The United Nations takes on the Future: The Millennium Project Assessed the Best Strategies

UN Secretary-General António Guterres issued Our Common Agenda, a bold report on UN reforms that includes five foresight elements that are: UN Futures Lab, UN Summit on the Future, UN Envoy for Future Generations, Periodic UN Strategic Foresight and Global Threats reports, Re-purposed UN Trusteeship Council as a Multi-Stakeholder Foresight Body. The Millennium Project just released an international strategic assessment of how to implement each to improve global foresight.
Real-Time Delphi (RTD) questionnaire asked how critical each of the five element was to improving the effectiveness of global foresight; what and who would make this element successful, and what features would make it most effective; and additional strategies to implement the element.
The study was conducted in association with The Millennium Project’s 70 Nodes around the world (groups of individuals and institutions), along with the World Futures Studies Federation, and the Association of Professional Futurists.
The RTD panel of 189 futurists and related international experts from 54 countries overwhelmingly endorsed and will support the five foresight elements of Our Common Agenda, as an integrated and interdependent system: the success of each one affects the success of all the others.

Read more about the study

Three Futures of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United State, January 1, 2022

Implications for all of us

This report contains the three scenarios, plus an introduction, executive summary, conclusions, detailed lists of implications, readiness, list of low probability events that could change the scenarios, and an appendix with results from four Real-Time Delphi studies that was used as input to the scenarios plus the list of over 250 participants in these studies.

The three scenarios incorporated input from over 250 medical doctors, public health professionals, emergency relief staff, economists, and futurists in five US and international Real-Time Delphi studies (a unique interactive survey process). These studies assessed the possible best, worst, and most likely conditions by January, 2022.

Read more about the report and download the translations of the executive summary in other languages.

FUTURES is the most comprehensive futures studies encyclopedic dictionary that exists to date. It comprises over 1,000 terms and methods used in futures studies. The work was initiated and coordinated by Concepción Olavarrieta, with review and edits of terms done by Theodore Gordon and Jerome Glenn, and with the contribution of more than 500 futurists from The Millennium Project network.

It is available in English and Spanish.

It can be downloaded as pdf file, or purchased as a CD.

Check here the LIST OF TERMS addressed in FUTURES

Never before have technological advances had so great an impact on security — not only increasing the nature and level of threats, but also for the possibility of providing the means to address the threats. Technologies that could increase security include ubiquitous and omnipresent surveillance systems, the use of new algorithms for big data, improving bio- and psycho-metrics, and artificial intelligence and robotics. Yet trustworthy and reliable partners and an active and alert society remain sine qua non to reduce terrorism.

“To my mind, this publication is one of the best studies of modern terrorism and what to do about it that we have at our disposal. So I am confident that it will find a wide readership, not only in academic or think tank circles, but even more importantly, among policy makers and government officials. They stand to benefit most and they can afford least of all to ignore the important conclusions and recommendations that this wise publication has provided.”

Jamie SHEA
Deputy Assistant Secretary General,
Emerging Security Challenges Division, NATO

We believe that a new kind of arms race is developing. On one hand, is the possibility of increasingly destructive weapons falling into the wrong hands, and on the other, the development of new methods of surveillance and pinpointing individuals with malintent. Will the methods of detection be adequate and timely enough to avoid catastrophe? It is often said that one of the major purposes of futures research is to provide lead-time to decision makers and the decision process; we have lead-time. We hope it will be used to reduce the threat we see in front of us.

Albert Einstein is supposed to have said, “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch and do nothing.” We hope we have done something with this book.

Order the paperback from Amazon.com