the year's best books on the future. The Millennium ... India will result in their becoming giants of world trade, which should .... Criminal Court, NGOs, Internet blogs, and the international ..... hence the acceleration of scientific and tech- nological ...
2005 State of the Future
JEROME C. GLENN AND THEODORE J. GORDON
The State of the Future is an extraordinary overview of the emerging future, which reminds policymakers of their longterm responsibilities. Barbara Haering Vice-President, Parliamentary Assembly, OSCE Vice-chair of the Defence Committee of the National Council of Switzerland
The Millennium Project's work and its State of the Future reports are very important for Korea and the future of our planet. Lee Kang-chul Chief of Staff for the President of South Korea
The State of the Future compiles an incredible wealth of knowledge from around the planet, the kind of cumulative information that we need to create a real worldwide intelligence. Luis Alberto Machado Former Minister of Intelligence, Venezuela
Previous State of the Future reports are available in Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Farsi, and Korean. See “Books and Reports.”
Six of the last eight annual State of the Future reports were selected by Future Survey as among the year’s best books on the future. ISBN: 0-9722051-4-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 98-646672
© 2005 American Council for the United Nations University 4421 Garrison Street, NW Washington, D.C. 20016-4055 U.S.A. The Millennium Project is the sole responsibility of the American Council for the United Nations University. It is not directed by the United Nations University headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, nor is it currently sponsored by or part of the UNU’s research program. by Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon Cover designed by Darren W. Krape . Photography courtesy of Hans Meiser.
EXECUTIVE S UMMARY
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he world’s astonishing outpouring of humanitarian assistance to the victims of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami of December 2004 established a new standard in the ethical evolution of humanity. It inspired hope that we can create the will to act more decisively to address global challenges and win the race between the increasing proliferation of threats and our increasing ability to improve the human condition. The world has grown to 6.5 billion people, the annual economy is approaching $60 trillion, and the Internet is connecting 1 billion people. Future synergies among nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science can dramatically improve the human condition by increasing the availability of food, energy, and water and by connecting people and information A anywhere. The effect will be to increase collective intelligence and create value and efficiency while lowering costs. Yet a previous and troubling finding from the Millennium Project still remains unresolved: although it is increasingly clear that humanity has the resources to address its global challenges, unfortunately it is not increasingly clear how much wisdom, goodwill, and intelligence will be focused on these challenges. Just as it would be difficult for the human body to work if the neurons, muscles, bones, and so on were not properly connected, so too it is difficult for the world to work if people, ideas, resources, and challenges are not properly connected. The initial global infrastructure to manage globalization is being built through ISOs, WTO rules of trade, Internet protocols, and the standards and treaties of the UN and its organizations that help manage international air travel, postal systems, food quality, financial transactions, and health. Yet the moment-by-moment connectivity among ideas, people, resources, and challenges in order to create optimal solutions is yet to be developed. A worldwide race to connect everything not yet connected is just beginning, and great wealth will be made by completing the links among systems by which civilizations function and flourish. This year’s annual military expenditures will reach $1 trillion, and annual income for organized crime has passed $2 trillion. Yet the world has not dedicated the resources needed to stop water tables from falling, to narrow the rich-poor gap, or to provide safe and abundant energy.
