The Millennium Project
American Council for the UN University
Planning Committee Meeting
February 14-15, 2001
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, D.C.
AGENDA
Wednesday 14 February 2001
• Recent accomplishments
• Briefing on recent research
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Peer review of Challenges
State of the Future Index (SOFI)
Future Issues of Science and Technology
Analysis of the UN Summit Millennium Speeches
Environmental Crime & the International Criminal Court
Global Partnership for Sustainable Development
Environmental Security Scanning
Futures Research Methods V.2
• Node Reports
Agenda
Thursday 15 February 2001
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Project Information System Improvements
Project issues
Objectives for 2001-2002 Program
Nodes’ plans for next year
Public Relations, Marketing, and Fund Raising
Plans
• Review, action items, and conclusions
• Adjourn
Funding Support
2000-2001 Financial Sponsors
 Deloitte & Touche
 General Motors
 Hughes Space and Communications
 United Nations University
 U.S. Army Environmental Policy Institute
 U.S. Department of Energy
In Kind Support
 Smithsonian Institution
 The Futures Group International
Recent Accomplishments
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State of the Future makes FS’s best picks for 2000
Challenges for Humanity UN, US Senate distribution
Translations of Project’s reports
UN Strategy Unit
Science Attaches in planning process
Explorations on Transnational Crime strategy
Articles (AEPI, Foresight, FRQ, TF&SC)
Streaming Video
Talks (China, Argentina, Japan, UNEP, Finland, AEPI, Forum 2000, WANGO)
Project sales
Sales in the year 2000
Structure of sales by items
T ota l S a le s in 2000: $14,101.70
FRM (total: 134; WFS: 70)
SOF@M (total: 154; WFS: 70; FGI: 50)
4,410.12
31.3%
5,291.21
37.5%
SOF video (total: 21; WFS: 20)
25.1%
630.50
4.5%
SOF '97 (total: 2)
SOF '99 (total: 84; WFS: 20)
39.90
3,541.52
0.3%
SOF '98 (total: 5)
188.45
1.3%
Structure of buyers
corporations (total: 74; FGI: 50)
2,638.75
18.7%
W FS
5,191.70
36.8%
libraries (total: 2)
97.00
0.7%
IO (total: 5)
241.40
1.7%
government (total: 6)
287.35
2.0%
research centers (total: 8)
344.70
2.4%
resellers (total: 45)
1,894.63
13.4%
individuals (total: 35)
1,674.85
11.9%
universities (total: 27)
1,066.52
7.6%
NGOs (total: 18)
664.80
4.7%
Peer Review of Challenges
• New Questionnaire used with brief overviews of
each of the 15 challenges
• On-going process until next publication of SOF
• 21 Reviews received thus far
• Nodes, MP staff, listserv selected reviewers
• General improvements but overall descriptions,
actions, and regional views are well received
• Selected reviewers for more complete versions
Future Issues of Science and
Technology Study
Purpose: Obtain a broad range of
international perspectives on the emerging
issues and forces that are likely to influence
the future of science and technology
programs and their management
Three-Year Sequence
Year 1: What are the important future issues ?
Year 2: What are the implications for management?
Year 3: Create scenarios to make choices explicit.
Year 1 Study Flow
- Steering Committee for the Study
-Science Attachés Meeting
What are the most important S&T questions?
Suggested actions/developments/answers
S&T Panel Round 1
Rate questions and actions
Additional suggestions
National Priorities
- Science Attachés Meeting
- Steering Committee for the Study
- MP Nodes’ Meetings
- MP Planning Committee
Review additions
Design Round-2
S&T Panel
Round 2
The Panel Was Highly Engaged
71 new questions were suggested (distilled to 19)
210 new actions/ developments/answers were suggested
to address the original 14 questions
Separate discussions were conducted on the Millennium
Project’s Internet listserve <millproj@hermes.circ.gwu.edu>
People who were late submitted anyway in hope their
responses would be included
Requests were made to use the material in other ways
Government
Decision Makers
Create New
Opportunities
Avoid Problems
Future Issues
Private Corporate
Decision Makers
of
Science & Technology
Non-Science
Culture
Public knowledge and
understanding of S&T
Ratings of the Questions
(importance globally, to my country)
The first seven most highly rated questions:
1. What challenges can science pursue whose resolution would significantly improve the
human condition? ( 4.47 ; 4.04)
13. What potential catastrophes could change the world within the next 25 years which
science might help to avoid? (4.14 ; 3.70)
2. What future applications of science or scientific research have the greatest potential for
danger to human survival? (4.08; 3.62)
