Planning Committee Meeting

July 22-23, 2000 Westin Galleria, Houston, Texas

The occasion of the third millennium presents a timely opportunity for the only global organization, in terms of its membership as much as of its areas of work, to identify the challenges that it will face in the future and to engage in an imaginative exercise to enhance and strengthen a unique institution ---

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Millennium Report

Current Sponsors

       Deloitte & Touche Foundation For the Future General Motors Hughes Space and Communications United Nations University U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute U.S. Department of Energy

Recent accomplishments

          Partnership for Sustainable Development State of the Future at the Millennium State of the Future: The Video UN and Environmental Security 26 Ways to increase futures in decisionmaking Very Long-Range Factors and Scenarios UNU Technology Paper for UN SG’s Millen. Report Translations - Chinese, Spanish, Farsi, Japanese Articles: TF&SC, Futures, Foresight, FRQ, AEPI UN Habitat: continued listing in Best Practices

What’s New in this Year’s Report

1. Combination of a short version in print and more detailed 1000 page version on CD-ROM.

2. Regional perspectives on the global challenges - distilled views from the regional perspectives are in the print version, while more detailed regional perspectives are on the CD-ROM.

3. Indicators to measure progress on the challenges which were rated the most useful are in this book, while all the indicators and discussions are on the CD-ROM.

4. "Meta Strategies" abstracted from the hundreds of actions suggested to address the challenges.

5. Factors that might affect the next thousand years; a range of views about the possible trajectories of these factors are detailed on the CD ROM, along with a discussion of the value of such an exercise.

What’s New in this Year’s Report

(cont.) 6. Six very long-range scenarios based on the factors and trajectories are in this print edition, and an additional five scenarios and comments are on the CD-ROM.

7. A distilled version of the Millennium Project's study on environmental security and the United Nations appears in Chapter 5, with more detailed analysis plus environmental security threats with related international agreements and organizations on the CD-ROM.

8. The book details 26 ways to make early warnings more effective in decisionmaking, with a detailed discussions and case studies on the CD-ROM. 9. The CD-ROM adds 54 annotated scenarios and/or scenario sets to the 350 in last year's book.

Evolving new idea: A Strategy to Counter Transnational Crime

intergovernmental body - with a situation room to:  Set up information traps at money laundering locations   Identify a top criminal and prepare the legal case Identify assets that can be frozen, and readiness of banks, etc. to freeze them    Identify where the criminal is now and get readiness of local authorities make the arrest Identify best location to prosecute and get readiness of local courts to move immediately When every thing is ready, all the orders would be executed at the same time to: apprehend the criminal, freeze the assets and access, and open the court case.

“State of the Future: The Video”

      About 2 minutes per challenge (29:20) Node translations for showing in their region WFS added to catalog Fund raising video copy to WETV and Hazel Show at SOWF’s Forum 2000 in parallel with UN Millennium Summit Hughes asked that we improve the English audio track

Translations/Special editions

      Chinese edition of the 1999 SOF Farsi edition of the 1998 SOF Spanish edition of Futures Research Methodology AEPI editions: (a) futures and decisionmaking (b) UN and Environmental Security Technological Forecasting & Social Change (99SOF) Other MP articles in –

Futures

(very long-range scenarios) –

Futures Research Quarterly

Decisionmaking) (Futures Research and – –

Futurist

(Futures Research and Decisionmaking - similar)

Foresight

(Normative Scenario)

Principal Findings

1. The most important challenges are transnational in nature and trans institutional in solution. They require collaborative action among governments, international organizations, corporations, universities, and NGOs.

2. Hundreds of futurists, scholars, business planners, scientists, and decisionmakers were asked what could significantly affect the future. Their responses have been rated in questionnaires and discussed in interviews over the past four years. The results can be organized into 15 global challenges. 3. Global challenges had regional and local counterparts (sustainable development could be discussed as a global or neighborhood objective).

4. Some of the challenges are exploding or have the potential to explode into crises and require immediate, thoughtful, and inspired action.

Principal Findings

(cont.) 5. There is greater consensus about the scope of global issues and opportunities than is evident in the media. There is good agreement about many promising actions, although diverse views exist about other constructive actions.

6. Suggested actions could be organized into 12 meta strategies: •establishing new alliances, agreements, and treaties •engaging in social marketing •creating standards and permits •enforcing or modifying laws and regulations •performing scientific research and development •engaging in meetings, dialogs, or workshops •creating and amending economic systems, sanctions, and incentives •improving planning, accounting, and forecasting •creating and improving new educational programs •developing and sharing information •modifying institutions, infrastructure, and priorities •initiating new institutions, projects, and programs

Principal Findings

(cont.) 7. Issues and opportunities are interdependent. Study of interactions should be part of future policy analyses. From the standpoint of interdependence, the interactions of greatest potential were: •widespread adoption of a long-term perspective - e.g. taking the needs of future generations into account •the movement toward sustainable development •the reduction of population growth rates in most countries of the world.

