism? Experts speculate that the world is heading for a “singularity”—a time in which
technological change is so fast and significant that we today are incapable of conceiving what
life might be like beyond the year 2025.
Globalization and advanced technology allow fewer people to do more damage and in less time
than ever before. Hence the welfare of anyone should be the concern of everyone. Such
platitudes are not new, but the consequences of their failure will be quite different in the future
than in the past. Yet new technologies also allow fewer people to help more than ever before as
well. The Parties to the UN Convention against Corruption have begun implementing the treaty
and the World Bank is helping to strengthen national anticorruption units. The proliferation of
NGOs, global news media, and self-organizing Internet blogs are new forces for transparency,
providing some checks on the abuse of power. The synergies among the more than 16,000 ISO
standards improve the ethics in decisions around the world.
The World Bank lists unethical companies and individuals and produces indicators of good
governance. Corporate ethics indexes, new journals, civil society forums, and multi-religious
dialogues address global ethics in decisionmaking. Nine of 14 countries polled supported a tax
on arms trade or oil to support the UN’s ability to act more effectively, and the UN is the key
global body founded to incorporate ethical considerations into global decisions. Over 2,000
businesses have joined the UN’s Global Compact to use global ethics in decisionmaking. The
International Criminal Court has tried political leaders.
Collective responsibility for global ethics in decisionmaking is embryonic but growing.
Unfortunately, religions and ideologies that claim moral superiority give rise to “we-they” splits.
The moral will to act in collaboration across national, institutional, religious, and ideological
boundaries necessary to address the Global Challenges will require acknowledgement and
practice of global ethics.
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By addressing the 14 other Global Challenges through multinational corporations, governments,
and a range of international organizations, we add ethical considerations to global
decisionmaking. Some individuals are organizing themselves around specific ethical issues via
the Internet. Others explicitly try to develop global ethics, such as the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, UNESCO’s Universal Ethics Project, the Commission on Global Governance,
and the Institute for Global Ethics. Successful ethical codes are the product of a social consensus,
not a paternalistic imposition. Educating children to become responsible citizens will influence
adults and thus the entire population.
Global ethics must not only correspond to major religious morals, it should also engage both
believers and nonbelievers in a new alliance that creates a sense of “being with” all
humankind—including “futurekind,” so that we act in the interests of future generations. Memes
could be promoted like: Good for me, you, and the world. We need more effective ways to
control lobbying, reduce greed and self-centeredness, encourage honor and honesty, promote
parental guidance to establish a sense of values, reduce barriers to the freedom of inquiry,
encourage respect for legitimate authority, support the identification and success of the influence
of role models, implement cost-effective strategies for global education for a more enlightened
world, make behavior match the values people say they believe in, and spread the Olympic spirit.
A global process should be initiated that leads to an international code of conduct that empowers
a multilateral body like the UN to monitor it, including enforcement of international treaties
equally among all nations. Wasting time is a reliable indicator of unethical approaches.
Challenge 15 will be addressed seriously when corruption decreases by 50%, when ethical
business standards are internationally recognized and regularly audited, when essentially all
students receive education in responsible citizenship, and when there is a general
acknowledgment that global ethics transcends religion and nationality.
AFRICA: How much more damage does Zimbabwe have to suffer before moral outrage changes
the situation? Kenya’s treasury was looted of an amount equivalent to 20% of the nation’s GDP.
Most of the lowest-rated governments by Transparency International are in Africa. Business
Ethics Network of Africa, formed in 1999, began publishing the African Journal of Business
Ethics in 2006.
ASIA AND OCEANIA: Some 3,500 corruption cases have been investigated in Iraq, of which 780
cases have been lodged in court but fewer than 50 have been tried. The rapid urbanization of
Asia forces so many decisions so quickly that there is little time to consider the ethical
implications. Some do not believe there are common global ethics and maintain that the pursuit
to create them is a western notion.
EUROPE: The EU has criminalized xenophobia and racism. The Wittenberg Center has
established five areas of future impact by global ethics: sustainability and global governance,
corporate citizenship and new alliances, globalization and international organizations, anticorruption and integrity management, and discourse among cultures.
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LATIN AMERICA: Education, media, and religion are needed to reinforce ecological ethics,
human rights, democracy, equitable development, minority protection, conscious awareness,
happiness, social responsibility, and solidarity in order to balance the increasing effects of
individualism.
NORTH AMERICA: Corruption and ethics were the most important issues determining voters’
choices in the 2006 U.S. elections. Decisionmaking software could prompt users through ethical
considerations of their decisions, based on universal values of respect, honesty, compassion,
fairness, and responsibility, according to research from the Institute for Global Ethics. Socially
responsible investment funds are growing. New campaign finance approaches are needed to
improve ethics in political decisionmaking along with better real-time transparency to prevent
corruption.
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Figure 15
Global Challenges and SOFI Process
58
2. State of the Future Index
The State of the Future Index is a measure of the 10-year outlook for the future. It is constructed
with key variables and forecasts that, in the aggregate, depict whether the future promises to be
better or worse. The SOFI is intended to show the directions and intensity of change in the
outlook and to identify the factors responsible. Some of the Millennium Project’s experiments
with the index have illustrated how it might be used for policy purposes by demonstrating the
effects of proposed policies on a nominal State of the Future Index. The SOFI approach provides
a mechanism for studying the relationships among the items in a system—how making a single
change ripples throughout a system, in other words, creating some positive and intended
consequence as well as unintended results and, with this year’s work, standards for constructing
national SOFIs that will enhance nation to nation comparisons.
Yet, combining many variables into a single index number can lead to loss of detail. Creating an
index requires judgments not only in selecting the variables to include but also in weighting
them. An index of global conditions can mask variations among regions, nations, or groups. The
apparent precision of an index can easily be mistaken for accuracy. For these reasons, many
people interested in tracking social or economic conditions prefer to keep the variables that they
consider important separate and distinct. Hence, great attention is given to the variables that
make up the index, seeking accurate sources and tracking changes when they occur.
The State of the Future Index was first described in the Millennium Project’s 2001 State of the
Future. Since then, the SOFI chapter in State of the Future reports has focused on improvements
in the data sources and the method itself. This chapter presents an overview of the SOFI study
conducted in 2006–07. Details on all six years of SOFIs and the analysis and supporting data are
included in the CD Chapter 2.
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Box 2. SOFI Variables
Variables Included in the 2007 SOFI
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Population lacking access to improved water sources (percent of population)
Literacy rate, adult total (percent of people aged 15 and above)
Levels of corruption (15 largest countries)
School enrollment, secondary (percent gross)
Poverty headcount ratio at $1 a day (PPP) (percent of population)
(Low and Middle Income Countries)
Countries having or thought to have plans for nuclear weapons (number)
CO2 emissions (global, kt)
Unemployment, total (percent of total labor force)
GDP per unit of energy use (constant 2000 PPP $ per kg of oil equivalent)
Number of major armed conflicts (number of deaths >1,000)
Population growth (annual percent)
R&D expenditures (percent of national budget)
People killed or injured in terrorist attacks (number)
Energy produced from non fission, non fossil sources (percent of total primary energy supply)
Food availability (cal/cap)
Population in countries that are free (percent of total global population)
Global Surface Temperature Anomalies
GDP per capita (constant 2000 US$)
People voting in Elections (percent population of voting age)
Physicians (per 1,000 people)( surrogate for Healthcare Workers)
Internet users (per 1,000 pop)
Infant mortality (deaths per 1,000 births)
Forest Lands (percent of all land area)
Life expectancy at birth (years)
Women in parliaments (percent of all members)
Number of Refugees (per 100,000 total population)
Total debt service (percent of GNI) (Low and Mid Income Countries)
Prevalence of HIV (percent of population)
Homicides, intentional (per 100,000 population)
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The Global SOFI 2007
The variables included in the SOFI were reassessed in 2006–07 using the Real Time Delphi (see
Appendix L on the CD for details of the method.) Participants in the study were asked to rate the
variables, give worst and best scenario estimates, suggest new variables to be included in the
SOFI, and suggest sources that could provide at least 20 years of historical data.
Working with the results of the Real Time Delphi, a new global SOFI was constructed using a
set of 29 variables. These variables were selected on the basis of the score they received in the
RT Delphi study, the availability of data, and use of the variables in prior SOFI studies. Further,
where possible, the units were chosen to be useful in national SOFI applications as well as
global. Box 2 lists the variables used in the 2007 SOFI.
Online historical data sources for essentially all the variables were obtained, although some
manipulation was often required, and the data were fit with time series equations to both
interpolate missing data points and to obtain forecasts for the next 10 years.
The 2007 SOFI is not directly comparable with earlier analyses, since many of the variables are
now expressed in a way that facilitates their use in national SOFI computations. For example, the
old variable “Annual population addition (million)” is now expressed as “Population growth
(annual percentage).” Second, there are some entirely new variables such as “R&D expenditures
(percentage of national budget)” that have been added as a result of the Real Time Delphi inputs.
Some variables used in prior studies have been replaced by new ones; for example, “Share of
population with access to local health care (in 15 most populated countries)” has been replaced
with “Physicians (per 1,000 population),” which is more readily available and applicable to
national SOFIs as well. Finally, some variables changed because new data sources have been
found that present the data differently. For example, prior studies used “Violent crime (per
100,000 population, in 17 countries).” The current run uses “Homicides, intentional (per 100,000
population).”
The 2007 SOFI is shown graphically in Figure 16.
Figure 16. SOFI 2007
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A trend impact analysis was also performed to examine the effect of events that the respondents
to the RT Delphi felt might be important to the outcome of the SOFI. In all, more than 90 future
events were considered. Using these events and estimates of probability of occurrence and
impacts made by staff, TIA forecasts of individual variables and the SOFI itself were prepared.
The TIA analysis had the consequence of improving the forecasted SOFI so that the historical
trends extended for the next decade. Figure 17 shows the SOFI using TIA.
It was found that the forecasts were sensitive to some future events such as attacks that result in
doubling the number of people killed in a terrorist attack over the number otherwise expected
and an improbable but plausible catastrophe. Such an event could drop the SOFI to values lower
than those experienced 15 years ago.
Although the numbers are somewhat different, the 2007 SOFI curve shows the same general shape
as the SOFI solutions of the past few years: relatively rapid growth since the mid-1980s, then a
continued but slower growth into the next 10 years. Although one-to-one comparison is not
possible for reasons mentioned earlier, the 2005 SOFI and the 2007 SOFI are shown in Figure 18.
Figure 17. SOFI 2007 with Trend Impact Analysis
Figure 18. Comparison of 2005 and 2007 SOFIs
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The SOFI variables can be grouped into six domains: moral expectations, physical expectations,
security expectations, health expectations, intellectual expectations, and wealth expectations.
Each category can itself be a measure of progress. For the health, intellectual, and wealth
domains, the historical and projected values move toward “best” goals; for moral, physical, and
security domains, the trends are somewhat chaotic but tend to spiral toward “worst” limits as
time passes and into the future. Figure 19 illustrates the trends of each category.
Figure 19. Trends of Moral, Physical, Security, Health, Intellectual, and Wealth Expectations
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National SOFIs
SOFIs can be computed at the global, national, regional, or even sectoral level. National SOFIs
can help establish priorities for policy and investment decisions intended to improve a country as
a whole. This could encourage countries to ask themselves what it means to say a nation is better
off or worse off in 10 years—and to answer that question in more objective, quantifiable terms.
In 2004, the Venezuela Node of the Millennium Project together with Deloitte & Touche C.A.
initiated the computation of national SOFIs. They calculated SOFIs for selected countries in the
Americas––Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, United States,
and Venezuela. This exercise allowed assessment of data availability and comparability, as well
as analysis of which factors in each country determined favorable or unfavorable changes.
Calculating national SOFIs also allows a comparison between the performance of different
countries. In addition, national SOFIs address a problem with the global SOFI: variations among
regions and nations. Figure 20 compares the SOFIs of the 10 American countries.
Interest in creating national SOFIs has spread; Canada, China, Egypt, Hungary, Kuwait, South
Korea, and Turkey have all expressed interest in developing their own indexes using national
data.
Figure 20. Countries’ Non-adjusted SOFI Absolute Values
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The first SOFI for Turkey was calculated in 2006 by the Turkey Node of the Millennium Project
at the All Futurists Association of Turkey. The following year, they reassessed the variables
considered in the computation and improved the methodology.
The 2007 SOFI included 11 variables (3 more than the 2006 computation) that were selected
based on the availability of data for 20 years and the relation to the 15 global challenges that
have implications for the future of Turkey.
Using a Delphi survey, 28 members of AFAT assessed the best and worst values for the
variables included in the Turkey SOFI. Figure 21 shows the results of their calculations.
The following variables were included:
• Food availability
• GDP per capita
• Infant mortality rate
• Water access
• External debt per GDP
• Forestland
• Literacy rate
• Unemployment
• Health access
• Life expectancy
• Secondary school enrollment
The Turkey SOFI depicts a better future for 2016 with an index value of 1.62––compared with
the baseline of 1 for 2006. The strong change in the SOFI graph between 2001 and 2005 may
have been related to the one-party government during that time, compared with the coalitionbased governments in the 1990s. The Turkey SOFI was also able to capture the financial crisis of
1999 and 2001.
