2009 State of the Future by Jerome C. Glenn, Theodore J. Gordon, and Elizabeth Florescu. Millennium Project. 2009. 100-page paperback plus a CD-ROM with 6,700 pages of research. $49.95. Order from World Future Society, www.wfs.org/wfsbooks.htm.
In October 2008, major U.S. financial institutions crashed, and economies around the world went into recession. In March 2009, an asteroid passed within 77,000 kilometers of Earth; had it made impact, it would have obliterated all life within an 800-square-kilometer area. What do these two events have in common? According to Millennium Project scholars Jerome C. Glenn, Theodore J. Gordon, and Elizabeth Florescu in the 2009 State of the Future, both were near-total surprises.
“No one knew it [the meteor] was coming,” the authors write. “The time between its discovery and close approach was very short. Few people knew the global financial crisis was coming; fewer still forecast its breadth and depth.”
As a commission that advises the United Nations’ global efforts to raise living standards, lower disease rates, and relieve hunger, the Millennium Project anticipates—and seeks to avert—disasters of all kinds. It continually surveys more than 2,700 researchers for which trends they expect will shape world events over the coming years, and releases their combined observations in its annual State of the Future reports.
Like preceding reports, the 2009 edition identifies 15 Global Challenges that only worldwide action will be able to solve. The 2009 also present an overall outlook for life on earth over the next decade in its State of the Future Index, and synthesizes researchers’ analyses about conditions in the world at large via real-time Delphi studies and other forecasting exercises.
On the plus side, according to the researchers, the world now has fewer conflicts, global development assistance is growing, poverty reduction continues, women are gaining a greater voice in governments and organizations internationally, and scientific and technological progress keeps accelerating. On the minus side, fewer countries are governed by democratic governments; population growth trends portend more people lacking food and water; climate change is altering animal and insect patterns; new infectious diseases, including 20 drug-resistant “superbugs,” have emerged over the last 40 years; and worldwide energy demand could double by 2030.
The global recession and its long-term impacts have given the researchers much to discuss in this report. So has the growing concern worldwide over climate change. The authors hope that new national and international systems might effectively respond to both.
“The global financial crisis and climate change planning may be helping humanity to move from its often selfish, self-centered adolescence to a more globally responsible adulthood,” they write.
This year’s State of the Future Index projects global development over the next 10 years post-recession, alongside a “baseline” projection scenario in which the recession never took place. The comparison is a concrete tracker of the recession’s impacts: The first projection shows greater scarcity of food and potable water, higher poverty rates, stifled research and development, and hampered economic growth.
Yet we have an opportunity to build a new, better global economy, the authors argue. In a chapter unique to this edition, 217 international questionnaire participants offer ideas on the elements that this new economy might include: a higher priority on ethics at all levels; new definitions of GNP and GDP; global commons supported by international agreements; “collective intelligence,” by which leaders are able to draw from universal banks of information to guide their decisions; and updated educational systems.
At least one reason for hope is cited: Instantaneous- communication technologies provide the means for people across the world to know the world’s problems and to act collaboratively to solve them.
“Mobile phones, the Internet, international trade, language translation, and jet planes are giving birth to an interdependent humanity that can create and implement global strategies to improve the prospects for humanity,” the authors write.
Ethical decision making also seems to be making progress. More than 5,000 businesses signed on to the UN’s Global Compact, pledging to use global ethics. The International Criminal Court, international treaties, and new International Organization for Standardization guidelines are setting norms for national governance. Social media, ethics commissions, and NGOs all are keeping public officials accountable. Corporate social responsibility, ethical marketing, and social investing are increasing.
If one seeks evidence of new collective intelligence, this report itself surely provides it. With more than 2,700 participants from around the world since 1996 contributing to these assessments, the annual reports are as well-researched and all-encompassing as any. Readers will find a grand overview of the trends—both positive and negative—likely to shape world events in this century and beyond.
About the Reviewer
Rick Docksai is a staff editor for THE FUTURIST and World Future Review. E-mail rdocksai@wfs.org.