The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0
NORMATIVE FORECASTING
by
Joseph F. Coates with additions from Jerome C. Glenn
Introduction
I. History of Normative Forecasting
II. Methods and Techniques Genius forecasting Science fiction Survey techniques Methods of exhaustion Scenarios
III. How to Do It
IV. Strengths and Weaknesses of the Method
Appendices Bibliography Example of a Global Normative Scenario Example of a Regional Normative Scenario
The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to acknowledge helpful comments and insightful remarks provided by the peer reviewers of the first draft report, particular: Peter Bishop, Professor, Program for the Study of the Future, University of Houston; Pavel Novacek, Professor, Charles University and Palacky University, Czech Republic; and Larry Hills, United States Agency for International Development. Also Joseph Coates wishes to thank his staff at Coates & Jarratt, Inc., Washington, D.C. And finally, special thanks to Elizabeth Florescu, Neda Zawahri, Kawthar Nakayima for project support, Barry Bluestein for research and computer operations, and Sheila Harty and John Young for editing. Thanks to all for your contributions.
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INTRODUCTION
Forecasters and futurists generally divide the techniques they use into two broad categories: the exploratory and the normative. Exploratory approaches generally deal with questions of what may, might, or could possibly happen on the basis of the forces at play. Normative forecasting almost always reflects the needs of an organization and, therefore, is goal-oriented. The question dealt with basically is "how would we like the future to evolve?" Goal-oriented forecasting tends to take into account an organization's purpose, its mission, and, most importantly, its expected achievements in the future. Normative forecasting addresses the question of "what ought we to do." Normative forecasting is usually associated with large organizations, both public and private, as an important component of decision making and a factor in resource allocation.
In private or government high-technology organizations, such as those involved with space programs, submarines, aircraft design, or advanced computer technology, the link between normative and exploratory forecasting is crucial to provide direction for the organization. Therefore, some feedback is usually from one to the other, which effectively amounts to iterative cycles of exploratory and goal-oriented forecasting.
I. HISTORY OF NORMATIVE FORECASTING
Institutions, organizations, and governments have always had interest in the longer-term future. Normative forecasting is a much narrower aspect of that unstructured look to the future. The key elements that separate normative forecasting from any other kind of speculation or enunciation of goals are its systematic, comprehensive, and public aspects––public, in this case, meaning open to examination and review by people other than the planners and forecasters themselves. Furthermore, the normative forecast consists of two essential parts. First is the statement of a goal or set of goals for a specific time; second is the analysis in detail of how to reach the goal or goals.
The statement of the goal itself must be realistic and take into account a general awareness of present and future circumstances, resources, social, scientific, and technological contexts, etc. Crucial to the process is the detailed analysis, which reveals the specific steps or stages that must be met and how they will be met at specific times in moving toward the goal. From a different point of view, the function of a normative forecast is to allow an organization to orchestrate its resources in a highly targeted way in order to achieve a goal. Ideally, normative forecasting, as with any other kind of forecast, should leave the user and other professionals with the sense that they understand the process and that, if they had gone through the process, they would come to similar results.
From a different perspective, one can see normative forecasting as a celebration of human competence and efficacy. If our ability to shape or influence the future somehow were not implicit in the concept of normative forecasting, the concept would be self-contradictory.
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Not every statement of a goal is a normative forecast. The majority of them are not. Chairman Mao's goal in the great leap forward was no more a normative forecast than Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Why? Because no detailed analysis backed up what was necessary to achieve those objectives. The characteristic weakness of political goals-setting is the absence of supporting analysis on feasibility or necessity for achieving the goal. Normative forecasting is not emotive political arm-waving, but a detailed process of elaborate technique usable primarily in organizational or governmental planning. Normative forecasting is surely not the tool for the timid, the unimaginative, the fearful, or the fatalistic.
The mere forecasting of a future state, such as in science fiction, or the description of a range of alternative futures, such as in the familiar alternative scenarios of Herman Kahn, are not examples of normative forecasting. The alternative scenarios of Kahn are usually examples of exploratory forecasting. The alternatives represent the various ways in which the forces at play could work out. The central features of normative forecasting are two. First, within the framework of understanding the present world, what is the goal or goals that one sets. Second, where does the bulk of the work occur, what are the steps and stages necessary to get us from here to there, or from now to then, on an explicit schedule.
