Journal #4

av Jerome c. Glenn

Humanity is making momentous

strides forward in health, literacy,

and many other critical areas, but

also stalling or moving backward

on many others , warns The

Millennium Project in its latest

State of the Future report.

The global s ituation for humanity continues to improve in general, but at the expense of the env ironm ent. Massive transit ions from isolated subsistence agricuJture and industry to a global, Internet-connected, plu- ralistic civilization are occurring at unprecedented speed and with

never-before-seen levels of uncer- tainty.

The indicators of progress, from health and education to water and energy, show that we are winning more than we are losing-but where we are losing is very serious. As The Millennium Project has documented over the past 17 years in its annual State of tfze Future reports, humanity clearly has the ideas and resources to address its global challenges, but it has not yet sh own the leadership, policies, and management on the scale necessary.

On one hand, people around the world are becoming healthier, wealthier, better educated, more peaceful, and increasingly con- nected, and they are living longer. The child mortality rate has dropped 47% since 1990, while life expectancy has risen by 10 years to reach 70.5 years today. Extreme poverty in the developing world fell from 50% in 1981 to 21 % in 2010, primary-school completion rates grew from 81 % in 1990 to 91 % in 2011, and on ly one

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transborder war occurred in 2013. Furthermore, nearly 40% of human- ity is now connected via the Internet.

However, water tables on all conti- nents are falling, glaciers are melt- ing, coral reefs are dying, ocean acid- ity is increasing, ocean dead zones have doubled every decade since the 1960s, and half the world's topsoil has been destroyed.

Some critical socioeconomic fault lines are worsening, as well: Intra- state conflicts and refugee numbers are rising, income gaps are increas- ingly obscene, and youth unemploy- ment has reached dangerous propor- tions. Meanwhile, traffic jams and air pollution are strangling cities. In add ition, between $1 trillion and $1.6 trillion is paid in bribes, orga- nized crime takes in twice as much money per year as a ll military bud- gets combined, civi l liberties are in- creasingly tlueatened, and half the world is potentially unstable.

The International Monetary Fund expects the globa l economy to grow from 3% in 2013 to 3.7% during 2014

www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST Septe111ber-October 2014 15

and possibly 3.9% in 2015. The world population having grown 1.1 % in 2013, global per capita income will be increasing by 2.6% or more a year. Our world is reducing poverty faster than many thought was possible.

Nevertheless, the divide between the rich and poor is growing fast: According to Oxfam, the total wealth of the richest 85 people equals that of 3.6 billion people in the bottom half of the world's economy, and half of the world's wealth is owned by just 1% of the population. We need to continue the successful ef- forts that are reducing poverty, but we also need to focus far more seri- ously on reducing income inequality in order to avoid long-term instability.

Instability has already been erupt- ing and expanding in many parts of the world over the last five years, due to a confluence of rising food and energy prices, failing states, fall- ing water tables, climate change, de- sertification, and increasing migra- tions resulting from political, environmental, and economic condi- tions. And, because the world is bet- ter educated and increasingly con- nected, people are becoming less tolerant of the abuse of elite power than in the past. Unless these elites open the conversation about the future with the rest of their popula- tions, unrest and revolutions are likely to continue and increase.

Although wars between states are becoming fewer and fewer, and the numbers of both nuclear weapons and battle-related deaths have been decreasing, conflicts within countries are increasing: A third of Syria's 21 million people are displaced or live as refugees, and the world ignores 6 million war-related deaths in the Congo.

Other fault lines are emerging worldwide in the form of rapidly ris-

ing frequency of cyberattacks and es- pionage, an escalation in territorial tensions among Asian countries, and overlapping jurisdictions for energy access to the melting Arctic. It will be a test of humanity' s maturity to re- solve all these conflicts peacefully.

Meanwhile, the world is automat- ing jobs far more broadly and quickly than it did in earlier eras. How many truck and taxicab drivers will future self-dr iving vehicles re-

Figure 1 2013 State of the Future Index

1.5

1.0

0.5

0.0

1993 1998 2003 2008 2013 2018 2023 Each of the 30 variables making up the index (Box 1) can be examined to show where we are winning, where we are losing, and where there is unclear or little progress.