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Explosive economic growth over the previous decades has led to dramatic increases in life expectancy, literacy, and access to safe drinking water and sanitation and to decreases in infant mortality for the vast majority of the world. Yet without the creation and implementation of a strategic plan for a global partnership between rich and poor that uses the strength of free markets with rules based on global ethics, disparities could grow and trigger increased migration of the poor to rich areas, resulting in a range of complex conflicts and humanitarian disasters. The ratio of the average income of people in the top 5% to the bottom 5% has grown from 6 to 1 in 1980 to over 200 to 1 now. This is not sustainable. The high technology and low wages of China and India will result in their becoming giants of world trade, which should force the developing world to rethink its trade-led economic growth strategies. China alone could produce 25% of all manufacturing in the world by 2025. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment found that 60% of our life-support systems are gone or in danger of collapse. The assessment was conducted by 1,360 experts from 95 countries who produced a global inventory of the state of our ecosystems and warned that this degradation could grow worse by 2050 as another 2.6 billion people are added to the earth. Declarations from world leaders about sustainable development have not led to actions sufficient to change this trend. Current absorption capacity of carbon by oceans and forests is about 3–3.5 billion tons per year. Yet today 7 billion tons are added to the atmosphere annually, which could increase to 14 billion tons per year if current trends continue—eventually leading to greenhouse effects beyond the ability of humans to control. The World Summit at the UN’s 60th anniversary in September 2005 has stimulated many reassessments of the prospects for humanity and cooperative strategies. It seems that the UN Millennium Development Goal of cutting poverty in half between 2000 and 2015 may well be met on a global basis, but not in the poorer areas in 2
sub-Saharan Africa, and that hunger and water scarcity will continue to increase unless more serious and intelligent investments are made. World population grew by 4 billion since 1950 and may grow another 2.6 billion by 2050 before it begins to fall. According to the UN’s lower forecast (which previously have generally proved to be more accurate), world population could fall to 5.5 billion by 2100—an astonishing 1 billion fewer people than are alive today. This assumes that there will be no major life extension breakthroughs by then. In any case, civilization will have to adapt to a world in which older people form the majority. Meanwhile, water supply has to be increased, not simply redistributed. Despite improved access to safe drinking water and better sanitation during the last decade, 1.1 billion people still do not have access to safe drinking water and 2.6 billion people—half the population in developing countries—lack adequate sanitation. Nearly 15% of the world is connected to the Internet, and the digital gap is closing. Millions share ideas and feelings with strangers around the world, increasing global understanding. Google and other search engines have made much of the world's knowledge available, which helps to provide a more even playing field for the future knowledge economy. With the advent of the "24–7 always on" globalized world of ubiquitous computing, we will be making many more decisions per day, constantly changing our own and others' schedules and priorities. The potentials for information overload will make it increasingly difficult to separate the noise from the signal of what is important to know in order to make good decisions. Civilization is also becoming increasingly vulnerable to cyber-terrorism, power outages, information pollution (misinformation, pornography, junk e-mail, media violence) and to virus attacks, both electronic and biological. Weapons of mass destruction are still stockpiled and form a threat that has yet to be addressed realistically. By conventional definitions, most people continue to live in democracies or partly free
2005 STATE OF THE FUTURE conditions rather than autocracies. Yet in 2004 only 17% of the world’s people lived in countries that enjoyed a free press. Until Africa shifts from being an exporter of primary raw materials to a more scientifically oriented culture, it has no chance of closing its economic gap with the world. Official development assistance to developing countries increased to $78.6 billion in 2004, the highest level ever. Factoring in inflation and the lowered US dollar, this is a 4.6% rise in real terms from 2003 to 2004 and follows a 4.3% increase from 2002 to 2003. Increasing threats from new and reemerging diseases and from drug-resistant microorganisms have led WHO to adopt more rigorous international regulations. Malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS are expected to kill more than 6 million people in 2005. There were 4.9 million new HIV/AIDS cases in 2004, while more than 3.1 million people died of AIDS—200,000 more than the previous year. Treatment costs continue to fall, to as low as $140 a year for some in developing countries, but the spread of HIV in Eastern Europe and Asia means the number of people with AIDS in these areas may one day dwarf the number in Africa. As human encroachment on the natural environment continues, increased interspecies contacts can lead to the spread of infectious diseases to humans known previously only to wild animals. While prospects for Kashmir improved, the horrors in Sudan, the Congo, Iraq, and IsraeliPalestinian areas continue, as do nuclear uncertainties with Iran and North Korea. The world has yet to agree about when it is right to use force to intervene in the affairs of a country that is significantly endangering its own or other peoples. Conventional military force has little effect in combating the asymmetrical and intrastate warfare as the boundaries between war, civil unrest, terrorism, and crime become increasingly blurred. Although Yassir Arafat's death has restarted the Middle East peace process, internal Islamist political reforms have been evolving quietly for the past several years that could lead to the hardliner negotiations referred to in the Middle East Peace
Scenarios (see CD Chapter 4.6 Water Works). Improved international cooperation on and prosecution of terrorism as a war crime is expected now that the UN has a definition of it: “In addition to actions already proscribed by existing conventions, any action constitutes terrorism if it is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act.” The world is slowly beginning to realize that improving the political and economic status of women is one of the most cost-effective ways to address the other 14 global challenges described in Chapter 1. Yet on average, women still get paid 18% less than men, and male violence to women causes more casualties than wars do. It is time for an international campaign to develop a global consensus for action against transnational organized crime, which has grown to twice the size of all military budgets combined and is increasingly interfering with governments’ ability to act. World energy demand is forecast to increase by 60% from 2002 to 2030 and to require about $568 billion in new investments every year to meet that demand. Oil production is declining among the majority of producers. Meanwhile, the Texas Transportation Institute found that traffic jams in the US alone during 2003 wasted 2.3 billion gallons of gasoline, adding greenhouse gases and hastening the day when the oil wells run dry. Of all the decisions that face society, what could be clearer than the need for a massive Apollo-like program to increase the world's supply of nonpolluting energy? Most people still do not appreciate how fast science and technology will change over the next 25 years and would be surprised to learn about recent breakthroughs. For example, several years ago light was stopped by a yttrium-silica crystal and then released; it has also been slowed in gas and then accelerated. Adult stem cells have been regressed to embryo-like flexibility to grow 3