The most sensitive or critical variables were external debt per GDP, unemployment, and
forestland. The reduction of external debt per GDP is critical for the sustainable development of
Turkey to achieve an annual GDP growth of 7% until 2013. Forestland is an asset that is
becoming more and more critical due to climate change. Unemployment has been stable around
10% in the last three years but action plans should be designed in order to reduce it to 6–7%, the
pre-crisis levels, so that Turkey gets into an economically and socially healthy shape before a
possible membership to the European Union in 2015.
Turkey continues to improve its SOFI computation. The 2008 Turkey SOFI is expected to
include a few more variables: women in Parliament (updated after the 2007 elections),
expenditures for R&D, Internet penetration, and CO2 emissions. AFAT will also develop
collaboration with relevant Turkish NGOs to expand participation in assessing the variables
included in the SOFI.
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Figure 21. Turkey SOFI (normalized for year 2006 = 1)
In 2006, a SOFI was computed for South Korea. The variables included mirrored those that had
been used previously in other SOFI studies, and a subset was selected for which 20 years of data
were available. The best and worst values used in this calculation were obtained in a new Delphi
survey conducted among 30 Korean experts.
A second SOFI was calculated for South Korea using the same variables as in the first run and
the best and worst values previously determined for the global SOFI available at that time. This
calculation was made to obtain a SOFI that could be directly compared with those of other
countries.
Figure 22 shows a comparison of the South Korean SOFI in relative terms using global and
South Korean normalization values.
The variables considered in the South Korea SOFI calculation were:
• Infant mortality
• GDP per capita
• Percentage of households with access to safe water
• Atmospheric CO2 emissions
• Annual population addition
• Unemployment rate
• Life expectancy
• Forestland
• Freedom Index
The South Korean SOFI reflects the expectations of South Koreans and the particular situation of
the country. For instance, while the world as a whole considers a declining population a positive
trend, Korea sees the opposite (this was evident in the South Korean Delphi survey, where the
best value for the variable “annual population addition” is bigger than the worst value). The two
SOFI versions were calculated separately because the aim of the analysis was not only to
compare South Korea with the rest of the world but also to measure how good or how bad the
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future seems to be as seen by the South Koreans, when looking at the future through their own
lens. The specifically designed South Korean SOFI gives a national picture according to national
considerations, since the best and worst values for the normalization are based on the particular
South Korean expectations for the next 10 years versus the general expectations for the whole
world.
Since the SOFI methodology “punishes” more severely the worse values, the lower SOFI for the
Korean values in the 1980s reflects the high expectations of Koreans. In the period between 1984
and 1991 where large differences exist, key variables in the SOFI set were well below today’s
expectations. (See Chapter 2 in the CD for details on the analysis and interpretation of the results.)
Figure 22. Comparison of Relative SOFIs for South Korea using Global and South Korean
Normalization Values (normalized for year 2006 = 1)
Conclusions and Further Developments
It now appears that creation of a “standard” for national SOFIs could be useful. This would
essentially be an instruction manual for use in constructing national SOFIs; it would include
spreadsheet software and global data where applicable. Once several countries have produced
SOFIs to the same standards, a systematic cross-sectional and longitudinal comparison could be
accomplished.
The 2006–07 SOFI research produced some new insights into standardized methods for
constructing national SOFIs that would permit more effective comparisons among countries and
between a global and a national SOFI. In this standardized approach, there are two types of
national SOFIs: the first one is designed to be compared with a global SOFI and with SOFIs of
other countries (call this class the national comparison SOFI). The second type is the national
unique SOFI designed to describe and track a country’s progress with a focus on its own unique
goals and expectations (call this the national focus SOFI). This standardized approach is still
under development, and the initial concept is described in more detail in Chapter 2 on the CD, in
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the subchapter “State of the Future Index Variables and Their Use in Country to Country
Comparisons.”
For the national comparison SOFIs, every country would use the same set of standard variables
as the global SOFI with a few exceptions, their own national history and forecasts, the same best
and worst values and importance weights as chosen for the global SOFI, and the same set of
external TIA events and probabilities but with national perceptions about the impacts of the
events on the variables. Thus to construct a national comparison SOFI, a country would have to
collect national historical data for the standard set of variables, forecast these data, and estimate
the impacts of the TIA events on these variables. The remaining information required to produce
a national comparison SOFI would come from the global SOFI. With this approach, all countries
would produce comparable national SOFIs.
National focus SOFIs would provide more latitude to the process but would sacrifice the ability
to make one-to-one comparisons among countries and between a country’s SOFI and the global
SOFI. In implementing this class, countries could use a non-standard set of variables that might
include those that have special importance to the country (for example, the achievement of
specific national policies), unique goals expressed through the selection of best and worst values
and weights, specific TIA events of national importance, and their probabilities and impacts.
While the national focus SOFIs should not be used in country-to-country comparisons, they will
be most useful in tracking the state of the future of a country over time, evaluating the success of
policies and the proximity to goals, and stimulating discussions about productive policies and
factors that can affect their success.
Of particular interest would be an analysis designed to find out whether country SOFIs (weighted
by population) add up to the global SOFI. In addition, experiments with other applications such
as corporate SOFIs could be conducted. One suggestion is that a measure of national
innovativeness be add. Finally, online databases of variables and events might be constructed to
facilitate national and other applications.
Concerning the SOFI generally, much work yet remains to be done. It still appears desirable to
produce robust “enterprise level” software that can be used across a spectrum of applications,
including not only national SOFIs but corporate applications as well.
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www.BrainPaint.com
This image was created through Michael L’s Brainwaves (electrical signals detected on one’s
scalp with sensors) during a process called EEG biofeedback. The EEG contains data much like
a fax machine transmission. Bill Scott created a program called BrainPaint that extracts and
graphs that data in real-time, which allowed Michael to paint this image as part of his
biofeedback process. It had no photo retouching or anything done with someone’s hands. It
requires nothing except thought and feelings. The exercise Michael was involved in during the
making of this image was to experience power through releasing control. The less concerned
with points he became, the more points he accumulated. It also seems that the more someone
appreciates the images, the prettier they become.
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3. Future Possibilities for Education and Learning
by the Year 2030
The year 2030 is 23 years away. Looking back over the past 23 years provides a sense of the
rapidity and magnitude of the changes we experienced in that time. Twenty-three years ago it
was 1984. In that year how many people would have believed that the Republic of Korea by
2007 would successfully compete with the United States in some areas of the transportation,
information, and communications industries? Or that millions of people would be able to search
billions of computer references is less than a second, and then do it again for no extra cost?
Twenty-three years ago what Ministry of Education had the objective of connecting their
schoolchildren to the Internet? The rate of change over the past 23 years seems very fast for
many people today, yet the factors that made those changes possible are accelerating. As a result,
the changes over the next 23 years will be even greater. What might those changes be for
education and learning?
At the request of the Presidential Commission on Education and with support from the Ministry
of Education of the Republic of Korea, the Millennium Project reviewed futurist thought to
design a Real Time Delphi that collected the judgments of 213 experts around the world, selected
by the Project’s Nodes. The 19 possibilities (see Box 3) they considered present a broad array of
policy choices and options that can inform the policymaking process. The international panel
was asked to rate each for how likely it was to occur by 2030. Only 5 of the 19 were given less
than a 50% chance of occurring. Figure 23 presents the possibilities in rank order by average
likelihood.
The interrelation of these possibilities presents a dramatically different view of education than
dominates today. As Moore’s Law continues to be valid over the next 23 years, portable
intelligent devices could have the processing power of the human brain by 2030. Individuals
would gain access to the world’s knowledge that has been integrated by Web 17.0 for “just-intime knowledge and learning,” using simulations with virtual reality interfaces adapted to their
unique needs throughout their lives. Continuous evaluation of individual learning processes
designed to prevent people from growing unstable or becoming mentally ill, along with programs
aimed at eliminating prejudice and hate, could bring about a more beautiful, loving world.
In parallel, brain function should also be dramatically increased by improved personal nutrition
and brain enhancement pharmaceuticals. Insights from partial mapping of the human brain and
other methods could dramatically increase personal intelligence and longevity by 2030. More
remotely in the future, brains may be genetically enhanced and designer microbes could make
brain cells work more efficiently. With the use of public communications to reinforce the pursuit
of knowledge and the use of these learning innovations and educational concepts, individual and
collective intelligence could be improved.
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Box 3
Possibilities Influencing Education by 2030
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
National programs for improving collective intelligence
Just-in-time knowledge and learning
Individualized education
Use of simulations
Continuous evaluation of individual learning processes designed to prevent people
from growing unstable or becoming mentally ill
6. Improved individual nutrition
7. Genetically increased intelligence
8. Use of global on-line simulations as a primary social science research tool
9. Use of public communications to reinforce pursuit of knowledge
10. Portable artificial intelligence devices
11. Complete mapping of human synapses to discover how learning occurs and thereby
develop strategies for improvement of learning
12. Means for keeping adult brains healthier for longer periods
13. Chemistry for brain enhancement
14. Web 17.0
15. Integrated life-long learning systems
16. Programs aimed at eliminating prejudice and hate
17. E-Teaching
18. Smarter than human computers
19. Artificial microbes enhance intelligence
Figure 23. Likelihood of Education Possibilities, 2030
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Advances throughout history have created gaps between early adapters who can afford the
initially higher costs and those who cannot. Many participants in this study warned that serious
efforts will have to be made to prevent dangerous knowledge and intelligence gaps leading to
unstable conditions. Policymakers should develop ways to encourage broad democratic usage of
these new powers without letting their abuse by the few disadvantage the many. Over the last
several years, the digital gap has begun to narrow, giving hope that greater decentralization,
access, transparency, and proliferation of feedback mechanisms can address these concerns.
Although many comments from the international panel could be grouped into advances for
individual learning or group learning, the overall picture of the future is so extraordinarily rich
and complex that both approaches can be accommodated.
If educational policymakers believe these results, what steps should they consider today? To
answer this, the respondents were encouraged to provide judgments about factors that could help
or hinder the possibilities and, assuming they occurred, to consider the consequences that might
follow. This chapter lists the possibilities in the order in which they were presented in the
questionnaire (together with the references provided to the participants in the questionnaire),
with a distillation of the pattern of both positive and negative features of these possibilities. The
full text of the responses is presented in CD Chapter 5, Education and Learning 2030.
Each possibility is assessed in terms of:
What might make this happen?
What prevents this from happening?
What are some positive consequences?
What are some negative consequences?
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1. National programs for improving collective intelligence
By 2030 some richer as well as lower-income countries have made improving collective
intelligence a national goal; this includes improving individual capabilities as well as intelligence
for their nations as a whole. 1
The widespread realization that collective intelligence provides a political and economic
advantage in an increasingly knowledge- and creativity-oriented globalized economy will lead to
the adoption of this national objective. In addition, it should also improve the general functioning
of society and social well-being and should reduce the fear of falling behind. Some respondents
saw this as inevitable due to the continuing advances of ICT, the continuation of Moore’s Law,
and the general public’s increasingly easy use of the Internet. CI will become a new buzzword,
with major academic institutions using it as a strategic research focus and demonstrating that it is
the next logical step in social-technological evolution. Downloadable open source prototypes for
collective intelligence by MIT or similar institutions and the promotion of successful experiences
such as Wikipedia and Google will also help.
Countries with leaders who respect and encourage free thought and the rights of the individual
might announce this goal first, especially Asian countries that want increased respect and
economic power. But it might also take complex and urgent national and international problems
and disasters to get CI accepted as a national goal. Increasing and intense international
competition among countries might also tend to develop the concept of competitive human
capital within national education programs. Another way to foster CI is the pursuit of nationally
important projects like landing on the moon, especially if the process is equitable in mobilizing
many people to ensure collective solidarity. Finally, the increasing volume and complexity of
knowledge will continue to drive the world toward collective intelligence approaches.
More people will work together to solve problems. It should make large-scale intelligenceimproving programs possible, which will improve national economies and reduce the rich-poor
gap. It should stimulate more meaningful participation of civil society in national intelligence
and reduce repetition, overlap, and confusion with information pollution and overload. Virtual
learning and decisionmaking communities could gradually supplant nation-states in effective
decisionmaking, increasing social stability. Human life would be more civilized and Earth’s
resources might be more treasured, with better protection of the environment.
A smarter society will reduce some of the costs of low-cognition individuals (in terms of crime,
wasted education effort, failed social projects), increase the number of people able to handle
1
RT Delphi references: October 13, 2006, MIT opened a new Center for Collective Intelligence; “Examples of
Collective Intelligence,” in Handbook of Collective Intelligence (Wiki), hosted by MIT Center for Collective
Intelligence; “Are Dramatic Increases in Collective Human-Machine Intelligence Plausible within 25 Years? Yes –
70%,” Millennium Project Delphi, ACUNU, 2003.
73
more complex work, and might attract more creative people. It might vigorously promote the
reformation of the educational system and the development of education. Research is continuing
to show that learning is fundamentally a social process. Open-source, knowledge creation
communities and mass collaborations have resulted in very widely used information, social
sharing, and learning resources such as Wikipedia, YouTube, MySpace, FaceBook, and
SecondLife. Learning will be primarily accomplished on the Web, as continuation of new
structured knowledge is developed on the Web by Wikipedia-like collectives that will allow
people to do a self-assessment of prior knowledge and then be placed into the particular
knowledge continuum just where they need to be in order to progress in a guided learning
experience at their own pace of learning.