Box 1 Variables Used in the 2013-14 State of the Future Index

1. GNI per capita, PPP (constant 2005 inter- national $)

2. Economic income inequality (share of top 10%)

3. Unemployment, total{% of world labor force)

4. Poverty headcount ratio at $1.25 a day (PPP) (% of population)

5. Levels of corruption (O=highly corrupt; 6=very clean)

6. Foreign direct investment, net inflows (balance of payments, current$, billions)

7. R&D expenditures(% of GDP} 8. Population growth (annual%} 9. Life expectancy at birth (years} 10. Mortality rate, infant (per 1,000 live births) 11. Prevalence of undernourishment

12. Health expenditure per capita (cu rrent$) 13. Physicians (per 1,000 people) 14. Improved water source(% of population

with access) 15. Renewable internal freshwater resources

per capita (thousand cubic meters) 16. Ecological Footprint/ Biocapacity ratio 17. Forest area(% of land area) 18. CO emissions from fossil-fuel and cement

2 production (billion tonnes)

19. Energy efficiency (G DP per unit of energy use (constant 2005 PPP$ per kg of oil equivalent)]

20. Electricity production from renewable sources, excluding hydroelectric (% of total)

21. Literacy rate, adult total (% of people ages

16 THE FUTURIST September-October 2014 • www.wfs.org

15 and above) 22. School enrollment. secondary(% gross) 23. Number of wars (conflicts with more than

1,000 fatalities} 24. Terrorism incidents 25. Number of countries and groups that had

or still have intentions to build nuclear weapons

26. Freedom rights (number of countries rated free)

27. Voter turnout(% voting population) 28. Proportion of seats held by women in

national parliaments(% of members) 29. Internet users (per 100 people) 30. Prevalence of HIV(% of population

age 15-49)

place? How many industrial laborers will lose their jobs to robotic u1anu- facturing? How many telephone support personnel will be sup- planted by AI telephone systems?

In every industry and sector, the number of employees per business revenue is falling, giving rise to em- ployment-less economic growth. Job seekers will need more opportunities for one-person Internet-based self- employment and for markets for their interests and abilities in other job markets worldwide. Successfully leapfrogging slower linear develop-

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"Because the world is better educated and Increasingly connected, people are becoming less tolerant of the abuse of

These great conversations will be better informed if we realize that tJ1e world is improving more than most pessimists know and that future dangers are worse than most opti- mists ind icate. Better ideas, 11ew tools, and creative management ap- proaches are popping up all over the world, but t11e lack of imagination and courage to make serious cl1ange is drowning the innovations needed to make the world work for all.

As a global think tank, The Millen-

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elite power than in the past."

ment processes in lower-income countries is likely to require imple- menting futurist ic possibilities- from 3-0 printing to seawater agri- culture-and making increasing individual and collective intelligence a national objective of each country.

The explosive, accelerating growth of knowledge in a rapidly changing and increasingly interdepe11dent world gives us so much to know about so many things. Unfortu- nately, we are also flooded with so much trivial news Ulat serious issues get little attention or interest, and too much time is wasted going thiough useless information.

At the same time, the world is in- creasingly engaged in diverse con- versations about how to relate to tJ1e environment and to our fellow hu- mans, and about what technologies, economics, and laws are right for our common future. These conversa- tions are emerging from countless international negotiations, UN gath- erings, and thousands of Internet discussion groups and big-data analyses. Humanity is slowly but surely becoming aware of itself as an integrated system of cultures, econo- mjes, technologies, natural and built environments, and governance systems.

nium Project gathers insights from a network of more than 4,500 experts who continuously gather and share data via our online Global Futures System (GFS). GFS can be thought of as a globa l information utility from which different readers can draw different value for improving their understanding and decisions.

The collective intelligence emerges in GFS from synergies among data/ information/ know ledge, software/ hardware, and experts and others with insight that continually learn from feedback to produce just-in- time knowledge for better decisions than any of these elements acting a lone.

In addition to succinct but rela- tively detailed descriptions of the current situation and forecasts, we also formulate reco1nmendations to address the various global chal- lenges. Some of our recommenda- tions are as follows:

• Establish a U.S.-China 10-year environmental security goal to re- duce climate change and i1nprove trust.