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY replacement tissue, and computers have been controlled by thought via implanted computer chips in the brain. To help the world cope with the acceleration of change, it may be necessary to create an international S&T organization to arrange the world’s science and technology knowledge as well as forecasts of potential consequences in a better Internet-human interface. Global ethics are emerging from a variety of sources such as the International Organization for Standardization (there are 15,036 ISO standards), corporate ethics indexes, multi-religious dialogues, UN treaties, the Olympics, the International Criminal Court, NGOs, Internet blogs, and the international news media. Ethical decisionmaking in a globalizing world should be informed by understanding of the 15 Global Challenges described in Chapter 1 and their interconnectedness. The establishment of the eight UN Millennium Development Goals was a giant step in this direction. The next should be the creation of global transinstitutions for water, energy, AIDS, education, and so on rather than just relying on current institutional structures that are not getting the job done. The eight MDGs and 15 Global Challenges provide many foci for such transinstitutions. In addition to the morality and social benefits of addressing these goals and challenges, there is also great wealth to be made, as the markets for their resolution are huge and long term. However, making this more likely will require future-oriented politicians, which in turn will require a better educated public to elect more global future-minded leaders. This book and the accompanying CD are intended to support those decisionmakers and educators in their efforts to improve the human condition.
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State of the Future Index: A Five-Year Review So, is the future getting generally better or worse? According to the State of the Future Index and a review of performance over the past five years, prospects are getting better, but slowly. The chart below shows comparisons among the five annual SOFIs. It appears that the 2005 SOFI is, in general, higher than the SOFIs of previous years. The State of the Future Index is constructed from key variables and forecasts that, in the aggregate, depict whether the future promises to be better or worse over the next 10 years. Many variables were suggested and rated by a global lookout panel to show changes in the 15 Global Challenges in Chapter 1. The number of variables was reduced to 20, due to the availability of reliable data over the previous 20 years. The variables that turned out to be higher than originally forecast were atmospheric CO2, literacy rates, life expectancy, terrorist casualties, and the number of people not free. The variables that were lower than previously forecast were population additions and deaths due to AIDS. A five-year review of the global SOFI found that there has been generally good consistency with respect to the improving trend depicted, that perturbations in the index can be traced to specific events, and that the future outlook remains sensitive to developments that can affect the Figure 1. 2001-05 State of the Future Index, Annual Comparisons
2005 STATE OF THE FUTURE variables, particularly AIDS deaths, terrorist-caused casualties, and the number of wars. The five-year review also showed that historical data are changed frequently by their sources as new information is introduced (as when a country updates societal data it supplies to a UN agency) and when definitions change. Thus it is important not only to add a new data point each year but to continually revisit all the older data. Figure 1 illustrates how historical data influence the SOFI in the five different years. Full details of these data and analysis appear in CD Chapter 2. A SOFI can be created for issues, organizations, even individuals. Chapter 3 presents national SOFIs. Future Ethical Issues Contemporary debates over the ethics of such issues as genetically modified foods, cloning, and same-sex marriages might have been better informed had the public and decisionmakers begun discussing these topics 30 years ago. Globalization and advances in science and technology will lead to future ethical issues affecting our species as a whole; reaching informed decisions about these issues may take many years. Hence, to help those future dialogues, the Millennium Project conducted an international assessment to identify the most important ethical issues that may face humanity in the foreseeable future. The issues rated the most significant that may emerge between now and 2010 were: • What is the ethical way to intervene in the affairs of a country that is significantly endangering its or other people? • Should religions give up the claim of certainty and/or superiority to reduce religion-related conflicts? • Do we have a right to clone ourselves? • Do parents have a right to create genetically altered “designer babies”? • Should national sovereignty and cultural differences be allowed to prevent international intervention designed to stop widespread
violence perpetrated by men against women? The issues rated the most significant that may emerge between 2010 and 2025 were: • Do we have the right to alter our genetic germ line so that future generations cannot inherit the potential for genetically related diseases or disabilities? • To what degree should the rights and interests of future generations prevail in decisions of this generation? • Would the advent of global ethical norms unduly constrain the differences among groups or the evolution of values? • Should a person be subjected to psychological, social, or cultural mechanisms for having the propensity to commit a crime (including, for example, the use of weapons of mass destruction) even if he or she has not yet committed such an act? • As the brain-machine interface becomes more sophisticated and global, do the demands of collective intelligence outweigh those associated with individual identity? The issues rated the most significant that may emerge between 2025 and 2050 were: • Do we have the right to genetically change ourselves and future generations into new species? • Is it ethical for society to create future elites, augmented with artificial intelligence and genetic engineering? • Do we have a right to genetically interfere with newborns or embryos because their genetic code shows a high probability for future violent behavior? • Is it right to create intelligent technological "beings" that can compete with humans or other biological life forms for an ecological niche? • Should we have the right to suicide and euthanasia?