Some ideologies make intervention into cognition politically controversial. These include issues
involving group cognitive differences, gender differences, the heritability of cognitive abilities,
the use of biomedicine for enhancement, and the relationship between individual and state. The
lack of a single decision point for a curriculum tends to increase the number of people involved
in the decision who could defeat the idea, such as politicians fighting globalization, religious
groups with conservative views, and others who do not want a change in the status quo.
Some other perceptions that might prevent this possibility are escalating costs with benefits too
far in the future to be seen as “real,” romantic anti-science backlash focusing on feelings, the
inability to make major changes in beliefs about how learning and value creation really happen,
the lack of interest in long-term projects, and “conspiracy theories” about methods of increasing
intelligence. War, famine, pandemics, economic depression, social convulsion, disease, poverty,
ignorance, religious prejudices, and other disruptions could hamper efforts to improve collective
intelligence, potentially resulting in a vicious cycle and self-destruction.
Countries that do not pursue increasing intelligence as a national goal are likely to have slower
economic growth, leading to “intelligence divides,” growing gaps between the rich and poor, and
massive inferiority complexes and depression about “falling behind.” If techniques were
manipulated, it could lead to vicious competition, ignoring basic education, controlling choices,
invading privacy, and regimenting thoughts. Psychological effects of diminishing individuality
and authorship could cause a student revolt against being part of a “collective.” If improved
cognition reduced acceptance of traditional values it might be politically disruptive, while other
forms of cognition enhancement might be supplied with subtle or not-so-subtle attempts at
manipulation toward ideological ends.
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2. Just-in-time knowledge and learning
Rote learning has diminished in importance by 2030. With ubiquitous computing and education
for life-long learning, “just-in-time knowledge” has become the norm. 2
This might happen due to a failure of rote learning to achieve educational objectives, the desire
for personalized learning, continued advances in artificial intelligence, and the realization that
this it the only way to keep up with rapidly changing knowledge in all fields. Life is too complex
to know what a person needs to know and when you need to know it, so this will occur by
necessity. Infrastructures will be built for teachers and students to use 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week, worldwide.
The confluence of advances in nanotechnology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and avatarbased synthetic online worlds will make education more experiential and engaging by 2030. Rote
learning will continue because it “trains” the brain, but “just-in-time knowledge” works because
it gets us what we want. The need to be constantly updated on new knowledge and developments
will require transferring the teaching from specific subjects to the subjects needed for specific
purposes, with fast, practical learning procedures and new methods of teaching. We will need to
learn more about how to learn and how to use information, and we will spend less time on
learning specific information or subjects.
Anyone anywhere will have access to the education they want where this is implemented. People
will become more self-confident and empowered, businesses will be more efficient, countries
will improve their economic development, and societies will be more practical, efficient, and
harmonious. Education and training costs will be lowered. It will be easier to change jobs, taking
greater advantage of human resources. Rote learning will continue to diminish, leaving room for
reflective thinking, which is the cornerstone of significant learning.
Just-in-time knowledge and learning might greatly improve human competence and intelligence,
enhance democracy by creating a more educated public, increase the number of responsible
global citizens, accelerate the creation of advanced knowledge and learning networks, reduce the
“power” of academic arrogance, and initiate another Renaissance. Much of traditional education
will be replaced by Web-based, managed learning provided by open source collaboratives or
vendors who compete in delivering measurable knowledge acquisition and retention, with speed
and effectiveness as the basis of their payment. Teachers and students must be part of a team
where the teacher is a coordinator of information collection.
2
RT Delphi references: Monica Sambataro, “Just-in-Time Learning,” Computerworld, 3 April 2000; Just-in-Time
Education: Learning in the Global Information Age, 2000; “Just-in-time Learning: The Acquisition of Knowledge or
Skills as They Are Needed,” at Word Spy, posted 1 June 1998.
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The technological collapse of the Internet could stop this from happening; too much computer
hacking, information manipulation, and other forms of information warfare would make people
uncertain of what to trust. The costs might be prohibitive. Ignorant, backward, stubborn
prejudices within traditional education systems, where the teacher is the only active subject and
the student a passive element, along with conservative religious leaders, could discourage this
development. Worries about bias and shallowness, as well as problems in teaching robust
information gathering skills, might also slow its adaptation.
In a world where everybody can look like a specialist, there will be more risk of decisions being
made on shaky grounds and less respect for true expertise, and there would be fewer good ways
of validating actual competence. Slow and old educational validation systems may slow the
adoption of this possibility.
Just-in-time knowledge and learning could produce a very practical but a very superficial world
of knowledge. Innovation could suffer. This could create poor learning habits; self-centered lazy
thinking; a public less engaged in the political process, leading to more government control; the
inability to see the “big picture” for the good of the planet; and a reduction in problem-solving
reasoning, much like many people’s current inability to concentrate or focus on a topic in-depth
without intermission or a commercial break. Some rote learning will be necessary to reduce these
negative consequences.
While this development could certainly lead to advances in science and technology, fields like
history and civics might suffer. It would increase the rich-poor gaps, since it might be impossible
for lower-income countries to implement. Those with the advanced technologies for “just-in-time
learning” will evolve differently from those in the least-advanced societies caught in the divide
and left behind.
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3. Individualized education
Through tests of various sorts, including simulations, the needs of individual students are being
assessed, and curricula and instructional methods are being tailored to individual students. It is
recognized by 2030 that all students have special needs, and these needs are being largely met in
many places in the world. 3
The convergence of advances in the Internet, cognitive sciences, medicine, artificial intelligence,
continuation of Moore’s Law, just-in-time learning, and the success of the $100 laptop will make
this more available. Young people who want to function more intelligently and teachers with
advanced technology skills are already driving this process.
If facilitated by mentors, it could be the core of the new educational paradigm. The proper use of
IT and “coaching on-line” to address individual learning not only in elementary, secondary, and
tertiary education but also of adults for “life-long learning” should be included. This can also be
made more likely by the assumption that everyone is potentially a genius and that each genius is
different from the others, by teachers who awaken the curiosity and creativity in each student, by
improved low-cost individualized educational software, by the proliferation of reusable learning
modules at all levels of society, and by standards and single-sourcing for learning modules at all
levels, so that there is no confusion or overlap in what has been learned.
This should lead to more satisfied students, greater respect for individual uniqueness and
innovative achievements, changes in ideas about equal schooling rights, better use of genetic
information to customize learning, and more special “geniuses” nurtured to their potential. The
academic arrogance about who should be taught could also be reduced.
Increasing numbers of people will be leaders in different aspects of life. Leaders will need people
among themselves to be coaches and referees to help teams work effectively and competition to
be fair and to help different teams to be able to live together.
This can be blocked from happening by new ideological or religious movements that sweep the
world into mono-thematic curricula, lower student-teacher ratios that could raise costs too high
for poorer educational systems to afford, teacher shortages, standardized examinations, teacher
unions that abhor the prospect of rewarding their superior colleagues, difficulties in reliable
diagnoses and evaluation of results, and the desire to preserve standard courses based on a lower
than average student capability, giving priority to teaching material rather than learning. Until
teachers have tools to read students’ minds, there cannot be fully “individualized” education.
Since learning is a social activity, there will continue to be needs for common goals for learning.
3
3 RT Delphi references: Individualized Education Plans, 2003; “Special Education Resources on the Internet,” at
seriweb.com, 2001.
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Widespread use of very individualized learning could reduce social cohesion; individualized
learning could lead to more individualized versus team or group actions within society. Such
individuals could create new ways of learning that might divide society over how best to conduct
education. The results of individualized education depend upon the intellect, objectivity,
empathy, and intent of the people involved and the artificial intelligence systems used. This
could be a great way to “brainwash” people into adopting a particular ideology or way of
acting.
4. Use of simulations
In 2030, virtual reality simulations with programmed learning are available and used
internationally, accounting for nearly a third of the tele-educational experience in elementary and
secondary schools. These simulations allow people to progress at their own pace, alone or in
groups. They are designed on the basis of insights derived from cognitive science. They diagnose
and adapt to the individual’s or the group’s learning style and need for hints and other forms of
prompts. This is a means of providing artificial experience and social experimentation in a safe
environment. 4
This could be made possible by the interplay of the VR game industry and educational systems;
leadership willing to commit the funds over enough time to demonstrate the benefits; the
continued advance of Moore’s Law, nano processes, increased bandwidth, popularization of
high-tech VR; the spread of video games and easy-to-use software creation tools (will X Bot
become a teaching tool?); growing acceptance and participation in simulated societies like
Second Life; the use of wiki-like approaches to creating simulations for specific learning
environments; the application of new insights from cognitive science; and the needs of the
knowledge economy. Simulations of all kinds are a widespread and vital part of military training
today.
As scientific collaboratories force standardization of data and simulation formats, educational
simulations can be a lowered-cost by-product. Costs could also be lowered by global cooperation
and subsidized wiki-like development of simulations, with common modules used worldwide.
Future generations of Second Life–type simulations could also lower educational subsidies as
these applications become commercialized. Open source standards should be considered for
educational simulation software to become more accessible. Computer-smart students will be
best reached through the uses of social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, which will
morph into avatar-based VR worlds. VR design and implementation costs are going to improve,
4
RT Delphi references: Jong-Heon Kim et al., “Virtual Reality Simulations in Physics Education,” IMEJ
(Interactive Multimedia Electronic Journal), undated; “Virtual Reality: History,” Science for the Millennium,
National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois, 1995; “Virtual Reality,” at Wikipedia.
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and once the interface becomes more natural, the numbers of people using many new
applications will accelerate around the world.
This immersive experiential learning will have a continually growing impact, increasing the
number of truly educated people, opening eyes to new experiences, stimulating creativity,
improving tacit knowledge of the behavior of complex systems, providing space for individual
personality development, and furthering the evolution of humanity. It will challenge people to
believe that if a problem can be solved in virtual reality, then in can be solved in the “real
world.”
Simulations can satisfy both individual needs and collective learning experiences. Continuous
real-time science, governance, and learning simulations will connect real-time public intelligence
and information to government budgets, making simulations a basis for dialog and decision.
Simulations will become a more normal mode of interaction, lowering costs of high performance
hardware. This will evolve into new forms of individualized educational platforms.
See Holopticism at www.thetransitioner.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Holopticism.
Concerns about video game violence, limited home access or understanding by parents, lack of
leadership, high costs, difficulties of implementation, and disagreements about what values and
content to include could inhibit acceptance of simulations. Serious VR educational applications
are more difficult to create than that experienced today in Second Life.
This could lead to cyber “addiction,” loss of touch with reality and face-to-face human contact,
and disconnections between learning in simulations and actual activities in reality. Cults of
brilliant but socially backward individuals with little sense of team spirit and sharing could grow.
It could also limit thinking about possibilities in the “real world” to those options offered in the
“virtual reality” systems. It might encourage selfish and unrealistic perceptions as people achieve
status in cyberspace that they cannot achieve in reality. It could limit the face-to-face
communications needed especially by younger people, even though simulations will become
very vivid. To make educational simulations universally acceptable, they could become shallow,
conveying little sensibility and moral character, and could be poorly used by teachers who do not
add the complexity and interactivity of real experiments that can be lacking in “edutainment.”
The gap between the nations, regions, and cultures that use simulations and those that do not will
widen through time. There could be a backlash to this trend. Some groups will assert the value of
“real” interaction and deny the benefits of virtual simulations. Whether this backlash becomes
violent will partly depend on the proportion of the population with access to this technology.
Cyber crimes and purposeful design of immersive VR technologies to negatively influence
human behaviors are also possible. See Edward Castronova’s excellent book Synthetic Worlds.
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5. Continuous evaluation of individual learning processes designed to prevent
people from growing unstable or becoming mentally ill
The objective of these programs, which have appeared in several countries, is to identify persons
who seem likely in later life to exhibit antisocial behavior, including terrorist activities and
violent criminality. Special nurturing programs are provided to people identified in this way to
help keep them from becoming unstable or mentally ill in later life. 5
The increasing awareness that single individuals can become massively destructive (SIMAD)
could bring this about, but great care should be taken to ensure that these activities are in the
public interest and that they do not drift into totalitarian applications. Perfecting the theory and
methods of psychological evaluation and the use of Mallow’s hierarchy of needs should guide
the development of such programs. The evaluation systems would have to be validated by many
individuals, and the samples would have to be significant. The programs will have to be selfevidently beneficial and very creative and engaging to encourage widespread adoption.
If developed in a humane environment, this activity could identify young people at risk. Alice
Walker’s work showed that those who led troubled lives but still did well had one thing in
common: they all had found someone who loved them. A program like this could identify and
match such young people with appropriate mentors.
This could help make for more harmonious and stable societies; reduce social problems like
suicide, drug abuse, and terrorism; provide deeper knowledge of human nature; and increase
investments into preventive mental health and medicines. It could also be a relatively
inexpensive way to deal with certain mental health issues—especially as people live longer.
Perceptions that this could be a one-time classification system used by governments to control or
eliminate deviant behavior or that it could be implemented by more dictatorial paranoid societies
to reduce creativity and innovation could prevent this from happening. All geniuses are always a
little crazy! Although proposed with good intentions, it is full of too many negatives such as
“profiling” to find universal acceptance. Antisocial behavior, including terrorist activities and
violent criminality, is not just a problem of individual nurture; it also has social causations. No
one knows how to do this, especially to make it work in very large populations. The increasing
evidence that most mental illness has a genetic or physiological cause indicates that these
programs might have limited effectiveness compared with genomic analysis.