• Grow meat without growing an- imals, to reduce water demand and greenhouse-gas emissions.

• Develop seawater agriculture for biofuels, carbon sink, and food without rain.

• Build global collective intelli- gence systems for input to long- range strategic plans.

• Create tele-nations connecting brruns overseas to the development process back home.

• Establish trans-institutions for 1nore effective implementation of strategies.

• Detail and implement a global stra tegy to counter organized crin1e.

• Use the State of the Future Index as an a lternative to GDP as a mea- sure of progress for the world and nations with 30 variables that in- cludes indicators for social equity and well-being.

I Drld The world is in a race between im-

pleme11ting ever-increasing ways to improve the human condition and the seemingly ever-increasing com- plexity and scale of global problems. So, how is the world doing in this race? What's the score so far?

The Millennium Project's global State of the Future Index (SOFI), pro- duced annually since 2000, measw·es the 10-year outlook for the future based on historical data on 30 key variables. In the aggregate, these data depict whether the future promises to be better or worse. The SOFI is intended to show the direc- tions and inte11Sity of change and to identify the responsible factors and the relationships among them.

The current SOFI, shown in Figure 1, indicates a slower progress since 2007, although the overall outlook is prom1s1ng.

Some Kev Trends AffecUng lb s, e n, Ulf.' ·n,u

• Computing. The EU, United States, Japan, and China have an- nounced programs to understand how the brain works and apply that knowledge to make better comput- ers wit11 better computer-user inter- faces. Google also is working to cre- ate artificial brains that could serve us as personal artificial-intelligence assistants. Another great race is on to make supercomputer power avail- able to the masses with advances in IBM's Watson and with cloud com- puting by A1nazon and ot h ers.

www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST Septernber-October 2014 17

Figure 2 Where We 're Winning , Where We 're Losing

Winning

Mortality rate, infant

(per 1,000 live births) ============----

School enrollment, secondary(% gross) t=============----

Electricity production from 2023 renewables, excl. hydro (% of total)

2013

Number of wars (conflicts with 2003more than 1,000 fatalities) 1--...;;;;;;..,.

1993 Seats held by women in national

parliaments(% of members) I-==::;-....

Losing

Ecological footprint/ biocapacity ratio (x10) t===::

CO 2

emissions from fossil fuel and cement production •-~------

(billion tonnes; GtC0 2 ) t=======:-

0 20 40 60 80 100 120

Note: Some data has been amended to fit the graph: [/100] means the real number has been divided by 100, while [x10] means a multiplication by 10.

18 THE FUTURIST September-October 2014 • www.wfs.org

About 85% of the world's popula- tion is expected to be covered by high-speed mobile Internet in 2017.

• A Web-connected world. More than 8 billion devices are connected to the Internet of Things, which is expected to grow to 40 biUion-80 bil- lion devices by 2020. According to tl1e UN's International Telecommu- nications Union, nearly 40 % of hu- manity now uses the Internet. This global network is close to becoming the de facto global brain of humanity.

So what happens when the entire world has access to nearly all the

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"It is not vet clear that humannv will grow from shon-term,me-first thinking to longer-term, we-first,planet-oriented decision making."

attacks over 24 hours on July 24, 2013, the majority of which attacked targets in the United States. Cyber- attacks can be thought of as a new kind of guerrilla warfare. Prevention may involve an endless intellectual arms race of hacking and counter- hacking software, setting cyber traps, exposing sources, and initiat- i11g trade sanctions.

• Civil strife. The long-range trend toward democracy is strong, but Freedom House reports that world political and civil liberties deterio- rated for the eighth consecutive year

world's knowledge, along with in- stantaneous access to artificial brains tl1at can solve prob lems and create new conditions like geniuses, while blurring previous distinctions be- tween virh.tal realities and physical reality? We have already seen bril- liant financial experts-augmented with data and software-n1aking the short-term, selfish, economic deci- sions that led to the 2008 global fi- nancial crisis, continued environ- mental degradation, and widening income disparities. It is not yet clear that humanity will grow from short- term, me-first thinking to longer- term, we-first, planet-oriented deci- sion making.