With that view in mind, contemporary normative forecasting had its origins in World War II, with the needs of the military for goal-oriented and mission-oriented planning. During the war and subsequently, normative forecasting was picked up by the space program. Again, the central feature was large, expensive, and long-term technological systems, which had to be examined exhaustively from every point of view.
The formation of the RAND Corporation at the end of World War II is a forecasting landmark. RAND was set up to preserve the capabilities that were successfully used in World War II for orchestrating scientific, technological, and engineering talent. The parallel development of the Stanford Research Institute, now known as SRI International, to address the commercial sector and the civil sector of government's interests occurred at the same time. Of the scores, if not hundreds, of studies done under the auspices of government contractors or government, one must add the larger universe of studies, such as the White House Goals Research Staff. Again, normative forecasting applies, to some extent, to looks at the future of the United States.
Erich Jantsch, a consultant to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in 1967 produced a landmark study, Technological Forecasting and Perspective, which includes historic and methodological treatment of normative forecasting.
More recently, the Millennium Project used an international Delphi panel to identify global norms around which to write a global normative scenario. It integrated policies and positive events identified and rated by previous global panels and then wove these together into a global scenario for 2050 with three themes of technology, human development, and political and economic policy. See: http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/normscen.html. A second approach to create a normative scenario for the Middle East began by identifying seven necessary pre-conditions for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and then listing and rating options or actions to help achieve each pre-condition. The results will be used to create initial draft scenarios,
Normative Forecasting 2 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 which will then be used as a basis for interviews with opinion leaders to make the normative scenarios more plausible. See: http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/ME-Peace-Scenarios.html.
II. METHODS AND TECHNIQUES
The methods and techniques of normative and exploratory forecasting overlap. Exploratory forecasts, however, tend to rely much more strongly on mathematical analysis and formal, quantitative trend forecasting, as well as extensive use of probabilistic methods. Normative forecasting tends to rely more heavily on qualitative tools, since it involves more open-ended, uncertain, and creative elements of the futures enterprise.
Many techniques—such as scenarios, Delphi, various forms of expert group meetings or interviews—tend to be used in both normative and exploratory formats. More genius forecasting and greater use of science fiction also appears in normative forecasting than in exploratory forecasting.
An exploratory forecast generally moves forward into the future in terms of forces at play. Exploratory forecasting reflects a continuity model of the future, i.e., a clear linkage between the forces at play and their effects on the components of the system under study. Hence, the objective in the exploratory forecast is to examine the various ways in which those forces and components may play out. Exploratory forecasting rarely suggests a single outcome but, much in tune with contemporary futures research, yields alternative futures.
Normative forecasting, in contrast, jumps ahead and states some goal or objective that may be substantially or only apparently discontinuous with the trends currently at play. Then, having defined that future goal, the forecaster backs away from that future to the present to identify the necessary steps for reaching the goal. The most widely recognized example is the American space program. Its most crucial objective was set by President Kennedy: we will put a man on the moon and return him home safely within a decade. Surely, the forces at play did not make the man on the moon a likely outcome from incrementally developing military rockets. Rather, what happened was that a powerful public figure set the goal. That automatically launches a flood of studies on the steps to reach that goal. Its planners had to go from the macro social goal to forecasts of what kinds of social systems would be implied in order to make that objective real.
Then the planners had to consider capabilities required to meet the goal. What kind of physical facilities are required? What was the present state of the science or technology to put the appropriate rocket ships, launching pads, exploratory vehicles, and recovery components in place? Rockets were already available from World War II, offering a substantial capability to put something into space. But at each of those stages, the national goal of a round trip to the moon far outstripped capabilities. Planners had to roll backward into the present to define all the things necessary to accomplish that objective. For example, one would have to look at the kinds of fuel that would be required for a particular kind of vehicle or a particular kind of vehicle arrangement. Then, could that fuel be produced? That, in turn, leads to multiple avenues of research and development to determine whether a particular fuel could be made. The craft had to
Normative Forecasting 3 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 return to the earth, like a meteor on entering the atmosphere. What had to be done to its surface? What kind of materials are needed in order to survive re-entry? Again, one has to set some technical objectives and various approaches for meeting these technical objectives. Literally thousands of normative forecasts in these nested plans covered the smallest technological objectives.