5
RT Delphi references: Jean-Pierre Voyer, “The Pre-conditions for a Constructive Social Inclusion Research
Agenda,” presented 27 March 2003.
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This program might result in group speak, less privacy, reduced freedom of speech and thought,
and the strengthening of intelligence-gathering/police organizations in nation-states with the
worst histories of human rights violations. This could lead to neo-socialist realism, preventing
more new forms of art.
Some of the world’s brightest thinkers would have been classified in a negative fashion by such
programs. What would have happened to them and their breakthroughs? In the future, if we
begin to “cure” or isolate individuals with deviant personalities, are we going to destroy
something that could have been of benefit to the world? Who decides what is “deviant”?
6. Improved individual nutrition
Self-administered diagnostic tests identify individualized nutrition requirements for improved
cognitive development. These tests are used in the more affluent areas and are beginning to be
used in lower-income areas with government and insurance company support. 6
Alliances among health insurance companies, education programs, and businesses could promote
self-administered tests and help educate the consumer about new nutritional foods. Insurance
companies could lower premiums to those who use the tests and new foods. Scientific
breakthroughs in nutrition, DNA testing, improved understanding of the “nature and nurture”
factors in health, individualized medicine, and “nutrigenomics” would also increase the chances
of this possibility. NGOs and UN agencies would be necessary to help in poor countries.
This could greatly improve a nation’s health and cognitive development, reduce the cost of
health care, and increase longevity and physical strength and performance.
Improved individual nutrition could be blocked by poverty, cultures with bad nutrition habits,
lack of political will, the costs of converting food production to more individualized and
nutritious foods, and the fear that the diagnostics could be faulty. (Yet the overall beneficial
effects of full and diverse nutrition may overshadow the high cost-benefit of individual effects.)
It may not be financially possible for poorer areas. The sensual pleasure of inherited eating habits
could override such prescriptions. If DNA tests were required, then some people will oppose it.
6
RT Delphi references: “Foods for Thought: Foods that Build and Foods that Drain the Brain,” at AskDrSears.com,
2000; “Foods and Vitamins that Help Brain Development and Repair Damage,” at Yourfamilyclinic.com, undated;
U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, “Fish is Food for the Brain as well as Good Protein,” Focus: Fisheries and
Food Security, undated.
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This could further the separation between rich people who can afford special diets and the poor
people who can’t.
7. Genetically increased intelligence
Genes that contribute to increasing intelligence and learning have been identified and used by
many parents in the upper and middle classes of the world to change the potential intelligence of
their future children. Treatments have been subsidized for many people in poorer regions. 7
Future synergies among neurosciences and genetics, parents who want a better life for their
children, and initial successes of cognitive enhancements through pharmaceuticals could make
this happen. The main form of near-future genetic intelligence enhancement would be
Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis, selecting away genes involved in pathologically lower
intelligence. This would lead to a reduced number of the lowest performing, in turn increasing
the average. But PGD would have to become more common, which requires improvements in
technology, automation of the process to bring down the price, creation of standards that make
different treatments comparable, and, most important, attitudinal shifts that make genetic
selection more acceptable.
Genetic enhancement of intelligence should be combined into a single procedure that would also
affect genes associated with criminal behavior. Just as we “correct” our eyesight with glasses, we
should also correct our low intelligence. Once a safe procedure is available for increasing
intelligence, parents will take their child to the country that offers it first. Genetically increased
intelligence should be accompanied with or preceded by the development of social ethics,
acceptance of differences, and respect for others.
This could cure mentally retarded children. As with most advances, richer people would have
this for their children, but eventually the price will come down to make future generations more
intelligent.
Insufficient progress in genetics, high costs, the fear of genetic mutations caused by incorrect use
of genetic technology, and the belief that life is an unalterable gift from God will discourage this
path.
7
RT Delphi references: Wesley Smith, “Biohazards,” San Francisco Chronicle, 6 November 2005; João Pedro de
Magalhães, “Defining Our Children’s Traits,” 2006; Everett Mendelsohn, “The Eugenic Temptation,” Harvard
Magazine, March-April 2000.
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Naive selection criteria may lead to favoring a few detectable “intelligence genes” although they
do not represent the full range of human capacity (on the other hand, even assuming broad
approval and use of the technology, this limitation is unlikely to affect a very large number of
people by 2030).
It could increase the rich-poor gap, possibly leading to a divided society of intelligent managers
and less intelligent consumers, or it could be used by future dictatorships wishing to manipulate
people or develop a “super race” or to provide “world leaders.” Children might no longer have
“time” to be children.
8. Use of global on-line simulations as a primary social science research tool
Virtual realities like Second Life—which opened in 2003 and by mid-2007 had nearly 7 million
inhabitants—are used by leading cognitive scientists, curriculum experts, and behavioral
scientists to evolve the equivalent of natural laws for social behavior and new tele-virtual
educational simulations. In these e-universes, people act as societies, form laws, build new
cultures, and provide a way to experiment with the glue of society without the concerns that
might accompany human experimentation. 8
Initial use may be for business market research and political forecasting, and then when the cost
comes down it could be used in teaching social science. This will evolve naturally from
phenomena such as Second Life.
It could reduce research costs, provide superb “strawmen” for comparative analysis, and
stimulate the imagination to promote development of creative cultures. Anyone anywhere will
have access to advanced social science research education.
It is almost impossible to reproduce real social situations in cyberspace. People may not provide
enough accurate information for the simulations, hence reducing their value. Acceptable controls
using such tools may be a bit of challenge. Abuse of people in cyberspace is possible, the same
way experimenters have abused humans in research in the past. If results show that political
directions are headed in the “wrong” directions, then future applications could be suppressed.
8
RT Delphi references: Home Page, at secondlife.com; Annalee Newitz, “Your Second Life is Ready,” Popular
Science, September 2006; “Artificial Worlds Used to Unlock Secrets of Real Human Interaction,” Cornell News,
14 February 2003.
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Virtual realities could result in a kind of split personality—one focused in the cyber world and
the other in the conventional world—that could work against the evolution of human society.
“Second Life” could have conflicts with real life in culture, ethics, morality, and other aspects.
9. Use of public communications to reinforce pursuit of knowledge
In 2030, social marketing of learning concepts or memes is widespread. Some of the themes
have been: Intelligence is Sexy, Knowledge is Cool, Knowledge Matters, and Ignorance Equals
Poverty. Public media leaders often meet with educational leaders, cognitive scientists, and
entertainers to discuss promoting the message that learning is a central pursuit of life. 9
With the coming knowledge-based economies, the importance of knowledge and intelligence
would be highlighted, and the media and entertainment industries could be enlisted to play a role
in the pursuit of knowledge, such as Project Red for AIDS with Bono of the rock group U2.
Informal meetings like this already happen in the United States with the Ad Council, so it seems
likely that in 25 years public communications will be even more widespread.
It should promote the development of people’s imagination, creativity, and innovation; produce a
better-educated population and improve the knowledge economy; enhance democratic
governments and promote the general well-being of societies; and be an essential part of
reducing poverty, increasing social justice, and accelerating progress.
This approach could be prevented by too many diverging viewpoints within the media, public
conformism, and lack of a professional ethic within the public media. Societies would have to
become more pro-education first. With the success of individualized learning there might not be
as much need for public media, and it could be seen as a new form of social engineering by less
enlightened governments and therefore would be opposed by free societies.
The messages might become dull and overused, negatively reinforcing education.
9
RT Delphi references: “Social Marketing,” Social Marketing Institute, at social-marketing.org; “Social
Marketing,” at Wikipedia; “Practice Areas: Social Marketing,” Communications at CDC, Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, 23 July 2003.
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10. Portable artificial intelligence devices
In 2030, most people carry tiny computers that contain extensive personal memories and interact
with their owners in human fashion. Meet a person on the street and the earbuds whisper, on the
basis of facial pattern recognition, “that’s Billy Johnson whom you met at a party three years
ago. He is a pilot and his wife’s name is Angie.” More seriously, the machine also participates in
personal decisionmaking and in the on-the-spot need for information. Some individuals have
been technologically augmented with nanobots, brain chips, and nanotech transceivers in
clothing. 10
Maturity of recognition technology (voice, face, and retina, etc.), nanobots, brain chips, and other
forms of nanotech transceivers used by early adopters among very rich individuals will make this
happen.
These devices will improve memory, analysis, and decisionmaking and will make human
competence advance rapidly. Naturally, the richer nations will get this first, but just like the hand
calculator, as the price comes down the usage will spread worldwide.
People’s lives and experiences will be recorded, allowing them to better manage their lives, learn
from their experiences, and re-live their happier experiences as they grow older. Personal AI
should also reduce crime significantly. Imagine a very advanced Google in your pocket that you
ask to identify someone walking down the street or point out others in the area with similar
interests. The AI devices may also tell you with whom to interact and help you to interact with
them.
Complexity of facial pattern recognition and privacy issues involved in face recognition and
other information requirements for decision-making could restrict this. Certain uses of the
devices might be restricted because of defense and military intelligence considerations.
Potential loss of privacy, continually arising ethical issues, a widening of the rich-poor gap,
potential uses by criminals, a race to build portable “anti-artificial intelligence devices” to protect
privacy, and reduced intellectual and emotional capabilities of people who have become
dependent on these devices are among the potential negative consequences.
10
RT Delphi references: Artificial Intelligence Center, SRI International, at www.ai.sri.com; MIT Computer
Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, at www.csail.mit.edu/index.php; Journal of Artificial Intelligence
Research, at www.jair.org.
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11. Complete mapping of human synapses to discover how learning occurs and
thereby develop strategies for improvement of learning
Just as the gene was decoded, so was the connection pattern of the synapses in the human brain.
From this complex map came information about cognitive development, intelligence, and
emotion, about how to design artificially intelligent machines, and ultimately about how to
improve the speed and depth of learning. 11
The realization that increased intelligence is the key competitive advantage in the knowledge
economy will stimulate massive brain research by several countries that fund the research over
sufficient time to make breakthroughs. The Allen Brain Atlas project (an interactive, genomewide image database of gene expression in the mouse brain) is an example of what is quickly
happening in neuroscience. Complete understanding of mental functioning requires
improvements in dynamic scanning methods (like extending the scope and resolution of such
techniques beyond what we now have in functional MRI), database management, image
processing, computational neuroscience, and automated research that may not be enough to
finish the job by 2030. Nevertheless, even partial results are likely to produce important
neuroscience insights about learning. Advances in complexity theory, acceptance that it will take
incremental advances to achieve this, and the need to make great advances would also help to
bring this about.
A more complete understanding of neuroscience could result in extraordinary progress in
robotics and could empower most fields of cognition, from AI to learning enhancement drugs. It
would be a great advance in life sciences, provide a qualitative leap in learning theory and
human and machine intelligence, and establish a significant benchmark in human history.
This is a very complex task, which could be blocked by the belief that it is far too complex and
expensive to complete in 25 years. Other inhibiting factors include the belief that intelligence
and emotions go far beyond patterns of synapses or that insights from this research might not be
very helpful in understanding how learning occurs on a personal level for an individual. The
dominant educational establishment and ethical issues over human testing could also prevent
this.
11
RT Delphi references: T. H. Murphy, J. M. Baraban, and W. G. Wier, “Mapping Miniature Synaptic Currents to
Single Synapses Using Calcium Imaging Reveals Heterogeneity in Postsynaptic Output,” Neuron 15 (1995), pp.
159–68; Society for Neuroscience, “Scientists Map Maturation of the Human Brain; Make Advances in
Understanding the Lasting Effects of Stress, Nicotine and Alcohol,” press release, 8 November 2003; Allen Institute
for Brain Science, at www.alleninstitute/content/about_the_institute.htm.
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If this were to occur, it could result in the abuse of power and prestige by the scientists and
doctors at its forefront and a series of problems with human and animal testing. It might also
trivialize human emotion and being––is love only a set of chemical reactions?
12. Means for keeping adult brains healthier for longer periods
In 2030 there are techniques for keeping adult brains healthier during the aging process. For
example, adult neural stem cells have been cloned and injected into adult brains to keep them far
healthier for longer times than formerly believed possible, making old age learning and an older
knowledge-based workforce possible. 12
Rising standards of living, aging populations with increasing political power, and falling fertility
rates will speed medical science to make this possible. People used to think that adults could not
grow new nerve cells. Research has now shown that new brain cells are created every day. Many
of the new cells born each day die off, but exercise and a more stimulating environment reduce
the death rate of brain cells. Some research indicates that continued adult learning may be
associated with the growth of new brain cells. Research in neurogenesis (adult growth of new
brain cells) should keep brains healthy longer, certainly by 2030, and this is only one line of
research. Adult brains will stay healthier longer as a result of training, biofeedback, behavior
modifications, medications, and other stimulants. These processes may make people “better than
well.”
This has the potential for elimination of brain diseases, including mental illness and Alzheimer’s
and Parkinson’s diseases, hence avoiding large numbers of elderly with dementia while adding
the elderly to the workforce, which would reduce the economic impact of falling fertility rates.
Some developments in cognitive sciences could be delayed by people believing it is not possible
and hence not investing in the necessary research, ethical issues, ageist assumptions that decline
is inevitable, and the fear of tampering with “order of nature” and the brain—the most complex
structure in the known universe. The potential costs could limit the widespread use of the
relevant techniques to extend brain functioning. Techniques like functional magnetic resonance
imaging may take longer than expected to produce results.