Human i ty may become more responsible and compassionate as the Internet of people and things grows across the planet, making us n1ore aware of humanity as a whole and of our natural and built environ- ments. Yet multi-way interactive me- dia also attracts individuals with common interests into isolated ideo- logical groups, reinforcing social po- larization and conflict and forcing some political systems into gridlock.

And although the Internet's growth may make it increasingly dif- ficult for conventional crimes to go undetected, cyberspace has become the n1edium for new kinds of crimes: According to the cloud-services pro- vider Akamai, there were 628 cyber-

in 2013, with declines noted in 54 countries and i.Jnprovements in only 40 countries. At the same time, in- creasing numbers of educated and mobile-phone/ Internet-savvy people are no longer tolerating the abuse of power and may be setting the stage for a long and difficult transition to more global democracy.

• Climate change. The Intergov- e rnm en ta I Panel on Climate Change's Fifth Assess111ent Report found that world greenhouse gas emissions grew by an annual aver- age of 2.2% between 2000 and 2010, up from 1.3% per year between 1970 and 2000. Each decade of the past three was warmer than the previous decade. The past 30 years was likely the warmest period in the Northern Hemisphere in the last 1,400 years.

Furthermore, even if all CO 2

emis- sions are stopped today, the IPCC re- port notes that "most aspects of cli- mate change will persist for many centuries." Hence, the world has to take adaptation far more seriously, in addition to reducing emissions, and creating new methods to reduce the greenhouse gases that are al- ready in the atmosphere.

Without dramatic changes, UN Environment Program projects a 2°C (3.6°F) rise above preindustrial levels in 20-30 years, accelerating changing climate, ocean acidity, changes in disease patterns, and saltwater intru-

sions into freshwater areas world- wide. The UN Food and Agriculh.tre Organization reports that 87% of global fish stocks are either ful ly ex- p loited or overexploited. Oceans ab- sorb about 33% of human-generated CO

2 , but their ability to continue do-

ing this is being reduced by chang- ing acidity and the die-offs of cora] reefs and other living systems.

• Energy needs. The wor ld also needs to create enough electrical production capacity for an addi- tional 3.7 billion people by 2050. There are 1.2 billion people without electricity today (17% of the world), and an additional 2.4 billion people will be added to the world's popt1la- tion between now and 2050.

Compounding this is the require- ment to decommission aging nuclear power plants and to replace or retro- fit fossil fuel plants. The cost of nu- clear power is increasing, while the cost of renewables is falling-wind power passed nuclear as Spain's leading source of electricity. How- ever, fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natu- ral gas) will continue to supply the vast majority of the world's electric- ity past 2050 unless there are major social and technologica l changes. If the long-term trends toward a wealthier and more sophisticated world continue, our energy de- mands by 2050 could be more than expected. However, the convergen- ces of technologies are accelerating rapidly to make energy efficiencies far greater by 2050 than forecast today.

• Water stress. Major progress was made over the past 25 years that provided enough clean water for an additional 2 billion people. But as a result of water pollution, accelerat- ing climate change, falling water tables around the world, and an ad- ditional 2.4 billion people in just 36 years, some of the people with safe water today may not have it in the future unless significant changes oc- cur. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and De- velopment (OECD), half the world could be living in areas with severe water stress by 2030.

• Population growth . The UN's mid-range forecast is that the world's population, which now to- tals 7.2 billion people, will number 9.6 billion by 2050. By that date, the

www.wfs.org • THE FUTURIST Septe,nber-Oclober 2014 19

. .

number of people over age 65 will equal or surpass the number under 15.

Average life expectancy at birth has increased from 48 years in 1955 to 70.5 years today. Future scientific and medical breakthroughs cou Id give people longer and n1ore pro- ductive lives than most would be- lieve possible today. For example, uses of genetic data, software, and nanotechnology will help detect and treat disease at the genetic or molec- ular level.

direct regard for social issues? On tl1e other hand, might social co11sid- erations impair progress toward a truthful understa11ding of reality?

