Futures of Europeans

Jerom C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon
The enclosed CD of over 3.000 pages contains the cumulative work of the Millennium
Project since 1996 and details of the studies included in this print section.
http://www.acunu.org/millennium/sof2004.html
Table of Contents
Print Section
CD-ROM Section

"The insights in this year's State of the Future can help decisionmakers and educators who work to counter hopeless despair, blind confidence, and ignorant indifference-attitudes that too often have blocked efforts to improve the prospects for humanity. Last year's edition began with the statement:

After seven years of accumulative global futures research by the Millennium Project, it has become increasingly clear that humanity has the resources to address its global challenges; what is less clear is how much wisdom, good will, and intelligence will be focused on these challenges."(...)

"On what basis should the world's resources
be allocated on behalf of humanity? The State
of the Future Index is a tool in development
to help answer that question. It is a statistical
combination of key indicators and forecasts
related to 15 Global Challenges as a whole that
assesses whether the future is improving or
getting worse over the next 10 years. It integrates
expert judgments from around the world
to answer in quantitative terms which issues
deserve attention to diminish risk or improve
the future."

From August 2003 to July 2004, the Millennium Project engaged in a Delphi study that had several distinct objectives:
1. Updating the 15 challenges being tracked by the Project and listing measures that could be used to determine that the challenges had been met.
2. Projecting the best and worst plausible future values for the socioeconomic variables included in the Project’s previous work associated with measures of the State of the Future Index (SOFI)
3. Identifying and evaluating future developments that could influence the course of the SOFI variables.

These objectives were pursued in two rounds of questionnaires.
the 15 Global Challenges are identified and discussed:
1. How can sustainable development be achieved for all?
2. How can everyone have sufficient clean water without conflict?
3. How can population growth and resources be brought into balance?
4. How can genuine democracy emerge from authoritarian regimes?
5. How can policymaking be made more sensitive to global long-term perspectives?
6. How can the global convergence of information and communications technologies work for everyone?
7. How can ethical market economies be encouraged to help reduce the gap between rich and poor?
8. How can the threat of new and reemerging diseases and immune microorganisms be reduced?
9. How can the capacity to decide be improved as the nature of work and
institutions change?
10. How can shared values and new security strategies reduce ethnic conflicts, terrorism, and the use of weapons of mass destruction?
11. How can the changing status of women help improve the human condition?
12. How can transnational organized crime networks be stopped from becoming more powerful and sophisticated global enterprises?
13. How can growing energy demands be met safely and efficiently?
14. How can scientific and technological breakthroughs be accelerated to improve the human condition?
15. How can ethical considerations become more routinely incorporated into global decisions?
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April 13
The Futures of Europe, Keynote speaker
Jerome C. Glenn, Director of the Millennium Project (Washington)

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available online Ten Years Hence 15 Global Challenges and the Implications for Business

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