12
RT Delphi references: Monika Guttman, “The Aging Brain,” USC Health, spring 2001; Brain Aging International
Journal, at www.brainaging.ro/Pub-BAJ.htm; “With Few Factors, Adult Cells Take on Characteristics of Embryonic
Stem Cells,” Medical News Today, 14 August 2006.
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This development could leave a group of non-treatable elderly behind, while vital elderly might
feel locked out of a youth-directed society, possibly becoming discontented, forming isolated
subcultures, or enduring other imbalances in the quality of life.
13. Chemistry for brain enhancement
Brain chemistry research has led to safe drugs that enhance intelligence, improve memory,
increase attention span, and improve visual acuity and hand/eye coordination. 13
Changes in the perception of enhancement are needed for this to happen, and development of an
“enhancement culture” among people will be needed to set the social norms of when the drugs
are proper or not proper to use. Positive evaluation of the ethical consequences, current research
by DARPA spreading to civilian uses, and increased awareness of sources such as Brain Drug
Targeting: The Future of Brain Drug Development, by William M. Pardridge, will increase the
likelihood of this possibility. Ritilin, Valium, and Prozac are examples of new psychoactive
drugs that do not “enhance” human intelligence but allow a person to function normally, despite
mental problems. Adrenalin has been used to erase traumatic memories.
This could result in enhanced human intelligence and physical functioning, plus the positive
consequences described for keeping adult brains healthier longer.
Medical regulations on testing and marketing, ethics of usage, suspicion of drugs, the high value
placed on “the natural,” medical monopolies, and the fear of the unknown effects of “wonder
drugs” would discourage the possibility.
Thinking that “miracle drugs” will solve all human problems will yield dangerous consequences,
such as luring people into a competitive drug race, overdosing, and ignoring the complexity of
the human psyche.
13
RT Delphi references: “Psychoactive Drug,” at Wikipedia; “Psychotropic Drugs,” World Health Organization, at
www.who.int/topics/psychotropic_drugs/en; “Psychotropic Drugs and Children: Use, Trends, and Implications for
Schools,” Center for Health and Health Care in Schools, George Washington University, Washington, DC,
December 2004.
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14. Web 17.0
By 2030 the trend toward data integration on the Web that started around the turn of the century
(Google Earth, Wikipedia, the MIT course material) has progressed to the point that a large part
of the world’s knowledge—data, analyses, discussions—has been integrated into Semantic Web
17.0. That structure is organized according to a logical framework of concepts (both precise and
fuzzy ones), has a natural language interface, is dynamically maintained, and contains an
intelligent subsystem that “understands” the logical rules that govern the interactions of entities.
The interface makes heavy use of virtual reality–type graphic techniques for presenting
knowledge and processes. 14
The progression from teaching children to teaching adults, and then to self-directed learning,
together with progress in semantic analysis and the realization that knowledge must be worked
on cooperatively, will make Web 17.0 the place where people go to learn whenever and however
they choose.
Web 17.0 should make the networks intelligent, make query and analysis more exact, break
down barriers to knowledge cooperation, stimulate co-creation for massive co-development, and
reduce complexity, confusion, chaos, and error. It could change the economic paradigm of
payment for access to intellectual property to the paradigm of income from the “act of
knowledge working” with some shared property. Douglas Englebart’s Open Hypertextdocument
System and Pierre Levy’s Information Economy Meta Language could combine with XML Geo
and other open innovations to allow people to immerse themselves in the diversity of
information, inclusive of historical information, multicultural and alternative perspectives, realtime serious games/games for change, and practical rigorous dialog and consensus building.
Human collective consciousness will greatly advance, as networked intelligence is always on and
instantly accessible and ways of knowing are no longer a struggle.
The current illegal and unethical uses of the Internet are likely to increase if more ethical means
are not implemented. Some bottlenecks would be the ability for improved semantic analysis,
“individualistic vs. group solutions,” and industries that fight open source software initiatives.
New kinds of viruses and methods of manipulating information delivery could be used to distort
knowledge on the Semantic Web by those who don’t like the new knowledge. In the past,
cigarette companies distorted cancer research, today an oil company is distorting global warming
14
RT Delphi references: William E. Halal, “The Intelligent Internet,” Government Computer News, 23 June 2004;
Bill Gates, “Now for an Intelligent Internet,” reprinted from the Economist Group, Microsoft, November 2000;
Artificial Intelligence Foundation, at alice.pandorabots.com.
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research, and in the future some groups might want to distort research that counters their
ideologies. As ideological wars were fought by industrial means in Korea and Vietnam, future
ideological wars could be fought by information warfare means yet to be invented, making the
Semantic Web a battle zone and hence less trusted. Major geopolitical problems, terrorism,
ideological conflicts, and even open source arguments could become foci for, or versions of,
information warfare.
15. Integrated life-long learning systems
In 2030 education ranges across all age groups—from prenatal programs to programs for the
elderly that provide knowledge, work, and leisure enjoyment. 15
Life-long learning is already a trend reinforced by longevity as well as by the further
development of knowledge and learning society; Elderhostel is a contemporary example. To
some degree the Internet is providing life-long learning now, although few see it that way yet.
More people are devoted to education (teaching and learning) for more years than ever before in
history. Improved classification of competences required by different occupations for all age
groups, a better understanding of how we learn from elementary school on up, and increased
attention to the spiritual needs of people via more humanistic educational approaches would
promote the emergence of such a possibility.
The positive impacts include reformation of education, increased curiosity, and selfimprovement and learning becoming more a part of life, helping the evolution of society. Greater
attention will be paid to prenatal care as a necessary condition for better overall physical and
mental performance.
Economic and cultural retrogression, growing generation gaps, and the widening divides
between rich and poor could increase conflicts that would interrupt the evolution of education.
Too much dependence on computers and learning systems that might suffocate people if they are
too conservative and the educational managers are too complacent. It could also create a gap
between those who use the systems and those who opt out.
15
RT Delphi references: “Elderhostel: Adventures in Lifelong Learning,” at www.elderhostel.org; Senior Strategies:
The STEP (Students, Teachers, Elderly, Parents, Student Achievement) Program, Home and School Institute,
Washington, DC, 1983; “Life in the USA: New Careers an Education,” at www.lifeintheusa.com/aging.careers.htm
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16. Programs aimed at eliminating prejudice and hate
Psychologists in 2030 believe that many wars and extremist activities are fueled by overt or
subtle teachings of parents, peers, and teachers. Significant efforts have been made to reduce
these influences in the education of young people. 16
Universal curricula created by some internationally accepted body like UNESCO or Wikipedia
8.0 is more likely to be universally accepted and used by parties to an educational treaty. It has to
be developed with the sense that it will be taught in Chicago as well as Jeddah. Curricula should
include emotional as well as intellectual development and acknowledgement of the individual’s
potential to contribute to society, as well as a respect for cultural diversity, the value of “soft”
knowledge, and more accurate history. In addition, better integration of insights from psychology
would contribute to understanding the need for unlearning, re-cognition, and commitments to
new beliefs and emotional change. Special attention should be given to the learning that occurs
during adolescence, when students form their personal philosophies and world views. Reduction
of violence in media and entertainment would help the curricula be more effective.
Society becomes more auspicious, respectful, democratic, free, equitable, harmonious, and
stable. Such programs are essential for the survival of humanity as increasingly destructive
capabilities become more available to small groups and individuals.
If it is created within an atmosphere of “I will tell you how to teach your children,” it will fail.
As long as there are significant gaps between rich and poor and limited resources, prejudice and
hate will continue to be inflamed by extremists. Some governments will want to intervene and
control people’s behavior. It may take at least a generation beyond the Westphalian “state-aboveall”; thereafter, there may be “space” to begin significant efforts to design and offer educational
means with less emphasis on extremes in society.
If it is possible to reduce or eliminate hatred and prejudice, then it means that others can control
human minds for ill as well. For example, cult leaders, totalitarian states, or new forms of
ideological political correctness might use these methods or technologies to control the public.
16
RT Delphi references: U.S. Department of Education, Preventing Youth Hate Crimes: A Manual for Schools and
Communities, Washington, DC, undated; Kathleen Cotton, Fostering Intercultural Harmony in Schools: Research
Finding, Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, Portland, OR, November 1993; Department of Canadian
Heritage, Canada’s Fourth Report under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Gatineau, PQ,
Canada, November 2003.
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Education alone would not be enough to eliminate prejudice and hate; programs must include
specific means to achieve social justice.
17. E-Teaching
Most of the poorer areas in 2030 as well as the more affluent ones use global outsourcing for eteachers on-demand. These e-teachers are increasingly artificial constructs using artificial
intelligence rather than live humans. 17
E-teaching can be encouraged by realizing that it is good for both affluent and poorer regions of
the world, that it can make the best teachers available to many people regardless of location, and
that it can be cost-effective. It can address both the diversity in knowledge levels and the
unevenness of access to knowledge in education systems. Outsourcing to the best e-teachers will
increase their income to the point that they can hire computer programmers, cognitive scientists,
and others to make really brilliant programs to reach even more people around the world.
Continued improvements and cost reductions in virtual reality, bots, and tele-education
collaboration among educational institutions, governments, business, and NGOs will also help.
Today, Homework Help from India charges $18 an hour for tutoring on any subject. Knowledge
can be shared and built upon at no cost. The cost of communications will likely go to near zero
and the cost of e-teaching will be within the reach of all, especially if the government subsidizes
e-learning. Special interests will have to be defeated by firm and wise government policies.
E-teaching will help education to become more democratic, increase access to more people
around the world, reduce financial and environmental costs per student and thus help reduce
poverty, popularize science and culture, increase the joy of learning, facilitate the exchange of
information among educational institutions, and open new methods of education. It will also lead
to customized one-on-one instruction and make knowledge acquisition easier, faster, more
individualized, virtual, and globalized. It is likely that educational opportunities in virtual or
synthetic worlds will be continuously perfected as tools for teaching. Avatars or 3D holographic
recordings will allow top teachers to send their lessons to all, including the underprivileged.
Appropriate levels of funding and an R&D emphasis on education (not just “gaming”) could
advance this. It’s possible that by 2030 accelerating technologies could lead to a point at which
the elite will be educated in part through direct brain uploads or novel nanotechnology
applications and the people in poorer areas will have to “settle” for 3D VR teachers and learn
the “old-fashioned” way, by listening and trying to remember. The live teacher is one of the least
efficient and perhaps least effective ways of teaching; artificial constructs will become more and
more the norm.
17
17 RT Delphi references: John M. Harris, Jr., “Why We Need Better E-Teaching, Not More E-Learning,” MELD
(MedBiquitous E-Learning Discourse), 6 May 2005; “e- learning,” at Wikipedia; “Advanced Distributed Learning,”
at Wikipedia.
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E-teaching could be delayed by entrenched monopolies, educational system inertia, lack of
access to computers with high speed Internet, governments and other institutions that do not
value education enough, and the lack of cooperation in exchanging information.
Although it is a useful tool for distant publics, it may not be a substitute for face-to-face
education that provides the human dimension. The personality of teachers and experience of
interpersonal communication is an important part of the educational process; e-teaching might
not be able to take personal differences into account. Education is more than exchange of
information. The poorest areas might not be able to afford e-teachers, perpetuating the
knowledge gap.
18. Smarter than human computers
Machines in 2030 are clearly smarter than humans in any way that “smartness” can be measured.
With this threshold having been passed, the roles and methods of education and learning are
being reassessed everywhere. 18
Moore’s Law seems like a good indicator that artificial intelligence will overtake human
intelligence by 2029, as forecasted by Ray Kurzweil. In effect, the Internet is already a “smarter”
than human computer; this depends of course on how “smartness” is defined. If “smarter” means
memory or specific functions, then the Net has already surpassed the individual human brain.
Advances in the fields of artificial life and nanotechnology will continue and it is likely that
machines will pass the Turing test and extend into ways of machine “understanding” beyond
simple information processing. The fulfillment of this and other scenarios in this vision of 2030
could eliminate the need for conventional schools and human teachers. If superhuman AI
emerges, these entities are also going to require some form of education, which most likely
would be extremely different from human learning in terms of learning facts, social interactions,
relations with the physical world, and growing up from childhood to maturity.
This development could dramatically increase human development and be regarded as the best
tool or co-agent ever created by humanity. The integration of AI and the human intellect in
micro-devices would dramatically enhance the efficiency of learning and the nature of work and
would fundamentally change the methods of education and learning. This processing power may
18
RT Delphi references: The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, at
www.singinst.org/overview/whatisthesingularity; Nick Bostrom, “When Machines Outsmart Humans,” Futures
35(7) (2000), pp. 759–64; Raymond Kurzweil, “Will My PC Be Smarter Than I Am?” Time, 19 June 2000.
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yield very different kinds of “thinking” from that of humans and provide an interesting crossreference to understanding reality.
Computers may surpass “intelligence” as we define it today, but they will never be able to
compete with the other learning areas of individuals, such as emotional and social, where the
interests of individuals reside. There could be a backlash from people who feel threatened by
robots and computers that might grow beyond our ability to control or who believe that such
computers would be used by powerful evil forces. Frustration at not being able to achieve this
goal could lose support for further development, as some believe that it is impossible to make
machines that are clearly smarter than humans in any way. The knowledge and intelligence of
the physical, psychological, social, and emotional domains could be mimicked but not the
thinking intelligence. And if it could be, who would trust it?