• Gender equity. Violence against women is ilie largest war today, as measured by death and casualties per year. Globally, 35% of won1en have experienced physical and/ or sexual violence. While the gender gaps for health and educational at- tainment were closed by 96% and 93% respectively, according to the 2013 Global Gender Gap report by

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,I ,.. ,::;.i ~- '' .. "It is unreasonable to expect the world to cooperativelv create and implement strategies to build abetter future without some general agreement about what that desirable future is."

• Accelerating technologies. Sci- ence and technology's continued ac- ce leration is fundamentally chang- ing what is possible, and access to this knowledge is becoming univer- sally available. For example, Chlna's Tianhe-2 supercomputer is the world's fastest computer, at 33.86 petaflops (quadrillion floating point operations per second)-passing the computational speed of a human brain. Individual gene sequencing is now available for $1,000-and the price could go dowi1 much further in comi11g years-a developn1ent that will enable individualized ge11etic medicine for every patient.

Although advances in syntl1etic bi- ology, quantum entanglement, Higgs-like particles, and computa- tional science seem remote from im- proving the human co11dition, such basic scientific endeavors are neces- sary to increase ilie knowledge that scientists can use to develop and in1- prove technologies to benefit hu- manity. But witl1 little news coverage and educational curricula, the gen- eral public seem unaware of the ex- traordinary changes and conse- quences tl1at need to be discussed: Is it ethical to clone ourselves, to bring dinosaurs back to life, or to invent thousands of new life forms through synthetic biology? Should basic sci- entific research be pursued witl1out

ilie World Economic Forum, tl1e gap in economic participation has been closed by only 60%, and the gap i11 political outcomes by only 21 %: Women account for only 21.3 % of the membership of national legisla- tive bodies worldwide, up from 11.3% in 1997.

• "Hidden" hunger. Food markets in n1uch of the developing world ex- hibit an increasing problem of hid- den hunger- that is, the intake of calories is sufficient, but those calo- ries contain little in nutritious value, vitamins, and minerals. A lth ough t11e share of people in the world who are hungry has fallen from over 30% in 1970 to 15% today, concerns are increasing over the variety and nu- tritional quality of food. The FAO es- timates that some 30% of ilie world population (2 billion people) suffers fro1n hidden hunger.

• Vulnerable urban coastal zones. Human construction is diminishing the land structures that the world's coastal zones rely on to blunt the im- pacts of hurricanes, tsunamis, and pollution. This is a harmful outcome, not onJy for flora and fauna, but for us, as well, since more tl1an half the world's people live witl1in 120 miles of a coastline. Without appropriate mitigation, prevention, and manage- ment of the natura l infrastructure withln w·ban coastal zones, billions

of people will be increasingly vul- nerable to a range of disasters.

• "Lone wolf" terrorism. Individ- uals acting alone can wield increas- ing amounts of damage. The number of terrorism incidents increased over the past 20 years, reaching 8,441 in 2012 and more tl1an 5,000 in the first half of 2013.

Of all terrorism, the lone-wolf type is the most insidious, because it is exceedingly difficult to anticipate, given the actions and intent of indi- viduals acting alone. The average opinion of our i.nternational panel is that nearly a quarter of terrorist at- tacks carried out in 2015 might be by a lone wolf, and that the situation might escalate: About half of t11e par- ticipants that we surveyed tl1ought that lone-wolf terrorists might at- tempt to use weapons of mass de- struction by around 2030.

It is unreasonab le to expect the world to cooperatively create and implement strategies to build a bet- ter future without some general agreement about what that desirable future is. Such a future can 011ly be bui lt with awareness of the global situation and of the extraordinary possibilities.

What we need is a global collec- tive intelligence system to track sci- ence and technology advances, fore- cast consequences, and docun1ent a range of views on them. The acceler- ating rates of changes iliat the world now experiences call for new kinds of decision making witl1 g lobal real- time feedback. The Global Futures System is an early expression of tl1at future direction. 0

About the Author Jerome C. Glenn is CEO of The Millennium Project and The Global Futures System, www.themp.org. This article is adapted from 2013-14 State of the Future, co- authored by Glenn with

Theodore J. Gordon and Elizabeth Florescu (published by The Millennium Project, millennium-project.org/millennium/201314SOF .html).

20 THE FUTURIST Septe1nber-October 2014 • www.wfs.org