5. What will help bridge the S&T gap between developed and developing countries?
(4.06 ; 3.59)
3. What are the principal factors that will influence science over the next 25 years?
(3.93 ; 3.71)
6. What emerging technologies are likely to have the most positive economic impact over
the next 25 years? (3.92 ; 3.96)
4. What are some seminal, key, or profound scientific developments that might occur
during the next 25 years? (3.86 ; 3.63)
(Complete list on the hand-out)
What challenges can science pursue whose
resolution would significantly improve the human condition?
Most highly rated developments/actions/answers:
1C.Commercial availability of a cheap, efficient, environmentally benign, non-nuclear fission and nonfossil fuel means of generating base load electricity, competitive in price with today's fossil fuels.
1F. Simple, inexpensive, effective medicines and corresponding delivery systems to treat widespread
diseases and epidemics.
1A. Improving the efficiency of water use in agriculture by 75%.
1H. Climate change - understanding and solutions.
1B. Cheap, efficient, means for providing potable water from salt or brackish sources.
Examples of Newly Suggested developments/actions/answers:
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Developing strong, lightweight materials that do not corrode, are resistant to wear, and easy to
recycle.
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Developing efficient, inexpensive (e.g. photochemical) process to produce hydrogen from water.
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Nanofiltering devices for water purification and recycling in households.
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Developing methods for enlarging human creativity.
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Reaching deeper understanding of the quantum foundations of physics.
What catastrophes could change the world within
the next 25 years which science might help avoid?
Most highly rated developments/actions/answers:
13A. Global epidemics, plagues, naturally caused or by human action such as an adverse genetic
mutation.
13F. Economic meltdown - a major worldwide depression.
13G. Magnitude 9 or greater earthquake.
13C. Global war. (But not an old fashioned East vs. West war with battle lines; rather a global terrorist
war and rise in global crime as a form of war seems more likely)
13H. Breakdown of law and order worldwide.
Examples of Newly Suggested developments/actions/answers:
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Criminal terrorism.
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Major unprecedented migration of poor people to the affluent world.
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Fragmentation wars among some nations.
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Climate change induced crop failures, floods, droughts, sea level rise, and/or extinctions.
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Major changes in the intensity and direction of ocean currents, leading to abrupt climate changes.
What future applications of science or
scientific research have the greatest
potential for danger to human survival?
Most highly rated developments/actions/answers:
2D. Accidentally - or intentionally - released genetically modified organisms that have serious
adverse consequences for the biosphere.
2H. Use of biotechnology to build new kinds of biological weapons of mass destruction.
2G. Nanotechnology to build stealthy new means of killing large numbers of people.
2C. Intelligent Nanotechnology evolves beyond human control.
2E. Dissemination of information on potentially dangerous technologies via Internet.
Examples of Newly Suggested developments/actions/answers:
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Loss of biodiversity from exclusionary marketing for genetically altered, patented varieties.
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Widespread availability of tailored psychotropes (e.g. programmed dream pills)
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Human cloning
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Technological development of the less developed world to the consumption levels of the US.
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Use of Internet to promote drug use and other socially undesirable actions.
What will help bridge the S&T gap between
developed and developing countries?
Most highly rated developments/actions/answers:
5F. Education and training.
5B. Very low cost, multi-purpose, portable computer communications useful to the poor majority to
begin to enter the education, economic, and health systems beyond their village.
5E. A new economics that effectively rewards innovation and work but distributes wealth more evenly.