It might increase unemployment and lead to the division of humanity between the
“technologically enhanced” and the “naturals,” a constant worry in the development of artificial
intelligence and its direct application to human beings. As the future will continue to be
“unevenly distributed”—a select few will benefit before everyone else—the outcome will
depend on the benevolence of the people in control of the technology. We might not recognize
superhuman intelligence for what it is, especially since it may be distributed and not embodied in
a single perceptible being per se, which could lead eventually to the science fiction image of
intelligent machines controlling humanity before humans realize it.
19. Artificial microbes enhance intelligence
Genetic codes have been written for new microbes that improve neural performance when cohabiting the brain. 19
Craig Venter’s work on writing genetic code to create unique lifeforms might develop some
lifeforms by 2010, then it might take another 10 years to create the microbes able to live in and
assist the brain, then yet another 10 to test this on other mammals. Hence by 2030 it could be
possible to have safe microbes assisting the brain in keeping neurons healthy. It would be wise to
dedicate some of the research money to public education, as was done for the Genome Project,
so that public understanding evolves with research developments. Gates-type foundations funded
19
RT Delphi references: Antonio Regalado, “Biologist Venter Aims to Create Life from Scratch,” Wall Street
Journal, 29 June 2005; David A. Relman, “The Human Body as Microbial Observatory,” Nature Genetics 30 (2002),
pp. 131–33; Michael Purdy, “Gut Microbes’ Partnership Helps Body Extract Energy from Food, Store It as Fat,”
press release, School of Medicine, Washington University at St. Louis, 12 June 2006.
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by the nouveau-super-riche in countries like India, Russia, and China could accelerate the
research.
Symbiotic organisms have many advantages over gene therapy, but they require ways of
circumventing the immune system. Symbiotic gut bacteria producing drugs seem very plausible
and could probably be used for enhancement. Anti-cavity mouth bacteria have already been
demonstrated. Psychopharmacology, nanobots, and computer brain interfaces may also increase
human intelligence.
This development would revolutionize life sciences. Healthy brains will last much longer,
reducing medical costs, and could make for a wiser civilization.
There is a normal “human” fear about the unknown; many people will be afraid of artificial
microbes, new bacteria, and nanobots. Those behind the anti GMO-regulations might also
oppose this, as would those who consider altering human biology unethical. (A global human
review board might be created to help prevent this.)
Microbes might mutate and cause mental disease or other unknown side effects; thus a series of
research trials over years would have to be conducted.
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In coming decades, changes in the environment—and the resulting upheavals, from droughts to
inundated coastal areas—are likely to become a major driver of war and conflict.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
“Global Warming: Confronting the Crisis” Conference
New York, March 1, 2007
Photos courtesy of: UN, NASA, and ESA
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4. Emerging Environmental Security Issues
There was a dramatic increase in world attention to climate change this year, which included
growing awareness of the potential consequences for national and international security and
stability. The increasing and overwhelming evidence for global warming, the success of Al
Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth, and China’s passing the United States in CO2 emissions
have put global climate change among the top issues on the agenda of world leaders today. As a
result, environment and security are becoming more clearly linked in the minds of citizens,
political leaders, and the media. The Secretary-General of the United Nations called climate
change a “defining issue of our era.”
Many world leaders in the UN General Assembly mentioned climate change and environmental
degradation on a par with terrorism, fair trade, AIDS, and human rights as essential issues to be
addressed by the international community. The Security Council of the United Nations held its
first debate on the security implications of climate change, and many Council members
considered the issue a top priority for their governments. “The world has moved from a global
threat once called the Cold War, to what now should be considered the Warming War,” says
Afelee Pita, Tuvalu Ambassador to the UN.
International environmental governance is improving. The technological ability to identify
environmental threats and crimes is becoming cost-effective through new sensors and
communications. Environmental damages that people and organizations got away with in the
past are less likely to escape detection and punishment in the future.
Environmental diplomacy is increasingly being used to support conflict prevention efforts and to
build international confidence, while environmental security is gaining recognition in both
military and diplomatic circles.
The Millennium Project defines environmental security as environmental viability for life
support, with three sub-elements:
• preventing or repairing military damage to the environment,
• preventing or responding to environmentally caused conflicts, and
• protecting the environment due to its inherent moral value.
This chapter presents a summary of the events and emerging environmental security–related
issues organized around this definition. More details and other Millennium Project studies
related to environmental security are included in Chapter 9 on the CD and are available at
www.acunu.org (under “Books and Reports,” select “Special Studies”).
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Over the past several years, with support from the U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute, the
Millennium Project has been scanning a variety of sources to produce monthly reports on
emerging environmental issues with potential security or treaty implications. Over 200 items
have been identified during the past year and about 900 items since this work began in August
2002. The full text of the items and their sources can be found in the CD Chapter 9.1, “Emerging
Environmental Security Issues,” and monthly updated reports on the Millennium Project’s Web
site, www.acunu.org (under “What’s New,” select “International Environmental Security
Issues”).
General Patterns and Insights
National and international security implications of climate change and environmental
degradation are increasingly acknowledged in official forums by governments, corporations,
NGOs, academic institutions, and international organizations as needing strategic interventions
to prevent conflicts.
Increasing scientific evidence of global warming, extreme weather events, and the number and
intensity of natural disasters have triggered new regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,
better monitoring systems and models, and strategies to develop systems for early warning,
mitigation, and adaptation to cope with climate change effects. Without more serious mitigation
and adaptation measures, mass migration and conflicts seem inevitable due to climate change,
falling water tables, and other contributing environmental factors.
There is no adequate international system or framework to cope with environmental refugees,
estimated to reach 50 million by 2010 and 200 million by 2050.
Environmental issues are a “threat multiplier.” Most conflicts are occurring in the least
environmentally sustainable regions, thus reinforcing the idea that environment and conflict
should be addressed simultaneously and that one aggravates the other.
The increasing ratification of multilateral environmental agreements and the adoption of ISO
14001 standards are improving environmental management globally. The time between the
design of an MEA and its coming into force as well as the time it takes to reach a high
ratification level are shortening considerably. International attention is shifting from designing
new MEAs to improving the effectiveness of existing agreements.
MEAs often conflict with national economic or political interests, generating issues of
noncompliance with international treaties, lack of cooperation with international organs, and
deadlock in many international treaty–related negotiations. Matters of disagreement are mostly
related to strategies for greenhouse gas emission cuts, nuclear non-proliferation, addressing
security aspects of environmental implications, and outer-space security issues.
Efforts are increasing to strengthen international environmental governance by improving
institutional structures, interlinkages among treaties, instruments to improve implementation, and
international guidelines and frameworks for environmentally sound management.
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The number, precision, and breadth of analytical tools to measure environmental change are
improving rapidly.
New international watchdog bodies have been created and others proposed to assist legal actions
against environmental crimes.
Since richer countries export polluting industries to poorer countries, there are economic
incentives not to change environmental policies; hence, more serious incentives are needed to
persuade developing countries to adopt environmentally friendly practices. However,
international pressure to change seems inevitable, considering the size and impact of large
countries like India and China.
More cooperation is occurring among a variety of institutions for better, more synergistic
environmental policy and activities, which expands the scope of environmental considerations
among a broader set of actors and the public.
There is a trend toward adopting the precautionary principle versus reactive actions.
The number, extent, and scope of ecologically protected marine and land areas are expanding.
Stronger international and transinstitutional coalitions and frameworks are needed to counter
global environmental crime, such as illegal trade in hazardous wastes, smuggling proscribed
hazardous materials, and exploiting and trafficking protected natural resources.
The accelerating rate of technological change has fundamentally changed the spectrum of threats
to the environment and human health, such as e-waste, possible risks of using nanotechnology
and biotechnology, use of chemicals, and the spread and safety of nuclear, chemical, and
biotechnology labs.
Although space technology enhances Earth surveillance, provides early warnings of natural
disasters, improves compliance mechanisms, and increases understanding of space and Earth
phenomena, local on-the-ground coordination and applications are still deficient.
Work is under way to develop a global system for countering pandemics from either natural or
terrorist causes.
The costs are falling for nanotech environmental sensors, which can be connected to global
information systems via satellite, potentially making environmentally damaging actions known
instantaneously and worldwide.
ICT and robotics, new detection and cleanup techniques, and more environmentally friendly
warfare contribute to reducing the military environmental footprint.
Militaries are increasingly called upon to assist in environmentally related issues, such as natural
disasters or conflicts triggered by or affecting the environment, MEA enforcement, and reduction
of their own environmental impacts.
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Europe continues to lead in implementation of environment-related regulations and the design of
new ones. It also began a revision of environmental regulations in order to make them easier for
implementation and enforcement. The European Commission intends to introduce criminal
sanctions for serious environmental offenses.
* * *
Environmental security analysis should include the impacts of new kinds of weapons;
asymmetrical conflicts; increasing demands on natural resources; urbanization (which makes
more people dependent on vulnerable public utilities); impacts of environmental degradation and
climate change; continued advances in environmental law, with escalating environmental
litigation; and the globalization that is increasing interdependencies.
Figure 24. HadGEM1 A1B Temperature Difference (global mean=3.40C)
between 2070-2100 and 1961-1990
Source: Adapted from Crown copyright data supplied by the Met Office.
(image adapted to black/white version)
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Preventing or Repairing Military Damage to the Environment
The UN reports that about half of all conflicts over the past 20 years were “re-conflicts”––
conflicts that recurred within five years of peace accords. Many had environmental backgrounds.
Environmental degradation and hazardous ordnance leftovers in post-conflict areas threaten the
livelihoods and health of current and future generations and may constitute an impediment for
lasting peace. There should be a “green chapter” in the Geneva Conventions for safeguarding the
rights of the environment.
The military will increasingly take part in post-conflict reconstruction efforts and environmental
restoration to build stability, as well as in mitigation of environmental effects to avoid conflict.
Thus environmental aspects have to be seriously considered in military planning and postconflict activities. A UK Ministry of Defence report identifies potential risks from
nanotechnology, chemical weapons from World War II, risks from military sonar, and tungsten
and its alloys as emerging sustainability issues related to military activities, and the Ministry
acknowledges the link between conflict, security, and sustainable development. 20
In April 2007 the UN Security Council debated the security implications of environmental
factors for the first time in its history. Some countries argued that the Security Council is not the
right forum for this. The EU, Peru, Panama, and Papua New Guinea (head of the Pacific small
island states) were among the supporters of the initiative. “The dangers that the small island
states and their populations face are no less serious than those nations threatened by guns and
bombs,” stated Ambassador Robert Guba Aisi of Papua New Guinea.
A group of high-ranking U.S. military officers and national security experts, discussing the direct
impact of some aspects of climate change on military systems and operations, warns that
“climate change could seriously exacerbate already marginal living standards… causing
widespread political instability and the likelihood of failed states.... The chaos that results can be
an incubator of civil strife, genocide, and the growth of terrorism.” 21
New national initiatives increasingly include the military for environmental protection,
mitigation (after natural disasters), prevention, and preparedness, as well as assistance in
compliance with international agreements.
Many post-conflict health and environmental impact assessments are ongoing, as are liability
disputes. Protocol V on Explosive Remnants of War (ERW) of the Convention on Certain
Conventional Weapons came into force in November 2006, almost three years after it was
adopted. The Protocol stipulates that Parties should take “remedial measures to mark and clear,
remove or destroy unexploded ordnance or abandoned explosive ordnance” as early as possible
after hostilities have ended, whether they control the territory or not, by cooperating directly or
indirectly with all parties involved through quick and accurate information exchange. The
Protocol is not retroactive. The Portfolio of Mine Action Projects 2007 found that 26 out of 29
war-ravaged countries or territories surveyed are beleaguered with the lurking remnants of
20
21
Sustainable Development Report 2005. UK Ministry of Defence, September 2006.
National Security and the Threat of Climate Change. CNA Corporation, 2007.
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cluster bombs and other explosives. Unexploded ordnance is the focus of the Projects in 2007 to
deal with the aftermath of conflicts that took place before Protocol V entered into force.
There is a proposal to develop a legally binding international instrument by 2008 to ban cluster
munitions and to create a framework for dealing with the consequence of cluster munitions’ use,
due to environmental damage and civil casualties. Several countries already have regulations to
limit the production, use, sale, or transfer of cluster bombs.
Some experts argue that “nonlethal” materials such as “incapacitating agents” are toxic
chemicals that would violate the CWC if used on the battlefield. Clarification of what chemicals
will be allowed under the treaty’s exception is needed.
“The biological weapons threat is multiplying and will do so regardless of the countermeasures
we try to take,” warns Steven Block, a Stanford University biophysicist and former president of
the Biophysical Society. The likelihood of SIMAD (Single Individuals Massively Destructive) is
increasing every day. There is no monitoring of the expanding gene-synthesis industry, and the
supervision of controversial experiments is voluntary and irregular at universities and private
laboratories around the world. Although scientists are still arguing about what approach would
be the best to increase protection against bioterrorism and new kinds of synthetic bioweapons,
they do agree on the need for swift and intensified international control to impede the accidental
or deliberate release of genetically modified organisms.
In order to prevent the misuse of science, it is important to strengthen the scientific expertise of
security organizations and to create an independent science and technology advisory committee
for intelligence agencies, as well as to promote within the international scientific community a
common culture of awareness and responsibility. UNESCO has issued a draft declaration that
sets universal ethical guidelines for governments to consider ethical and human rights in science
and technology policymaking. Standards are needed for new technology-related product
development, diagnostics, therapeutics, and reagents, as well as for handling protocols.