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Will the global acceptance of values and ethical principles used to judge these issue change by 2050? The international panel rated the following as decreasing over time: • Life is a divine unalterable gift. • Economic progress is the most reliable path to human happiness. • The family in all its forms is the foundation of social values. • Human rights should always prevail over the rights of other living and non-living things. The panel rated the following as increasing over time: • Harmony with nature is more important than economic progress. • Protection of the environment and biodiversity should be considered in any policy. • The rights of women and children are uninfringeable and fundamental for a healthy society. • World interests should prevail over nationstate interests. • Human space migration is part of human evolution. • Any artificial form of life intelligent enough to request rights should be given these rights and be treated with the same respect as humans. Two general themes that emerged from the comments by the international panel were matching people’s deeds with their stated beliefs and finding synergy between individual and collective orientations. The full details are in CD Chapter 3 and are summarized in Chapter 4.
Preventing the Downside of Nanotechnology Nanotechnology will provide an extraordinary range of benefits for humanity, but as with any advance, it is wise to forecast problems in order to avoid them. Little is known about the environmental and health risks of manufactured nanomaterials. For example, artificial blood cells (respirocytes) that dramatically enhance human performance could cause overheating of the body and bio-breakdowns, or disposal of highly efficient batteries using nanomaterials could affect ecosystem and human health. Since the military is a major force in nanotechnology R&D, it can play a key role in understanding and managing nanotechnology risks. As a result, the Millennium Project conducted a two-round expert Delphi1 to identify and rate important forms of nanotechnology-related environmental pollution and health hazards that could result from any military and/or terrorist activities and to suggest military research that might reduce these problems. The expert Delphi panel rated the following as the most important questions to pursue in order to identify and understand the potential health hazards of nanotechnology: • How are nanoparticles absorbed into the body through the skin, lungs, eyes, ears, and alimentary canal? • Once in the body, can nanoparticles evade natural defenses of humans and other animals? What is the likelihood of immune system recognition of nanomaterials? • What are the sizes, aspect ratios, and surface activity determinants of nanoparticle impacts on living organisms (research must be conducted for specific nanoparticles)? 1
For background on the Delphi method, see Theodore J. Gordon, “The Delphi Method,” Futures Research Methodology version 2.0, American Council for the UNU. Washington, D.C. (2003)
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2005 STATE OF THE FUTURE • What are potential exposure routes of nanomaterials—both airborne and waterborne? • Are the current toxicity tests used for chemicals appropriate and/or useful for nanomaterials? The panel also rated the following questions as the most important to pursue in order to identify and understand the potential environmental pollution of nanotechnology: • How biodegradable are nanotube-based structures? • Could nanoparticles enter the food chain by getting into bacteria and protozoa and accumulating there? • How will nanomaterials enter the environment and will they change when moving from one medium (e.g., air) to another (e.g., water)? • How can we identify and dispose of nanomaterial litter? • How might nanoparticles get into plants and other organisms? A classification system will be needed to provide a framework to make research judgments and keep track of the state of knowledge about nanotech’s potential pollutions. Toxicologists and pharmaceutical scientists will have to be brought together to investigate nanoparticles’ ability to evade cell defenses to target disease. Chapter 5 provides a summary of the results, and full details of the study are available in the attached CD Chapter 5.
