Wanted:
Global Parnerships
Achieving sustainable development for
all is the greatest challange. |
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| Global Challenges For Humanity |
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The Millennium Projects has identified
15 Global Challenges, crucial questions for policy action
now and in the next decade. It believes that making wise and
timely decisions about these challenges will set the course
of global development and societal achievements in the years
immediately ahead. The 15 Global Challenges, listed below,
are updated each year and enriched with regional views and
indicators to measure progress. They are published in the
annual State of the Future report.
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 globalization and the
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 organized crime be stopped from becoming
more powerful and sophisticated global enterprises?
13. How can growing energy demand 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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The Millennium Project
has released a study exploring the feasibility, likelihood and priorities
of a global sustainable development platform. The study calls for
a “global partnership for development,” similar to the
United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal. The study outlines
the motivations for and implementation requirements of such a platform,
and identifies the United Nations as the best candidate to coordinate
such a program. The Millennium Project is an international think
tank comprising more than 1,000 futurists, scholars, business leaders,
scientists and policymakers from more than 50 countries, acting
under the auspices of the American Council for the United Nations
University. The study is available upon request.
According to the Millennium Project’s 2002 State of the Future
report, the number one global challenge is making sustainable development
achievable for all. Another Millennium Project study on countering
terrorism also identified partnerships between the rich and poor
as a key strategy. The Global Partnership for Development (GPD)
study found that the principal motivations to implement such a platform
are:
* to improve the environment for the
benefit of humankind;
* to secure global equitable
and peaceful development;
* to improve development alternatives
for developing countries;
* and to establish global politics
and rules in the age of globalization.
The study answers questions such as why the GPD should be implemented
now; identifies targets for the GPD; outlines preconditions for
a successful implementation, the most important of which is protecting
human rights and international laws in recipient countries; and
providing a two-phase framework for how such a program would be
implemented, along with proposals for its financing:
* Phase One: Help the country
or region (having a GDP below $5,000 per capita per year) emerge
out of a state of crisis, and stabilize the country’s situation.
* Phase Two: Assist the country
in becoming a “medium” developed country with a GDP of
approximately $5,000, where entrepreneurial activities are sufficiently
developed and investment, particularly of private capital, can flow
into the country.
“There is no better time to consider a Global Partnership for
Development than now, with the results of uneven global development,
such as extreme poverty, disease, famine and terrorism, staring
us in the face,” said Jerry Glenn, Millennium Project director.
“While it will certainly not be easy, we cannot afford the
consequences of inaction. Our study is intended to provide a thoughtful
framework for debate about how to implement such a program.”
The Millennium Project is dedicated to exploring global futures
by interviewing and surveying individuals at corporations, universities,
NGOs, U.N. organizations and governments to understand world change
and to identify actions to reach the best possible future for humanity
as a whole. For information, call 202-686-5179; or visit www.StateOfTheFuture.org.
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