Normative forecasting has had its most refined development in the service of physical technological systems. It recently enjoyed a vogue in the business world using a different nomenclature. Virtually every large organization caught up in global competitiveness is reaching out to develop a vision of its own future. The traditional strategic planning components consist of: a mission, what the organization is all about; a set of goals, what it has to accomplish, generally in the relatively short and continuing run, to achieve that mission; and the objectives under each of those goals in order to move it towards practical applications. Finally, traditional strategic planning moves to detailed action plans.
The concept of vision goes past the mission statement, goals, and objectives and jumps forward 10, 20, 30, 50, or, in the Japanese case, 100 years to define a vision of the organization at that future time. That vision then becomes the normative base of the whole organization and the standard against which all the other more limited goals, objectives, projects, plans, and programs are evaluated. Are they compatible with that vision? Do they drive toward that vision? Do they drive away from it? Are they indifferent to it?
To a greater extent than exploratory forecasting, normative forecasting is at the heart of organizational planning. Let us now look at some of the techniques used in normative forecasting.
Genius Forecasting
Obviously, the most desirable normative forecast would be that made by a genius who sees through the haze more clearly than others and can anticipate the future with sharper vision. This approach is described in more detail in a separate chapter in this collection. The three principal difficulties with genius forecasting are: first, we do not know how to order one up; second, if we did have one, it may be difficult to recognize and accept the forecast made by such a person; third, even if one were an acknowledged genius, that genius would likely be limited to some but not all fields of human enterprise.
Reliance on finding the genius to set the goals for any large national or organizational plan is impractical; however, reaching out to wise and informed members of the population to draw out their concepts and thoughts about goals and objectives is highly practical. These responses can be folded into a normative forecast. Techniques for doing that are discussed below.
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Science Fiction
Science fiction is "noted more" for its popularity than its utility. Many people entertain the belief that science fiction is a rich source of solid speculation about the next decades. Much of science fiction has a negative cast, seeing dark outcomes in authoritarian states and technological oppressiveness. These warnings are useful, but the actual normative forecasting associated with science fiction is vanishingly small.
The value of science fiction in normative forecasts is primarily cautionary. As one considers any plan or program or particularly any technological project or major social development, science fiction offers many examples of things that could go awry and have negative side effects. While the role of science fiction is limited, those who have enjoyed science fiction may find their cautionary capabilities sharpened.
Survey Techniques
Two extremely effective forms of survey techniques exist with regard to normative forecasting: Delphi Questionnaires and In-depth Interviews.
In-depth interviews with experts, specialists, and affected parties, when conducted sufficiently openly and on a broad enough scale, are likely to reveal images of the future which either are or can be cast into normative forecasts. The in-depth interviews can be open-ended. One can interview 5, 10, 50, 100, or more people. The point at which one should stop the interviews is when one ceases to get fresh information. One limitation on the interview approach is the difficulty in finding credible people who have any normative vision.
Conducting in-depth interviews is not a simple process. One must identify the interviewees and one must plan what to ask them. Finally, one must have an approach for integrating and interpreting what they say.
To identify candidates for in-depth interviews, the organization doing the forecasting should identify a wide as possible range of stakeholders in the subject under consideration. A stakeholder is a person who has an economic, social, political, cultural, or other interest in the subject under study. Identify a wide range of them—10 to 100 or even several hundred—they will become the interview pool. Normally, one would write each of them a letter to indicate what the project is about, why they are to be interviewed, suggest a date, and then follow through with a telephone call or further correspondence to agree on a time and place for the interview. An interview ideally runs 20 to 60 minutes. Extremely busy people cannot allocate more time than that to an interview.
