From: Roger Greenway, ENN
Published August 4, 2009 07:10 AM
Millennium Project Report Issued on the Future of the
World
A major report issued by the United Nations Millenium Project has just
been released. It finds that half the world appears vulnerable to social
instability and violence due to increasing and potentially prolonged
unemployment from the recession as well as several longer-term issues:
decreasing water, food, and energy supplies per person; the cumulative
effects of climate change; and increasing migrations due to political,
environmental, and economic conditions. It also finds some good in the
global financial crisis, which may be helping humanity to move from its
often selfish, self-centered adolescence to a more globally responsible
adulthood.
After 13 years of the Millennium Project’s global futures research, it is
increasingly clear that the world has the resources to address its
challenges. Coherence and direction has been lacking. But recent meetings of
the U.S. and China, as well as of NATO and Russia, and the birth of the G-20
plus the continued work of the G-8 promise to improve global strategic
collaboration. It remains to be seen if this spirit of cooperation can
continue and if decisions will be made on the scale necessary to really
address the global challenges discussed in this report.
Major Findings include:
- The vast majority of the world is living in peace, conflicts actually
decreased over the past decade, cross-cultural dialogues are flourishing,
and intra-state conflicts are increasingly being settled by international
interventions.
- The world is beginning to wake up to the enormity of the threat of
transnational organized crime.
- Freedom House’s 2009 survey found that democracy and freedom have
declined for the third year in a row, and press freedoms declined for the
seventh year in a row. It estimates that only 17% of the world’s
population lives in 70 countries with a free press, while 42% lives in 64
countries that have no free press.
- Although government and business leaders are beginning to respond more
seriously to the global environmental situation, it continues to get
worse. Each day, the oceans absorb 30 million tons of CO2, increasing
their acidity. The number of dead zones—areas with too little oxygen to
support life—has doubled every decade since the 1960s. The oceans are
warming about 50% faster than the IPCC reported in 2007. The amount of ice
flowing out of Greenland during the summer of 2008 was nearly three times
more than that lost during the previous year. Arctic summer ice could be
gone by 2030, as could many of the major Himalayan, European, and Andean
glaciers. Over 36 million hectares of primary forest are lost every year.
Human consumption is 30% larger than nature’s capacity to regenerate, and
demand on the planet has more than doubled over the past 45 years. This
growth continues as, for example, more cars are expected to be produced in
China in 2009 than in the U.S. or Japan.
- World energy demand could nearly double by 2030, with China and India
accounting for over half of the increase. China uses more coal than the
U.S., EU, and Japan combined, but it now has a policy to close an old coal
plant for each new cleaner burning plant that turns coal into a gas before
burning it. Without major policy and technological changes, fossil fuels
will meet 80% of primary energy demand by 2030. If so, then large-scale
carbon capture, storage, and/or reuse should become a top priority to
reduce global climate change.
- In March 2009 an asteroid missed Earth by 77,000 kilometers, 80%
closer to the planet than our moon is. If it had hit Earth, it would have
wiped out all life on 800 square kilometers. No one knew it was coming.
The time between its discovery and close approach was very short.
- Nearly 25% of humanity is connected to the Internet. There are more
people using the Internet in China than the total population of the U.S.
Mobile phones are becoming handheld computers. Humanity, the built
environment, and ubiquitous computing seem destined to become so
interconnected that collective intelligences with “just-in-time
knowledge”� will emerge for improving civilization. With an increasingly
educated world and the majority of humanity connected to the Internet over
the next 20 years, new forms of political power may emerge, growing beyond
the control of traditional hierarchical structures.
- The world’s population is 6.8 billion. It is expected to grow to 9.2
billion by 2050, but it could shrink by 2100, creating a world with many
elderly people. Nearly all the population increases will be in developing
countries; hence, today’s first world will be tomorrow’s elderly world.
- Infectious diseases are the second leading cause of death worldwide.
About half the people in the world are at risk of several endemic
diseases. More than 42 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, and 74% of
these infected people live in sub-Saharan Africa. For the first time in 40
years, WHO declared a pandemic: the H1N1 influenza (swine flu) rapidly
infected 60,000 people in nearly half the countries of the world,
resulting in 263 deaths between April and June 2009.
The Millennium Project also explored future possible outcomes using its
Real-Time Delphi online software. The RTD is a relatively new and efficient
method for collecting and synthesizing expert opinions. According to the
report, the value of futures research is less in forecasting accuracy than
in focusing attention, planning, and opening minds to consider new
possibilities and in changing the policy agenda. The goal is not to know the
future precisely (how could that be possible?) but to understand a range of
possibilities that lead to better decisions.
For More on this important report: http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/sof2009.html
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