5C. More flexible exchange programs that allow reciprocal residency and internships in research labs
of other countries.
5A. Use of collaboratories for tele-science so that people can work as if they were in one lab even
though they are in different locations around the world.
Examples of Newly Suggested developments/actions/answers:
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Breaking down the new iron curtain between North and South.
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If the pressure of overpopulation ends, many more countries will be able to afford (basic) science
(like China, India, Brazil or Indonesia, etc.).
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Develop cassette colleges for developing world.
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Access to the chaotic jumble of fact, misinformation and lies on the Internet by all.
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Development of an effective all language simultaneous voice translation system.
What are the principal factors that will influence
science over the next 25 years?
Most highly rated developments/actions/answers:
3F. Education and training of the science workforce.
3C. Economic contraction or collapse. (Science, more than other enterprises, depends on human beings
having a relatively secure base to work from.)
3I. Scientific information exchange and institutional collaborations.
3A. Publicly visible scientific disasters or achievements significantly affecting public perspectives and
thus funding.
3B. Public understanding of the relationship of science and technology to the emerging knowledge
economy.
Examples of Newly Suggested developments/actions/answers:
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Increased corporate control of scientific research.
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Applications of breakthroughs of one discipline in other disciplines.
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Change in focus of interest (and funding) moving away from computing etc. to biological sciences.
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International sharing of major infrastructure.
What emerging technologies are likely to have
the most positive economic impact over the next 25 years?
Most highly rated developments/actions/answers:
6E. New, clean and inexpensive energy technologies
6A. Medicines derived from the knowledge founded in the Human Genome Project.
6D. Nanotechnologies.
6F. Genetically engineered products.
6C. Increased bandwidth capacity for multi-media communications for all Internet users at affordable
price.
Examples of Newly Suggested developments/actions/answers:
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Precision agriculture.
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Much improved medical diagnostics and relatively inexpensive personal wearable and implant
cable health monitors.
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New materials such as high-temperature superconductors and Buckyballs, biocompatible
implants.
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Acceptable systems of energy generation by nuclear fission using advances in information
technology for safety, operation, and monitoring; and control of the nuclear waste stream by
means such as transmutation, with acceptable means of waste storage.
What are some seminal, key, or profound scientific
developments that might occur during the next 25 years?
Most highly rated developments/actions/answers:
4H. Fusion or some other forms of cheap, abundant power with minimal adverse environmental
consequences.
4D. Discovery of the underlying principle, "the final theory" that links quantum physics and relativity
to explain the range of particles and forces that make up the universe.
4F. Computers that achieve awareness and can evolve.
4M. Capacity to build things cheaply and reliably by moving individual atoms and molecules.
4G. Self-replicating nano-robots or biochemical structures.
Examples of Newly Suggested developments/actions/answers:
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Remote microprobes that can be implanted in, or circulated through, living organisms or deployed in extreme
environments, such as the depth of the Earth's crust to collect chemical and physical data continuously and
relatively inexpensively.
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Human-computer symbiotics, such as implantable brain boosters, e.g. electro-bio-chemical processors with
integrated random-access memories and telecommunication circuits.
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Capacity to simulate and experiment with the brain's neurological functional modules, to diagnose disorders and
provide therapy for example Parkinson's, ALS etc.
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Reducing the cost of solar cell manufacture to less than $0.50 per watt.
Priorities
4.1 What would be the best investment in
basic science for your country's future?
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Education
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Biotechnology, Biology, Genetics
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Computers, Information Systems
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Environment, Ecology
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Chemistry
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Physics, including Plasma and High
Energy
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Energy
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Advanced material science
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Medicine, Health, life sciences
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Space Technology, Space Station
Priorities
4.2 What would be the best investment in
applied science for your country's future?
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Biotechnology, Biology, Genetics
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Energy
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Education
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Environment, Ecology
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Computers, Information Systems
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Advanced material science
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Medicine, Health, life sciences
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Manufacturing, Productivity
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Nanotechnology
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Industry Cooperative Research
Priorities
4.3 What would be the best investment in
technology for your country's future?