A critical step is defining what it is that one wants to learn from the interviews. Normally, one will have done some preliminary work on the topic at hand and have a sense of what the key or critical issues are, particularly what issues are associated with potential goals and their realization. Consequentially, one frames the interview questions (sometimes called protocol) to get at those questions. One will normally do a dry run, i.e., interview two or three people to test
Normative Forecasting 5 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 the interview protocol. Are the questions readily understood? Are the kinds of responses getting at what one needs? One makes modifications as appropriate and then proceeds with the interviews. One must always leave time for the interviewees to expand on points that they consider important or to introduce new topics. One may find that those new ideas will modify future interviews.
Public opinion surveys and direct participatory methods, such as large-scale group discussions and workshops, are often useful components of a normative forecast. They tend to enrich understanding of the public's feelings. In many societies, but not all, public feelings are a primary factor in the potential success or failure of a complex plan. Looked at from a slightly different point of view, the broad participatory activities, particularly in normative forecasts that are social or institutional as opposed to scientific or technological, can help to highlight barriers and obstacles that must be overcome as well as openings and channels to facilitate the moves toward the goal.
The Delphi Technique. The Delphi technique is explained in greater detail in a separate chapter in this series. It is generally conducted in the form of a survey questionnaire to experts or specialists to ask a systematic series of questions. The answers involve subjective judgments on a scale of, for example, 1 to 10. The Delphi technique allows one to canvass a large number of people and draw together a collective judgment of what they feel. The collective judgments in Delphi are almost always over a broad range with some central tendency. Delphi is always an input technique, the source of information, not as a final output to a study. The Delphi technique pushes one to look further and in more depth and to use other futures research techniques to better understand choices. The consensus component of Delphi tends to reflect traditional thinking, whether among ordinary people or specialists. The outliers, the people who have deviated from the central tendency, often have the most interesting things to reveal.
The Delphi technique was developed in the United States at the RAND Corporation in response to two critical points. First, the experts whom one would like to interview are often either unavailable or unwilling or unable to attend a conference or a workshop. Second, the question of prestige arises in some meetings, where a particularly prestigious individual will consciously or unconsciously suppress disagreement, leading to a far too narrow range of concepts for consideration.
The Delphi, as a systematic mail, e-mail, or online survey, overcomes both of these difficulties. A further feature of the Delphi is that most of the answers are quantitative. While many of the responses involve subjective judgment, the techniques for making those responses quantitative are important. For example, suppose we were considering the desirability of a new metropolitan transportation system. One might have identified a number of possible goals or objectives in such a system. One may then ask: "With regard to the items below, please evaluate each for its importance as a goal of the anticipated metropolitan transportation system and rate it on a scale of 1 to 10 in the marked space, with 1 being of little or no consequence, 5 of average consequence or importance, and 10 of extremely high importance. One then lists a variety of possible goals and leaves opportunities for the respondents to add goals that the interview protocol misses.
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Other kinds of quantitative questions of value may involve dates or questions, for example: "What date is realistic to have operating a 100-mile metropolitan transportation system of each of the following sorts?" Then one would list the various types: light rail, bus, trolley, etc. Next to that, one would have a line going from "now" to "never," and perhaps marking off the first portion in five-year intervals. Delphi provides responses to individual questions and the texture of the relative importance and plausibility of alternatives.
One can ask impact questions. "Assuming that we had a light rail system of 100 miles (and specify what it might cover), the principal consequences of that would be..." Then again one lists a range of consequences and the importance scale of 1 to 10.
However, a Delphi can also ask for additional subjective input: additional suggestions to achieve the goal, variations on the suggestions, and what might enhance or inhibit a particular item.
A test run is absolutely essential in a Delphi study, since the critical technical problem is the proper formulation of the questions. The most common error is to make the questions too complex with too many assumptions built into them; better to break the complexities down into individual questions rather than load up questions with complex clauses.
Methods of Exhaustion
A large family of futures tools help to identify goals by trying to map all the possibilities connected with the subject of concern. Relevance Trees and Morphological Analysis are covered in more detail in a separate chapter in this series.
