Some 10 years into the Millennium Project, the latest 'State of the Future’ report claims that it is now evident that humanity has the resources to address global challenges. What is less clear is how much wisdom, goodwill and intelligence will be focused on these challenges, say the authors.
The report presents a roadmap of the points that must be considered if we are to intelligently face challenges that lie ahead. These challenges include diminishing natural resources, disease, poverty, and the threat of terrorism.
The UN’s Millennium Development Goals are intended to help focus international cooperation and increase sensitivity to global problems and related policy-making. Progress is being made, says the State of the Future report: 'The digital gap continues to close, helping to democratize the coming knowledge economy with tele-nearly-everything and providing self-organizing mechanisms for emerging collective computer/human intelligence and management systems. A worldwide race to connect everything not yet connected is just beginning, and great wealth will be generated by completing the links among systems by which civilizations function and flourish.’
At the same time, 'terrorism is getting worse and will continue to do so as long as the world’s systems seem unjust’, according to the report. It also cites falling water supplies, the fact that more than half of Africans live on less than USD 1 per day, and falling life expectancy in Africa due to AIDS. In addition, human consumption is now 23 per cent higher than nature’s capacity to regenerate, only 17 per cent of the world’s population has access to free media, and one in three women suffers some form of violence in her lifetime. The report also points to technology: it has improved the lives of many, but is changing so rapidly that 'the possibility of it growing beyond human control must now be taken seriously’.
'The increasing proliferation of media and information makes it difficult to separate the noise from the signal of what is important to know about our global situation in order to make good decisions,’ the report warns.
What the world needs is a process to focus government, corporate, scientific, engineering and medical resources, say the report’s authors. They propose formalised ethics and decision training for decision-makers, as well as agreed processes for the setting of priorities.
State of the Future 2006 provides a 'report card’, intended to show where we are winning, and where we are losing.
Where we are winning:
– GDP per capita;
– food availability;
– life expectancy;
– adult literacy;
– infant mortality;
– access to safe water;
– access to health care;
– school enrollment.
Where we are losing:
– atmospheric carbon dioxide;
– unemployment;
– forestlands;
– number of poor people;
– AIDS deaths;
– developing-country debt;
– terrorist attacks.
The report’s authors recommend that it is used by decision-makers 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.’
For further information, please visit:
http://www.acunu.org/millennium/issues.html
Category: Miscellaneous
Data Source Provider: Millennium Project
Document Reference: Based on the State of the Future 2006 report
Subject Index: Forecasting
RCN: 26269
http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=EN_NEWS&ACTION=D&DOC=60&CAT=NEWS&QUERY=01240750fe68:0e42:0f8f0027&RCN=26269