New measures to improve nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons countermeasures include:
•
adoption of amendments to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear
Material;
•
the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, which
entered into force in July 2007;
•
the recommendation for a biosecurity watchdog and codes of conduct for scientists;
•
the International Strategy for Chemicals Management, adopted in February 2006; and
•
continuous assessment of existing regulations.
The IAEA is building a global network for monitoring nuclear facilities by using direct satellite
information to enhance the possibility of real-time tracking of sensitive nuclear materials and
checking that they are not being diverted for nonpeaceful uses.
Several scientists and environmental groups claim that underwater sonar to detect submarines
interferes with the echolocation system of whales and dolphins, sometimes causing mass
strandings. The U.S. government approved a budget to research the effects of military sonar
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systems on whales and dolphins, as well as the development of electronic systems to detect the
presence of marine mammals in naval training areas.
Conflict and environmental degradation exacerbate each other. Arab countries are among the
least environmentally sustainable in the world. According to the Environmental Sustainability
Index of Yale University, Iraq, Sudan, and Kuwait fall within the bottom 5% of the world for
sustainability, and half of the remaining Arab states scored in the lowest 25%. Without major
changes, environmentally induced migrations and more conflicts in the region seem inevitable.
The current wars are making this situation worse. The Hezbollah-Israeli war had a devastating
national and regional environmental impact. The oil slick caused by Israeli bombing of the
Jiyyeh power station affected some 150 kilometers of Lebanese and Syrian coastline, and the
cleanup could take up to one year with an estimated cost of over $64 million. Massive damages
to the ecosystem are already noticeable. The environment has a crucial role to play in Sudan’s
future peace and prosperity strategy, says UNEP. The Capacity Building for Environmental
Governance in Sudan program will cover the period 2007–09.
New technologies are offering improved detection, cleanup, monitoring, and surveillance
possibilities. WHO is developing a global epidemic simulator based on the model of climate
monitoring systems. Small robotic helicopters operated by radio control could be used for
reconnaissance and surveillance. High-sensitivity portable chemical and biological devices offer
high accuracy detection, monitoring, and cleanup possibilities with rapid response time.
Preventing or Responding to Environmentally Caused Conflicts
Climate change has increased environmental attention beyond just ecological, energy, and
economic concerns to national and international security considerations. The UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs notes that over the past 30 years the number of storms,
droughts, and floods has increased threefold while the number of people affected by disasters has
increased fivefold. Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warns that “environmental
degradation has the potential to destabilize already conflict-prone regions, especially when
compounded by inequitable access or politicization of access to scarce resources.” 22
Recent research shows that climate change is happening faster and could be far worse than
previously expected. Advanced computer modeling forecasts that by the century’s end, the planet
will face more weather extremes such as deadly heat waves, prolonged drought, and intense
rainstorms due to global warming caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. Scientists
emphasize that extreme scenarios––as effects of climate change––should be integrated into the
decision-making process. Most of the countries with the highest birth rates are those already
affected by the world’s worst wars. Growing pressure of people on land and resources is likely to
exacerbate conflict in those areas. Most of the population growth will continue to be in already
densely populated developing countries like India and China. And by 2025, the coastal
population worldwide will increase by 35%, to 2.75 billion people living within 60 miles of an
ocean. They will therefore be increasingly vulnerable to disasters resulting from climate change
and rising sea level.
22
Progress report on the prevention of armed conflict. Kofi Annan, 2006.
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Although research shows serious uncertainty concerning sea level rise forecasts, there is
compelling evidence that shore communities are at risk. Estimates of sea level rise by 2100 due
to global warming vary from the 9–88 centimeters projected by the IPCC to as much as 140
centimeters. Although it is difficult to predict melting in Greenland and Antarctica, researchers
note that these areas hold enough water to make sea levels rise by 70 meters.
The Sundarban islands––off the Bangladeshi and Indian coast––are among the first inhabited
islands already disappearing due to rising seas and erosion, threatening nearly 100,000 people
who will have to be evacuated over the next decade. Many Tuvaluans are also leaving their
Pacific island homes and moving to safer ground in New Zealand, thus officially becoming
environmental refugees. In late 2005, over 100 villagers of the Pacific island Tegua, in Vanuatu,
were relocated to higher ground to be protected from aggressive storms and waves. The move,
carried out under the Capacity Building for the Development of Adaptation in Pacific Island
Countries, might represent the first example of formal mass displacement as a result of climate
change.
Whole island nations—from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands—vast areas of countries from
Bangladesh to Egypt and to Alaska, and many coastal cities are at risk as sea levels continue to
rise, threatening the culture and the very survival of the inhabitants. Experts warn that in addition
to the South Pacific low-lying islands that are already affected, millions of people in densely
populated countries such as Bangladesh and parts of China, Indonesia, and Vietnam might be
forced to move by rising sea levels.
The UN estimates that by 2010 there might be 50 million climate refugees, while Christian Aid
estimates that over the next 50 years 1 billion people might be forced to migrate, mostly as a
consequence of environmental conditions. The vast majority will be from the world’s poorest
countries—the Sahara belt, South Asia, and the Middle East. It estimates that in 2007 there are
25 million people displaced by conflict and human rights abuses, 25 million by natural disasters,
and 105 million by large development projects, with 8.5 million now officially recognized as
refugees. By 2050, some 250 million people could be permanently displaced by climate change–
related phenomena. Janos Bogardi, director of the UNU Institute for Environment and Human
Security, called for the UN to create a legal framework to address future environmental refugees’
situation, while taking into account fears that by including environmental migrants in the
international legislation protecting refugees, “we are weakening one of the strongest tools for
protecting refugees.” Hence, the UN “should find other means of helping environmental
migrants.” He also emphasized that environmental factors often lie at the root of more obvious
causes of migration.
The thawing of Arctic sea ice opens up the Northwest Passage as an international shipping route,
triggering international disputes over sovereignty and ecological implications. In addition to a
potential sailing route, opening the Northwest Passage provides an opportunity for access to rich
resources, including oil. Research suggests that the passage could become ice-free and opened
for navigation as soon as 2015. Although scientists, politicians, and environmental activists are
increasingly warning about the complexity of the problem, no international regulations are yet in
place for this fragile region. While Canada claims sovereignty over the region, it is at odds with
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other countries, including the U.S., Denmark, and Russia, which argue that the area is
international waters or a continuation of their territories.
Water tables are falling on all continents; 40% of humanity depends on watersheds controlled by
two or more countries, thus conflicts are likely to be exacerbated unless integrated cross-border
water management systems are implemented. The International Water Management Institute
notes that while over the past 100 years water usage increased sixfold, it is expected to double
again by 2050. Today water scarcity affects 700 million people around the world; by 2025, this
could rise to more than 3 billion. The IPCC report Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
forecasts that “hundreds of millions of Africans and tens of millions of Latin Americans who
now have water will be short of it in less than 20 years. By 2050, more than 1 billion people in
Asia could face water shortages.” Green Cross International renewed its call for the adoption of
an international legal instrument that would assure the right to water.
Extreme drought might affect 10% of world land by 2050—five times more than now—and by
the end of the century the figure might be 30%, estimates the UK Met Office Hadley Centre. The
year 2006 was the International Year of Deserts and Desertification, and the UNEP Governing
Council recommended that 2010–20 be declared the UN Decade for Deserts and the Fight
Against Desertification to increase efforts to explore ways to cope, counter, or even reverse these
phenomena. The southern progression of the Sahara increases famine and migration, escalating
the risk of conflicts across Africa.
The increased number and intensity of natural disasters triggered the building of a global early
warning system. The Indian Ocean tsunami warning system was declared operational in July
2006, but local coordination is still lacking. The tsunami that struck Indonesia on July 17, 2006,
affected more than 54,000 people (killing 550) because no warning was issued to the population.
The UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction system provides a global framework for
disaster reduction and recovery. The first session of the multistakeholder Global Platform for
Disaster Risk Reduction, held in June 2007, focused on strategies for systematic implementation
of the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and
Communities to Disasters. The Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, set up in
cooperation with the World Bank, plans to improve preparatory and recovery actions to lower
the risks and consequences of natural disasters by considering disaster risk reduction a priority in
development projects in countries at risk. The World Bank Global Hotspots Study identifies 86
vulnerable countries with risks of high mortality and economic loss.
The IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2006 names two major issues facing the world over the next
24 years: the threat of “insecure” and “inadequate” energy supplies at reasonable prices and
environmental damages caused by increasing energy demands. Growing energy demand might
become a driving force for some countries to disregard international security issues and accords
to the point of jeopardizing international security.
Waste management is not just an environmental issue, it is also a security concern. The scandal
around the dumping of toxic waste at Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, has intensified the global debate
concerning trade in waste and the adequacy of the Basel Convention. Some African and Asian
countries became dumping grounds for hazardous waste, such as radioactive uranium waste,
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lead, cadmium, mercury, industrial and hospital chemicals, and a rising volume of electronic
waste. Although the Basel Convention and its 1995 amendment ban the dumping of toxic waste
in countries without proper facilities for handling it, the process continues illegally in countries
that are not party to the Convention. In addition to environmental and health consequences, a
Senegalese ecologist points out the security issues: “The waste is often accepted by corrupt
people or factions who want money to buy weapons.”
Although climate change is recognized as one of today’s most important threats to world
security, contributions to the two funds specifically designed to help poor countries adapt––the
Least Developed Countries Fund and Special Climate Change Fund––totaled just $43 million in
2005–06, while it is estimated that the overall annual costs to adapt to projected climate change
are likely to be between $10 billion and $40 billion per year. Meanwhile, in 2006 the world spent
$1.2 trillion on weapons and $1.5 trillion on oil, while the subsidies to fossil fuel industries
amount to over $235 billion per year.
Protecting the Environment Due to Its Inherent Moral Value
WWF and the Global Footprint Network report that humanity’s impact on the planet has more
than tripled since 1961 and that Earth’s resources are being used faster than they can be replaced
by nature. 23 If present trends continue, by 2050 humanity will demand twice as much as the
planet can supply. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment reported that 60% of Earth’s vital
ecosystem services are being degraded or used unsustainably.
The Paris Call for Action proposed a Universal Declaration of Environmental Rights and Duties
(the right to a sound environment) and the transformation of UNEP into the United Nations
Environment Organization. Environmental degradation “could even come to jeopardize
international peace and security” warned UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and UN General
Assembly President Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa called for “clear objectives and strong
ecological governance at the global level, a concept that continues to elude us.”
There are more than 700 MEAs. 24 The focus of international negotiations is switching from
designing new treaties to reinforcing existing ones and strengthening international environmental
governance. Evaluations of the effectiveness of these agreements are improving. Nevertheless,
noncompliance with international treaties and lack of cooperation with international organs, as
well as deadlock in many international treaty–related negotiations, continue to be an
international concern.
The 2007 UNEP Governing Council adopted decisions on issues related to strengthening
international environmental governance (including the draft Environment Watch Strategy Vision
2020 and coordination and synergies among multilateral environmental agreements) and
improving the assessment of the world environmental situation and mitigation actions. There are
efforts for better integration of the existing MEAs that cover related issues, such as the Basel
23
24
Living Planet Report 2006. WWF and the Global Footprint Network, 2006.
GEO Year Book 2007, UNEP, 2007.
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Convention on Waste and the Stockholm Convention on POPs for developing a framework for
environmentally sound waste disposal.
The European Commission’s three-year program to modernize EU legislation––as part of its
commitment to simplify the EU system of rules––started with the environment-related sector,
since it is the most heavily regulated. It also intends to increase the enforcement of
environmental regulations by introducing criminal sanctions for serious environmental offences.
The European Environmental Liability Directive came into force, establishing a comprehensive
framework on liability for damage to the environment, based on the “polluter pays” principle.
Increasingly powerful analytic models and tools are being created to compare national
environmental status. New international watchdog bodies have been created and others have
been proposed to assist legal action against environmental crimes. For example, the Compliance
Committee for the Kyoto Protocol has begun its operations, the Asian Regional Forum for
combating environmental crime was formed, a global advisory group to address bio-threats was
proposed, North America’s Commission for Environmental Cooperation is increasing
enforcement of environmental regulations and public participation, and in 2007 the EU
Environmental Liability Directive came into force.
Some noteworthy environmental agreements or laws that were recently adopted or strengthened
or are in negotiation are presented in Box 4.
A complete list and further details on the agreements are available on the CD in Chapter 9.1.
The Basel Convention is one of the most reviewed treaties, as it is being adapted to the new
waste types and management needs. Between 20 million and 50 million tons of e-waste are
generated per year around the world. Approximately 100 million phones and 300 million
personal computers might become waste by 2010. In the U.S., it is estimated that 14–20 million
personal computers are thrown out each year; developing nations are expected to triple their
output of all electronic waste by 2010. The December 2006 UN e-waste forum adopted the Ewaste Declaration for Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes
and Their Disposal, along with more than 30 decisions, including synergies and cooperation
among the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm Conventions. An international e-waste recycling
system, along with transparent information and monitoring mechanisms to ensure accountability,
is needed. Regional initiatives include the EC directive for e-waste management (Waste
Electronic and Electrical Equipment), which came into effect in August 2005, and the
Environmentally Sound Management of Electronic and Electrical Wastes program of action for
the Asia-Pacific.
The European Parliament has voted for a tougher waste management strategy, which stipulates
that EU production of waste should be stabilized at 2008 levels by 2012 and scaled back by
2020, requiring that 50% of municipal waste and 70% of industrial waste be recycled by 2020.