Principal Findings

(cont.) 8. Factors that impede action and decisionmaking are similar everywhere and largely independent of nationality and culture. The most important of these factors could be grouped as follows: •Institutional: •Financial: no one has responsibility; lack of adequate coordination; institutional inertia lack of funding, or the fact that the people who ought to pay are unwilling to do so •Disinterest in the future: near-term issues gain more attention than those that have more distant consequences •Planning inadequacy: lack of a long term view •Personnel: lack of decision skills; decisionmakers who do not understand the issues they must decide •Strategic: lack of clear-cut strategy and goals, lack of coordinated actions among actors •Complexity: lack of understanding of the magnitude of problems and consequences of actions •Political: the action interferes with national interests or it has been proposed by an opponent •Information: lack of accurate, reliable, and sufficient data and information, or the uncertainty of the risk •Lack of consensus: differing interests and ideology among key actors, politicians, the public, and lobbying groups

Principal Findings

(cont.)

Barriers

to the use of futures research in timely decisionmaking can also include moral factors. Those identified and rated as the greatest moral impediments were: •Insufficient attention to the needs of future generations •Caring about the well-being of only own group or nation •Corruption of political leaders, policymakers, corporate leaders •Waste •Greed and self-centeredness 9. Technological futures are easier to forecast than cultural or political futures.

10. Corruption and transnational crime preventing the solution to many of our problems could be turned around by targeting money laundering through sophisticated information technology and intergovernmental coordination on the location for prosecutions. The lack of ethical behavior and moral underpinnings has given rise to a new hunger for global ethics and the need to identify common ethical norms.

Principal Findings

(cont.) 11. Decisionmakers are generally not trained to make good decisions; in the future, formalized training for decisionmakers could result in an improvement in the quality of global decisions.

12. Information to reduce the time from early warning to timely action should unequivocally demonstrate that a crisis is pending and that details are available about what is possible and how action might alter the outcome of the situation. 13. Science and technology promise to give new capabilities that will change lives, values, social structure, and politics. New science and technology is essential to the solution of many world problems. 14. Sustainability is a concept that has spread globally and provides useful guidance to policymaking. Many global policies are now based on perceptions about their impacts on sustainability.

15. Economic growth is essential; it provides the means to increase employment, help solve environmental problems, improve the general welfare, and promote political stability.

Principal Findings

(cont.) 16. Many desirable policies, especially those addressing environmental and economic relationships, depend on scientific, technical, and economic standards that do not yet exist.

17. Since education is one of the fundamental strategies to address most of the global issues, it is important to identify the most effective educational materials, curricula, and distribution media for global education as well as institutional arrangements to accelerate learning.

18. In decisionmaking, the short term almost always wins over the longer-term when there is a conflict between the two perspectives; this is true even when the costs of doing so are clear.

19. The status and progress made on all the challenges can be assessed in large measure through the tracking of indicators, most of which already exist. 20. Environmental security is of increasing concern in world affairs and moving up the policy agenda in some countries.

Principal Findings

(cont.) 21. The Project assessed the factors that might affect humanity over the next thousand years. While there was some disagreement about whether such an effort was worthwhile, the exercise proved intellectually challenging. The most significant factors affecting the long-range future were judged as: •evolving human-environment dynamics, including the complex interactions among population and resources •the use of human genetic engineering to control disease, aging, and human characteristics •the availability of safe energy 22. As evidenced by the use of previous State of the Future reports by international organizations, governments, NGOs, corporations, and universities, it is possible to perform global futures research in a coherent fashion on a global basis that is international, interinstitutional, interdisciplinary, and independent.

Principal Findings

(cont.) 23. While quantitative methods have been devised to assess the relative costs and benefits of alternative policies, these methods depend on assumptions about the future, which will always be imperfectly and incompletely known. The methods researched in the Millennium Project contribute to reducing uncertainty. Among the methods incorporated by the project are: • global panels with feedback, augmented by in-depth interviews that built on the results of the panels • exploratory and normative scenarios constructed from panel suggestions • modeling to provide a quantitative backbone to scenarios • cross-impact methods for modifying scenarios • drawing lessons from history for forecasting • trend impact analysis for extending historical indicators in view of perceived future developments

Current work

(to be discussed in more detail Sunday)        Future Issues of Science & Technology Environmental Security Scanning Environmental Crimes Futures Research Methods - V 2.0 Indicators with historic and projected data for possible "State of the Future Index" Node Millennium Symposiums (South America, Italy, and China) Forum 2000 in conjunction with UN Millennium Summit in September

Future Science & Technology Issues

    Trial list to Science Attaches, ICSU, and MP  What are the key emerging international issues in S&T? How can the S&T gap between developed and developing countries be bridged? How is the global environment changing for science? What are the trends in counter science? What are some of the significant emerging characteristics of the international scientific complex?