The Relevance Tree literally creates a tree-like structure starting from some central root. Let us say we are looking at the components of a vehicle to carry goods, say, a truck. That would be the starting place and from that would develop three branches: the mechanism for power, the structure, and the control mechanisms. One could then expand the tree into a half-dozen possibilities, i.e., subsidiary branches, such as an internal combustion engine, an external combustion engine, a turbine electric-powered vehicle, a combination combustion and electric- powered vehicle, and so on. Under each of those possibilities, one would lay out more detailed choices or subsidiary branches. For example, under external combustion, one might look at steam or other kinds of propulsive liquids and gases. Under electric, one might look at such things as batteries, fuel cells, induction, third-rail concepts, and so on.
The relevance tree has its primary value when carried to exhaustion. On many topics, the tree can literally fill a wall in a standard size room. Using all the possibilities in multiple levels of detail helps one to create an image of the kinds of systems that may be new and useful. In this particular example, when one combines the details of the propulsion system with the details of the structure with the details of the control, one may see opportunities to create some truly new vehicles conceptually and then to consider whether their development should be a significant goal for the organization.
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The relevance tree (see next page) drawn from Joseph Martino's standard textbook, Technological Forecasting for Decision Making, illustrates the relevance tree directed at the automobile. If one were to work from the bottom of the tree up, one would see a possible new goal: automobiles operated from a third rail. That is, an electric rail that already implies a track. After consideration of that as the propulsion system, one sees that as perhaps impractical, so it is set aside as a goal. Not enough electricity is likely to be available or enough trackage to make it practical. When one looks at a fuel cell, one sees that its great advantage may be in generating electrical energy using fuel derived from the burning of natural gas, which will burn cleaner than petroleum products, thereby reducing air pollution in a heavily congested city. That alternative becomes very attractive to consider in relationship to an Otto cycle, the standard automobile, or a diesel engine, considering the pollution that they produce.
As one considers the fuel cell electrically driven automobile as a propulsion system, one sees immediately the questions that one has to look at in an exploratory way. What is the status of fuel cells today? What is the potential for future development? What is their efficiency? How much fuel do they use? Can we get it? What pollutants would they produce, and so on? These questions jump from the goal that the system suggests to the exploratory forecasts necessary to conclude whether the proposed system is a good choice. In exploring the automobile one would have similar trees developed down the design and control branch structures. What would the automobile look like? Would the use of the fuel cells cause a different modification in design? How would the vehicle be controlled? Source: Technological Forecasting for Decision Making, Joseph P. Martino, Elsevier Publishing co., N.Y., 1983, p. 160-161
The Morphological Box is a technique that has been employed to a limited extent, primarily by its inventor, Fritz Zwicky, who used it in his aeronautics research. The technique depends upon taking the subject at hand and asking a series of critical questions, which represent all the critical questions of the most general sort that one could ask about the system. The answers to these questions together form a description of the system and its main components. For each question, one provides all possible answers, which generates a large matrix. Let us assume 15 questions
Normative Forecasting 8 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 and an average of a dozen responses to each question. From this matrix of 15 x 12, one can then quickly eliminate impossible combinations and still be left with a large number of potential systems designs. The systems are defined by selecting one answer for each question.
The morphological box is potentially one of the most powerful goal-seeking or normative techniques one can use, but it calls for great practice and skill. Let us suppose, for example, that we were looking at the question of a new crop to promote. Question 1 would be: "What are the crop choices?" Question 2: "Where would they be grown." Question 3: "How would they get to market?" Question 4: "What is the market for that crop?" Question 5: "What would be the technical and scientific requirements?" Question 6: "What are the human resources skills required?" and so on.
Generating three to six or perhaps 20 responses to any of those questions allows one to go from the top of the matrix, selecting an answer to each of those questions to create a new system. Let us trace one thread through and see what comes out.
Crop possibility: potatoes. Where: sandy soil. Market: Europe. Route: trucks and ships. Technical requirements: harvesting, washing, drying equipment. Technical capabilities: trained agronomists. Training requirements: specific to potato husbandry, maintenance, servicing the crops.
