“Another 2.3 billion people are expected to be added to the planet in just 35 years. By 2050, new systems for food, water, energy, education, health, economics, and global governance will be needed to prevent massive and complex human and environmental disasters.”
– quote from 2015-16 State of the Future Executive Summary | The Millennium Project
The Millennium Project, a global participatory think tank, is known for its research into the challenges that lie in our future, and offer strategies and solutions to reach a better future of all of us. Based in Washington, DC, USA, the non-profit organisation seeks participation from futurists, academics, policy makers, governments, NGOs, corporations, among others, to understand the state of our world and identify ways and means to improve it. The Millennium Project publishes various research reports from time to time, of which 2015-16 State of the Future is a recent publication.
The 300-page 2015-16 State of the Future report is a meticulously researched work by Jerome C. Glenn, Elizabeth Florescu and The Millennium Project Team, and is available for purchase from The Millennium Project website. An 11-page Executive Summary (PDF) is available as a free download and provides a compact understanding of what the main report contains. It lists 15 Global Challenges which we need to take cognition of immediately. Here are a few excerpts from the Executive Summary of 2015-16 State of the Future report which are worth contemplating upon:
“Concentration of wealth is increasing. Income gaps are widening. Jobless economic growth seems the new norm. Return on investment in capital and technology is usually better than labor. Future technologies can replace much of human labor. Long-term structural unemployment is a business-as-usual forecast.”
“The global economy is expected to grow about 3.5% during 2015, while the population of 7.3 billion is growing at 1.14%; hence, the world average per capita income growth is 2.36%. This is still about half the per capita annual income growth prior to the global financial crisis and world recession.”
“To prevent the possibility of quantum computing with artificial intelligence and sensor networks growing beyond human control, we have to design human-friendly control systems and ways to merge wisely with future technology while living simultaneously in cyber-worlds and physical “reality.””
“The Millennium Project has identified and has been updating the following 15 Global Challenges. They can be used both as a framework to understand global change and as an agenda to improve the future:
- How can sustainable development be achieved for all while addressing global climate change? The IPCC reports that each decade of the past three was consecutively warmer and that the past 30 years was probably the warmest period in the northern hemisphere over the last 1,400 years. Even if all CO2 emissions are stopped, most aspects of climate change will persist for many centuries. Hence, the world has to take adaptation far more seriously.
- How can everyone have sufficient clean water without conflict? An additional 2.3 billion people received access to safe drinking water since 1990— an extraordinary achievement—but this still leaves 748 million without this access. Water tables are falling on all continents, and nearly half of humanity gets its water from sources controlled by two or more countries.
- How can population growth and resources be brought into balance? The current world population is 7.3 billion. It is expected to grow by another 1 billion in just 12 years and by 2.3 billion in 35 years. To keep up with population and economic growth, food production should increase by 70% by 2050.
- How can genuine democracy emerge from authoritarian regimes? A global consciousness and more-democratic social and political structures are developing in response to increasing interdependencies, the changing nature of power, and the need to collectively address major planetary existential challenges. Meantime, world political and civil liberties deteriorated for the ninth consecutive year in 2014 (61 countries declined; 33 countries improved).
- How can decision-making be enhanced by integrating improved global foresight during unprecedented accelerating change? Decision-makers are rarely trained in foresight and decision-making, even though decision support and foresight systems are constantly improving—e.g., Big Data analytics, simulations, collective intelligence systems, indexes, and e-governance participatory systems.
- How can the global convergence of information and communications technologies work for everyone? The race is on to complete the global nervous system of civilization and make supercomputing power and artificial intelligence available to everyone. How well governments develop and coordinate Internet security regulations will determine the future of cyberspace, according to Microsoft.
- How can ethical market economies be encouraged to help reduce the gap between rich and poor? Extreme poverty in the developing world fell from 51% in 1981 to 17% in 2011, but the income gaps between the rich and poor continue to expand rapidly. In 2014, the wealth of 80 billionaires equaled the total wealth of the bottom 50% of humanity, and Oxfam estimates that if current trends continue, by 2016 the richest 1% of the people will have more than all the rest of the world together.
- How can the threat of new and reemerging diseases and immune microorganisms be reduced? The health of humanity continues to improve; life expectancy at birth increased globally from 67 years in 2010 to 71 years in 2014. However, WHO verified more than 1,100 epidemic events over the past five years, and antimicrobial resistance, malnutrition, and obesity continue to rise.
- How can education and learning make humanity more intelligent, knowledgeable, and wise enough to address its global challenges? Much of the world’s knowledge is available—either directly or through intermediaries—to the majority of humanity today. Google and Wikipedia are helping to make the phrase “I don’t know” obsolete.
- How can shared values and new security strategies reduce ethnic conflicts, terrorism, and the use of weapons of mass destruction? The vast majority of the world is living in peace, and transborder wars are increasingly rare. Yet half the world is potentially unstable, intrastate conflicts are increasing, and almost 1% of the population (some 73 million people) are refugees or IDPs. The diplomatic, foreign policy, military, and legal systems to address the new asymmetrical threats have yet to be established.
- How can the changing status of women help improve the human condition? Empowerment of women has been one of the strongest drivers of social evolution over the past century and is acknowledged as essential for addressing all the global challenges facing humanity. The percent of women in parliaments doubled over the last 20 years from 11% to 22%. However, violence against women is the largest war today—as measured by deaths and casualties per year—and obsolete patriarchal structures persist around the world.
- How can transnational organized crime networks be stopped from becoming more powerful and sophisticated global enterprises? Transnational organized crime is estimated to get twice as much income as all military budgets combined per year. Distinctions among organized crime, insurgency, and terrorism have begun to blur, giving new markets for organized crime and increasing threats to democracies, development, and security.
- How can growing energy demands be met safely and efficiently? Solar and wind energy systems are now competitive with fossil fuel sources. Fossil fuels receive $5.3 trillion in subsidies per year compared to $0.12 trillion for renewable energy sources, according to the IMF. Energy companies are racing to make enough safe energy by 2050 for an additional 3.5 billion people (1.3 billion who do not have access now, plus the additional 2.3 billion population growth).
- How can scientific and technological breakthroughs be accelerated to improve the human condition? Computational chemistry, computational biology, and computational physics are changing the nature and speed of new scientific insights and technological applications. Future synergies among synthetic biology, 3D and 4D printing, artificial intelligence, robotics, atomically precise fabrication and other forms of nanotechnology, tele-everything, drones, falling costs of renewable energy systems, augmented reality, and collective intelligence systems will make the last 25 years seem slow compared with the volume of change over the next 25 years.
- How can ethical considerations become more routinely incorporated into global decisions? Although short-term economic “me-first” attitudes are prevalent throughout the world, love for humanity and global consciousness are also evident in the norms expressed in the many international treaties, UN organizations, international philanthropy, the Olympic spirit, inter-religious dialogues, refugee relief, development programs for poorer nations, Doctors Without Borders, and international journalism.”
“We should care about the whole world because the whole world will affect us—from new forms of terrorism and artificial intelligence to climate change and financial ethics. The State of the Future is offered to help us better understand the whole world of potential changes.”
[Citation: 2015-16 State of the Future report, Jerome C. Glenn, Elizabeth Florescu and The Millennium Project Team, The Millennium Project, August 2015.]
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