Steering committee    Suggests panel members, critiques questionnaire drafts, discusses results of rounds 1 and 2, and review all drafts of this research.

Composed of several Science Attachés and MP Participants Each Node selects 10 participants in their region Round 1 Rate list as to importance, and potential consequences on both the S&T enterprise and the broader community.

Round 2 – explore reasons for differences and potential actions to address key issues.

Environmental Security Scanning

70 items identified from August 1999 to June 2000 Two Examples:  The Prime Minister of France wants a UN World Environment Organization. He proposes this UN organization to be a mechanism for rules and enforcement for environmental agreements in the same way that the World Trade Organization is for trade agreements. This will raise environmental matters higher on the policy agenda. It is an additional indicator that political pressure is mounting to complete the global architecture of rules for global behavior and enforcement in general, and environmental policy change in particular. This could reduce environmental threats, which might have lead to conflict.  If present funding trends continue, destruction of chemical weapons in Russia will not be completed in our lifetime. With potential for smuggling and leakage, this issue deserves greater attention from the international community.

Environmental Security Scanning

Some patterns and questions

   

Sovereignty

- UN early warning response teams, ICC and war crimes, genetically modified foods and organisms, environmental conditions that affect public health, “Bioagent Chips” deployed to detect biological warfare attacks. Where should the nation-state end and the UN begin, when transborder action is necessary?

Worsening environment

- forests, fish, wet lands , water, greenhouse gases, and the interactions of these and other factorsg. With water tables falling in all continents, and ethnic tensions on the rise, water pollution caused by one group affecting another could escalate more seriously than in the past. Putin abolishes Russia’s environmental protection agency

Environmental Accounting

- $ value of environmental conditions

Environmental Ministers:

“... we can ensure environmental security through early warning...” raising environmental security on global agenda.

Futures Research Methodology

- V 2.0

• Existing CD-ROM 1. Introduction & Overview 2. Environmental Scanning 3. Participatory Methods 4. Structural Analysis 5. Delphi 6. Systems and Modeling 7. Decision Modeling 8. Scenario Construction 9. Trend Impact Analysis 10. Cross-Impact Analysis 11. Tech Sequence Analysis 12. Relevance Trees and Morphological Analysis 13. Statistical Modeling 14. Simulation-Gaming 15. Futures Wheel 16. Normative Forecasting 17. Genius, Vision, Intuition 18. Method Frontiers and Integration • On line methods (e.g. i-Delphi and Group Systems) • TRIZ • Science Road Maps • Multiple perspectives for forecasting and impact assessment • Agent Models • Self Modifying Scenarios • Decision Sciences • AI and Pattern Recognition • Mic Mac

The current processes to improve the Millennium Project are:

Planning Committee Meetings of 20 people to review and set agenda Planning Committee and Node email lists Annual

State of the Future

report - forces accumulative analysis, focuses feedback, and gets others up to speed Nodes - individuals and institutions who connect global, regional, and local perspectives in eleven cities around the world via questionnaires and interviews Questions to the Global Lookout Panel and Decisionmaker Interviews Integrate research by writing scenarios Web Site - initial dynamic knowledge repository Two Listservs: 1) Professional Participants 2) self-section from the Public

Additional Millennium Project ideas and issues

        Node coordination and InfoSystem Methodological Issues (batching vs short questions, on-line questionnaires, translation) Use and promotion of State of the Future Dissemination, promotion, book reviews, etc.

State of the Future translations Report on Project finances and outlook Node fund raising Public Relations

Objectives for 2000-2001

      Science & Technology Issues Environmental Crime Futures Methods - V 2.0 Indicators/data for possible "State of the Future Index"     Global Lookout panels per Challenge to peer review text, data, concepts, actions  Supplemental Research for Challenge Up-dates Nodes’ plans for next year Additions to annotated scenario bibliography Produce V.20 SOF@M Project’s Information System and Web site as collective intelligence Public Relations (Forum 2000, Node Symposiums, talks, articles, Op Eds)

Pending additional funding

        UN Millennium Summit Special Edition Scenarios: exploratory and normative Lessons of History Video series (for seminars/conferences, training, education materials) Individuals & Institutions to Futures Matrix MP trainings in methods and challenges Articles (Op Ed) and talks Hire an additional staff member

State of the Future

Version 2.0 with chapters - possibly - on:

         Updates on challenges Indicators - history and forecasts Feasibility of a “State of the Future Index” Future Science and Technology Issues Environmental Security scanning results Exploratory & Normative Scenarios Environmental Crime UN Summit, Forum 2000, Node seminars Futures Matrix