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Energy
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Computers, Information Systems
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Communications, Internet, Mobile
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Nanotechnology
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Biotechnology, Biology, Genetics
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Education
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Electronics
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Environment, Ecology
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Advanced material science
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Manufacturing, Productivity
Priorities
4.4 What are your country's current
S&T priorities?
Biotechnology,
Computers,
Biology, Genetics
Information Systems
Communications,
Advanced
Internet, Mobile
material science
Environment,
Ecology
Military
Medicine,
Health, life sciences
Transportation
Agriculture
and Food
Priorities
4.5 What are the major S&T challenges important to your
country that would (or do already) benefit from an
international collaborative, interdisciplinary approach?
Biotechnology,
Medicine,
Health, life sciences
Education,
Space
Biology, Genetics
Knowledge Transfer, S&T Marshall Plan
Technology, Space Station
Computers,
Bi-lateral
Information Systems
and multi-lateral programs
Communications,
Internet, Mobile
Electronics
Environment,
Ecology
Additional 71 questions suggested in
Round 1 distilled to 19 by staff, then rated by the
Steering Committee
• How can science become a more important part of the decision
process?
• What scientific developments could have the greatest impact on
sustainability on earth even beyond 25 years?
• How can inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary research be
strengthened and accelerated?
• How can the social & economic impact of scientific research be
evaluated?
• How can funding of S&T be directed toward research which more
directly addresses the global basic needs of humanity?
Second Science Attachés Meeting
• Attachés appreciated involvement in the study
• Review categories in the National Priorities section
• Current Priorities may have been misinterpreted; ask
what priorities are increasing in importance
• Gov S&T budget data available OECD, UNESCO
• Add nuclear conflict to answers under question 13.
• Intro Rd 2 with short status report of the study
• Go for more depth: shortening lists of 14 and 19
• Make the full text of Round 1 responses available
UN Millennium Summit Speeches
The largest gathering of world leaders in history assembled at the
United Nations September 6-9, 2000 to assess the challenges of
the 21st century.
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144 heads of State or Government
6 Deputy Ministers,
21 other Ministers
5 Vice-Presidents
1 Crown Price
10 chairpersons of delegations
10 observers
2 from civil society (Conferences of Presiding Officers
of the National Parliaments and the Millennium Forum)
UN Millennium Summit Speeches
• 63 Key Concepts Grouped into 6 Themes
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Globalization: inevitable, Internet all, be careful
Rich-poor gap: open markets, create partnerships
Peace and conflict: Rapid response and prevention
Human rights: Implement Int’l agreements
UN reform: expand SC, empower ECOSOC
Environment: Kyoto, nuclear waste, basis of SD
• Little ideological rancor
• Finland: We know the facts. We know what we want. We
know how to get it. All we need is the will to do it.
UN Millennium Summit Speeches
Percentage of countries that mentioned the topic
Globalization
Peace
Conflict
Poverty/3rd world
R-P Gap
Human Rights
UN reform/SC
Environment
Sustainable Dev.
0
10
20
Europe
Middle East
30
40
Latin America
Asia
50
60
Pacific Asia
70
80
90
Sub-Sah. Africa
100
UN Millennium Summit Speeches
Frequency the topic was mentioned by the regions
Globalization
Peace
Conflict
Poverty/3rd world
R-P Gap
Human Rights
UN reform/SC
Environment
Sustainable Dev.