Although the new directive would not impose firm obligations on member states, it would
establish a “general rule or guiding principle” influencing future waste management practices.
However, EU member states have different waste management strategies and efficiency and are
expected to fight the Parliament’s proposal.
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Box 4.
Some Environmental Agreements or Laws Recently Adopted, Strengthened,
in Negotiation, or Proposed Include:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism
(entered into force in July 2007)
Protocol V on Explosive Remnants of War, part of the UN Convention on Certain
Conventional Weapons (entered into force in November 2006)
UN Agreement to Protect the World’s Forests (adopted in May 2007)
E-waste Declaration for Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of
Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal
Stockholm Convention evaluation mechanisms (adopted) and non-compliance ones
(expected for 2009)
A global ban on mercury (in negotiation)
Legally binding international instrument banning cluster munitions and framework
for dealing with the consequence of cluster munitions to be proposed by 2008
Network of Marine Protection Areas, to be adopted by 2012
Post-Kyoto negotiations
Tougher regulations for mandatory emissions targets at country, regional, local levels
Conventional light bulbs to be banned in many parts of the world by 2012
European Environmental Liability Directive (entered into force in April 2007)
Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH)
(entered into force in June 2007)
EU Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS)
(entered into force in July 2006)
European Directive on Ship-Source Pollution (became effective in April 2007)
Europe to begin penalizing jet pollution in 2011
EU air quality directive for reducing pollution for fine dust particles
(with effect from 1 January 2015)
EU new regulations to combat surface water pollution
Tougher European waste management strategy with reduction targets
to 2008, 2012, 2020
China e-waste rules
Legislation to curb harmful ocean sounds (proposed)
108
The number of commercial chemicals is expected to grow 80% over the next 15 years. The
International Strategy for Chemicals Management was adopted in February 2006; there are
recommendations for a biosecurity watchdog and codes of conduct for scientists. Policymakers
and experts reinforce the need for applying the precautionary principle in the context of chemical
safety, for extending globally the regulations on heavy metals, and for tackling the widening
gaps among countries in following chemical safety policies.
The number of studies on the environmental and health impacts of various forms of
nanotechnology is increasing rapidly around the world. These will lead to new nanotechnology
standards. China was the first nation to set standards. The International Organization for
Standardization is in the process of developing standards, and the American Society for Testing
and Materials issued its first standard on terminology for nanotechnology.
FAO has called for environmental risk assessment studies for biotechnology, with protocols and
methodologies agreed at national and international levels. An independent investigating
international commission and an international register for biotechnology-related incidents were
proposed under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.
Protected ecological sites are being suggested both for land and marine environments. Greenpeace is
suggesting that 40% of the world’s oceans should be declared natural reserves and protected in
the same way that land areas are. The UN notes that 0.6% of the oceans are protected compared
with 12% of the world’s land. Pollution has led to about 200 marine “dead zones” or low
oxygenated areas, reducing fish stocks and the livelihood of people who depend on fisheries. An
estimated 16% of the world’s coral reefs suffered up to 90% mortality. A roadmap was launched
in 2007 to meet the goal of establishing a network of marine protected areas by 2012.
Some scientists believe that the dynamics causing global warming have reached the point beyond
human ability to stop climate change. There is growing debate about how to make post-Kyoto
strategies more inclusive and fair. One idea is establishing global per capita carbon emissions
targets. G-8 leaders agreed to seek “substantial” cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and to reach
consensus on a new––more inclusive––UN-led greenhouse gas emissions agreement by 2009.
Many countries support a target of a 50% cut of 1990 emissions level by 2050. Australia is
seeking to launch negotiations for a new Asia-Pacific climate agreement that would include
emerging high emitters such as China and India.
New proposals for emissions reduction strategies and targets are increasing. The EU’s new
Energy Policy stipulates that CO2 emissions should be cut by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020––a
target that could rise to 30% if the U.S., China, and other economic powers agreed to comparable
reductions. Britain might become the first country to limit greenhouse gases by law. The EU and
the U.S. government created committees to address climate change and energy security issues.
Norway hopes to become the world’s first “carbon neutral” country by reducing its emissions to
zero by 2050. Meanwhile, countries and local governments are increasingly adopting regulations
for phasing out inefficient incandescent lighting.
Space observations have become a major tool for monitoring environmental change, helping
policymaking develop adequate strategies, and assisting in the enforcement of environment-
109
related regulations. The ESA Globwetland project supports the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands.
The Global Monitoring for Environment and Security system aims to provide the public,
policymakers, and decisionmakers with essential strategic environmental and civil security
information based on operational and integrated space, air, ground, and sea observations. The
Health Early Warning System will improve warning and emergency response in case of natural
disasters and pandemics by using satellite communication. The International Charter “Space and
Major Disasters” is a network of international, private, and government space agencies that aims
to provide satellite data free of charge in emergency situations to those affected by disasters
anywhere in the world. Some 41 nations own satellites. Since there is no mechanism to address
space pollution events such as China’s January 2007 anti-satellite test, some kind of anti-ASAT
debris creating treaty seems necessary, possibly drafted by the Inter-Agency Space Debris
Coordination Committee in Vienna.
A growing number of industries and local governments are developing appropriate environmental
and energy policies and regulations in the absence of national leadership. In many cases these are
based on international standards or agreements. Civil society in some countries is increasingly involved
in the design of local and regional regulations, in many cases with the help of international NGOs.
The Cleantech Report™ by Lux Research notes the expansion of cleantech innovations: 1,500
cleantech start-ups operate worldwide, and 29,874 cleantech-related scientific journal articles
were published in 2006.
Alliances continue to be created among private companies, governments, NGOs, and
international organizations to increase national and international eco-efficiency and
environmental performance. Examples of these include the Principles for Responsible
Investment, which reached $8 trillion at its first-year anniversary; the American States initiatives
to fight pollution at the state level; the Asia-Pacific Partnership; and the Urban Environmental
Accords––a municipal version of the Kyoto Protocol.
Figure 25. Number of Parties to Multilateral Environmental Agreements, 1975–2007
Source: UNEP GEO Data Portal, with updates by the Millennium Project
110
Figure 26. Ratifications of 14 Multilateral Environmental Agreements, by UNEP GEO Region,
as of December 2006 (in parenthesis, number of countries in the region)
Source: UNEP GEO Data Portal
111
Millennium Project Nodes
112
Appendix
Millennium Project Participants Demographics
There were 334 futurists, scholars, business planners, scientists, and decisionmakers who
contributed this year to the global challenges, State of the Future Index variables assessment, the
education and learning 2030, and the future international environmental security issues studies.
The graphs below show the regional and sectoral demographics.
Figure 27. Participants in the 2006–07 Program
Total participants: 334
Sectoral Demographic
Regional Demographic
However, much of the work is cumulative in nature, which has come from 2,375 participants
over the past 10 years. The second set of graphs shows their regional and sectoral demographics.
Sectoral Demographic
Regional Demographic
113
Current and Previous Sponsors
Alan F. Kay & Hazel Henderson Foundation for Social Innovation, St. Augustine, FL (1996–2000)
Amana Institute, São Paulo, Brazil (2004)
Applied Materials, Santa Clara, California (2002–07)
Army Environmental Policy Institute, Arlington, Virginia (1996–2007)
Dar Almashora for Consulting, Kuwait (for Kuwait Oil Company 2003–04 and Kuwait
Petroleum Corporation 2005–06)
Deloitte & Touche LLP, Cleveland, Ohio (1998–2007)
Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, Michigan (1996–97, 2005–06)
Foundation for the Future, Bellevue, Washington (1997–98, 1999–2000, 2007)
General Motors, Warren, Michigan (1998–2003)
Hughes Space and Communications, Los Angeles, California (1997–98, 2000)
Ministry of Communications, Republic of Azerbaijan (2007)
Ministry of Education and Presidential Commission on Education, Republic of Korea (2007)
Monsanto Company, St. Louis, Missouri (1996–98)
Motorola Corporation, Schaumburg, Illinois (1997)
Pioneer Hi-Bred International, West Des Moines, Iowa (1997)
Presidential Commission on Education, Republic of Korea (2007)
Shell International (Royal Dutch Shell Petroleum Company), London, United Kingdom (1997)
UNESCO, Paris, France (1995)
UN Future Forum (Republic of Korea) (2007)
United Nations Development Programme, New York, (1993–94)
United Nations University, Tokyo, Japan (1992–95, 1999–2000)
U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, D.C. (2000–03)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C. (1992–93, 1996–97)
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
(Foresight and Governance Project), Washington, D.C. (2002)
114
Acronyms and Abbreviations
AFAT
AI
ASAT
ASEAN
CBD
CDC
CI
CO2
CWC
DAC
DARPA
EPA
ESA
EU
FAO
GDP
GHG
GMO
GNI
IAEA
ICC
ICSU
ICT
IEA
ILO
IPCC
ISO
IT
LQ
MDG
MEA
MED
MIT
NASA
NEPAD
NGO
ODA
OECD
OSCE
PGD
PERT
POPs
All Futurists Association of Turkey
artificial intelligence
anti-satellite
Association of Southeast Asian Nations
Convention on Biological Diversity
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S.)
collective intelligence
carbon dioxide
Chemical Weapons Convention
Development Assistance Committee
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (U.S.)
Environmental Protection Agency (U.S.)
European Space Agency
European Union
Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN
gross domestic product
greenhouse gas
genetically modified organism
gross national income
International Atomic Energy Agency
International Criminal Court
International Council for Science
information and communication technology
International Energy Agency
International Labour Organization
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
International Organization for Standardization
information technology
lower quartile
Millennium Development Goal
multilateral environmental agreement
median
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
National Aeronautics and Space Adminstration
New Partnership for Africa’s Development
nongovernmental organization
official development assistance
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis
Program Evaluation and Review Technique
persistent organic pollutants
115
ppm
PPP
R&D
S&T
SARS
SIMAD
SOFI
TB
TIA
TOC
UK
UN
UNCCD
UNFCCC
UNCLOS
UNDP
UNEP
UNFPA
UNIDO
UNODC
UNU
UQ
U.S.
VR
WHO
WMD
WTO
WWF
parts per million
purchasing power parity
research and development
science and technology
severe acute respiratory syndrome
Single Individual Massively Destructive
State of the Future Index
tuberculosis
trend impact analysis
transnational organized crime
United Kingdom
United Nations
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
United Nations Development Programme
United Nations Environment Programme
United Nations Population Fund
United Nations Industrial Development Organization
UN Office on Drugs and Crime
United Nations University
upper quartile
United States
virtual reality
World Health Organization
weapons of mass destruction
World Trade Organization
World Wide Fund for Nature
116
List of Figures and Boxes
NOTE: the page numbers indicated in this lists reflect the page numbers from the print section of
the State of the Future and not the ones of this word version.
Figures
Figure 1. SOFI 2007.....................................................................................................................6
Figure 2. Global Surface Temperature Anomalies (0C).............................................................13
Figure 3. Population Lacking Access to Improved Water Sources
(percentage of population)………………………………..…………………..…….15
Figure 4. Food Availability (calories per capita)........................................................................17
Figure 5. Global Trends in Freedom...........................................................................................19
Figure 6. Regional Internet Population Growth..........................................................................23
Figure 7. Share of People Living on Less than $1.08 a Day (%)................................................25
Figure 8. Physicians (density per 1,000 population)...................................................................27
Figure 9. Growth of International Organizations (NGOs and IGOs)..........................................29
Figure 10. Global Trends in Armed Conflict, 1946-2006.............................................................31
Figure 11. Women in National Parliaments (percentage).............................................................33
Figure 12. World Illicit Trade.......................................................................................................35
Figure 13. World Total Primary Energy Supply...........................................................................37
Figure 14. Estimated R&D Expenditures (percentage of GDP) in OECD and
Cooperating Non-member Countries.........................................................................39
Figure 15. Global Challenges and SOFI Process..........................................................................42
Figure 16. SOFI 2007....................................................................................................................45
Figure 17. SOFI 2007 with Trend Impact Analysis......................................................................46
Figure 18. Comparison of 2005 and 2007 SOFIs..........................................................................46
Figure 19. Trends of Moral, Physical, Security, Health, Intellectual, and Wealth Expectations..47
Figure 20. Countries’ Non-adjusted SOFI Absolute Values.........................................................48
Figure 21. Turkey SOFI................................................................................................................49
Figure 22. Comparison of Relative SOFIs for South Korea using Global and South Korean
Normalization Vlues .................................................................................................50
Figure 23. Likelihood of Education Possibilities, 2030................................................................55
Figure 24. HadGEM1 A1B Temperature Difference between 2070–2100 and 1961–1990.........81
Figure 25. Number of Parties to Multilateral Environmental Agreements, 1975–2007...............91
Figure 26. Ratifications of 14 Multilateral Environmental Agreements,
by UNEP GEO Region, as of December 2006..........................................................91
Figure 27. Participants in the 2006–07 Program...........................................................................93
Figure 28. Participants Since 1996................................................................................................93
117
Boxes
Box 1.
Box 2.
Box 3.
Box 4.
Where Is Humanity Winning and Losing......................................................................6
SOFI Variables.............................................................................................................44
Possibilities Influencing Education by 2030................................................................54
Some Environmental Agreements or Laws Recently Adopted, Strengthened,
in Negotiation, or Proposed.....................................................................................88
118

state of the future - Azerbaijan Future Studies Society

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