Environmental Security Events like the massive destruction of the recent tsunami and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment's pronouncement that 60% of our life-support system is threatened make the world realize that environmental security deserves greater attention. UNDP, UNEP, OSCE, and NATO have joined forces in the Environment and Security Initiative to offer countries their combined pool of expertise and resources to address the links between the natural environment and human security. The concepts of environmental diplomacy and human security are gaining recognition in both military and diplomatic circles. Environmental security is a link between the two. There was a noticeable increase in the number of articles, formal studies, and conferences related to environmental security during the past year. The environment is becoming recognized on a par with cultural and ethnic issues in security analysis. Advances in ICT, satellites, sensors, and the Internet are making it possible to monitor environmental agreements more effectively. 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. Chapter 6 is a distillation of monthly emerging environmental security issues reports.
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Sustainable Development Index The World Bank, UNDP, World Resources Institute, WHO, and OECD have created development indicators. However, integrated sustainable development indicators to measure world progress toward sustainability have appeared just recently (e.g., Environmental Sustainability Index, Sustainability Dashboard, Ecological Footprint, Living Planet Index, and Well-being Index). The Central European Node of the Millennium Project has created a Sustainable Development Index composed of seven major subject areas, 14 indicators (2 for each major area), and 64 variables (various numbers of variables for individual indicators). This index was calculated for 179 countries to express their state of development and progress toward sustainable development. Thus it allows a mapping of sustainable development as well as comparison among different countries. The countries rated as most sustainable were Sweden, Finland, and Switzerland, while those rated as least sustainable were Afghanistan, Somalia, and Burundi. Chapter 7 expands on the Sustainable Development Index first presented in the 2001 State of the Future and introduces the Quality and Sustainability of Life Indicators at national and regional levels. Reinforcement for Previous Research This year’s research supports much of the Project's previous research, which merits repeating: The dynamics of urbanization coordinates with so many important improvements to the human condition that urbanization, once thought a problem, is now part of the solution to poverty, ignorance, disease, and malnutrition. Although the interdependence of economic growth and technological innovation have made it possible for 3-4 billion people to have relatively good health and living conditions today, unless our financial, economic, environmental, and social behavior are improved along with our industrial 8
technologies, the long-term future could be more difficult. Most people in the world may be connected to the Internet within 15 years, making cyberspace an unprecedented medium for civilization. This new distribution of the means of production in the knowledge economy is cutting through old hierarchical controls in politics, economics, and finance. It is becoming a self-organizing mechanism that could lead to dramatic increases in humanity's ability to invent its future. 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 (meme epidemics). Because weapons of mass destruction may be available to single individuals over the next generation, 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, when a single individual can be massively destructive. To prevent individuals from growing up to be massively destructive, we should to begin to explore how to connect the systems of education, mental health, and security in a democratic and effective way. 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. The great paradox of our age is that while more and more people enjoy the benefits of technological and economic growth, growing numbers of people are poor and unhealthy and lack access to education. World leaders are increasingly seeking a common platform among UN organizations, the World Bank, the IMF, the
2005 STATE OF THE FUTURE WTO, multinational corporations, and other key actors of globalization in order to address this issue. Creating global partnerships between the rich and poor to make the world work for all, which seemed like an idealistic slogan before September 11th, may prove to be the most pragmatic direction as the possibilities increase that individuals may one day have access to weapons of mass destruction. The factors that caused the acceleration of S&T innovation are themselves accelerating; hence the acceleration of scientific and technological accomplishments over the past 25 years will appear slow compared with the rate of change in the next 25. Since technology is growing so rapidly along several fronts, the possibility of it growing beyond human control must now be taken seriously. 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 priorities (local, national, and international) 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. The role of the state is more important in countries where there is little private-sector activity; hence policies that make sense in western industrial countries that include leadership from the private sector are less applicable in poorer regions. When the actions of one country threaten the security of many, when do the many have the right to intervene in the affairs of the one? The extent of national sovereignty continues to
be a key element in the analysis of environmental security, terrorism, climate change, the International Criminal Court, and management of future S&T risks. Since education is one of the fundamental strategies to address most global challenges, 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. 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 and global trade, should be used to help cultures adapt in a way that preserves their unique contributions to humanity while improving the human condition. * * * The insights in this ninth 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.
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