0
20
40
Europe
Latin America
Middle East
Asia
60
80
Pacific Asia
100
Sub-Sah. Africa
120
Topic Stressed by
Various Countries
% of Topics Mentioned by the Country
P eace, Romania
HIV /A IDS , B otswana
S mall, Dev Countr, Malasia
P overty, P eru
P eacekeeping, B elgium
Transnational Crime, P eru
Future, Guatamala
S C, A ustralia
Global Warming, Chile
A rms, small, traffic, B urundi
Culture/values, Iraq
E nvirnment, P alau
Conflict, B urundi
Human Rughts, Lithuania
Humanitarian, Gineau
Governance, B arbados
Debt, Grenada
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10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Comparison Between Richer
and Poorer Countries
% of Top ic s Mentioned
P eace
Human Rights
Global Warming
Conflict
P overty/3rd world
SC
S ecurity
Development
Rich
Poor
E nvironment
peacekeeping
Nuclear
Regional
War
Future
Justice
R/P Gap
Debt
S mall/Developing Ctr
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
Topics Most Often Mentioned
by Poorer Countries
% o f To p ic s Me n tio n e d
P eace
P overty/3rd world
Global Warming
Conflict
S mall/Developing Ctr
S ecurity
SC
Human Rights
Democratization
E nvironment
Development
Debt
Justice
Regional
R-P Gap
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Topics most often mentioned by
Richer Countries
% of Top ic s Mentioned
P eace
Human Rights
Global Warming
Conflict
P overty/3rd world
SC
S ecurity
Development
E nvironment
peacekeeping
Nuclear
Regional
War
Future
Justice
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
Environmental Crimes in Military Actions
and the International Criminal Court
• ICC: 139 signatories and 28 ratifications
• Documents, UN Interviews, Scenario Comments
• ICC action on mil/env-crimes extremely unlikely since
environment is law on the ICC priorities and must
meet all of these conditions:
• most serious to the international community
• specifically intended, not “collateral damage”
• cause “long-term and severe damage to the natural environment”
and “clearly excessive” to anticipated military gains
• no legal basis in “criminal’s country to act (Complementary)
Potential Env-Crimes in Military
Actions and the ICC
• Country X would not send troops unless they
were exempt from any ICC prosecution
• A secret nuclear waste storage area is damaged
• Prosecute the officer in charge of the biological
weapons storage area
• The major source of greenhouse gases refused to
reduce its emissions
• Country X which has not ratified the ICC statute
says it will not cooperate with a case against one
of its military officers
Environmental Security Scanning
Some patterns and questions
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Sovereignty - UN early warning response teams, ICC and war
crimes, genetically modified foods and organisms, environmental
conditions that affect public health, “Bioagent Chips” deployed to
detect biological warfare attacks. Where should the nation-state
end and the UN begin to address environmental problems?
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Worsening environment - forests, resources (fish, wet lands ,
water), greenhouse gases, and interaction of these. With water
tables falling in all continents, and ethnic tensions on the rise,
water pollution caused by one group affecting another could
escalate more seriously than in the past. Putin abolishes Russia’s
environmental protection agency.
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Environmental Accounting - $ value of environmental
conditions
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Environmental Ministers: “... we can ensure environmental
security through early warning...” raising environmental-security
Futures Research Methods V.2
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Introduction & Overview Environmental Scanning
Participatory Methods
Structural Analysis
Delphi
Systems and Modeling
Decision Modeling
Scenario Construction
Trend Impact Analysis
Cross-Impact Analysis
Statistical Modeling
Simulation-Gaming
Futures Wheel
Normative Forecasting
Technological Sequence Analysis
Relevance Trees and Morphological Analysis
Genius Forecasting, Vision, and Intuition
Method Frontiers and Integration
Additional Chapters for FRM
Version 2.0
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Science and Technology Roadmapping
Field Anomaly Relaxation
Godet’s “tool box” (Scenario, MIMAC, etc)
Text Mining
Summary of Non-linear Techniques: Chaos
Modeling
• Software additions for methods
• SOFI
• Others
Discussion of Objectives for the
2001-2002 Program
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Publish State of the Future at the Millennium V 2.0
Publish Futures Research Methods CD-RO V 2.0
Rd 2 and report on Future Issues of S&T
Yr 2 Future Issues of S&T: Management implications
Complete Env-Crime & the ICC
Complete UN Millennium Summit Analysis
Partnership for Sustainable Development report
Complete SOFI paper, journal submission, and Delphi SOFI
indicators for relative weights
• Continue work on data mining for futures, Starlight, others
• Nodes’ plans for next year