One then has scores of possible goals coming out of the morphological box, which merit detailed analysis to establish whether they are appropriate for the nation.
The strength of the morphological box is that it can bring in an extremely wide range of possibilities. The difficulty is that it can be quite exhausting to do. One can too hastily dismiss attractive alternatives because they seem strange, but that is the essence of creativity, to look at the strange and unfamiliar and convert it into something practical.
Mission Flow Diagrams are a third method of exhaustion, which concentrates on the sequences of actions required to accomplish some objective. The terminology suggests its origins in analyzing military missions. The technique involves systematically laying out all the alternative routes by which something may be accomplished, including hypothetical and conjectural routes. Obviously, mission flow diagrams, like the relevance tree and the morphological box, open up possibilities for further exploration.
Unlike the morphological box or the relevance tree, what one wants to do here is lay out all of the steps necessary to accomplish an objective. Suppose the objective is to build a light rail metropolitan system. Then one has to lay out everything from today to the time operation begins, including maintenance and repair. This process allows us to say what has to occur to accomplish all of those steps and stages.
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Scenarios
Scenarios are a popular futures research tool used in normative and exploratory forecasting. It is covered in more detail in a separate chapter in this series. The scenario has the advantage over all other techniques in providing an integrated, coherent, consistent, and attractive picture of some future situation. Almost all other techniques break the future down into components and leave the integration for the reader to accomplish in his or her mind.
The scenario has many different applications. One is to put forward a future situation and use that as the jumping-off place for further planning, thinking, or research. Another use of scenarios is to present a completed image of some future situation, representing a full story about the future. A third application is to present a situation radically at odds with traditional thinking. By being organized and coherent, the scenario drives home the central point that the organization had better begin to think in new terms and consider new goals.
While the scenarios come in many forms, the best of them are systematically created, that is, they have a logical backbone that identifies the variables in the situation under study, sets some overall theme for the scenario, and then assigns qualitative and quantitative values to the scenario variables. From there, one creates the integrated image. Normative possibilities arise since one can conjecture about an organization radically altering its basic business plan, or responding to some big new threat, or seeing the organization in some future state after a new technological development is developed and exploited.
They can also be written to show what might be possible in difficult situations like the Middle East. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has to be one of the most studied and contested issues in world affairs today. Surprisingly, in 2003 when the Millennium Project began working on creating normative scenarios for the Middle East, there were no well-researched, objective, plausible peace scenarios - not just frameworks, objectives, analyses, proposals, proclamations, accords, treaties, or road maps, but scenarios: stories with causal links connecting the future and the present like a movie script. It is easy to imagine many scenarios that describe alternative ways the current conflict continues, but what is needed is a set of alternative peace scenarios created by participants with a range of views. In this way, many ideas can be woven together into a story to see how a culture of peace might emerge in the region. The Cairo Node of the Millennium Project at Cairo University in Egypt suggested this void had to be filled by taking a futurist "backcasting" approach to the problem: imagine peace is achieved, and then look at how we got there.
The normative scenarios for the Middle East Peace were created through a unique process. A series of literature reviews and interviews identified seven conditions that seemed required by all sides prior to the emergence of peace. The review also found a set of actions to help establish each precondition. An international panel of several hundred participants was asked to rate the importance of each action for achieving the precondition, the likelihood that the action could occur, and the possibility that it might backfire or make things worse. Additional actions were also collected and rated subsequently in a second-round questionnaire. The results were used to write draft alternative peace scenarios and submitted in a third round to the panel for critical review. The drafts were then edited based on the results. An example of one of the scenarios is
Normative Forecasting 10 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 included in the appendix of this chapter. Details of the process and results are available in Chapter 3.7 on the CD included with the 2008 State of the Future. The questionnaires that generated the scenarios are available at: http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/rd1-mepeace.html http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/rd2-mepeace.html http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/MEPS-rd3.html
Scenarios also have great value in coherently presenting a future state of society as a result of a technological development, a policy decision, or some other powerful shaping force. An example of a goal normative scenario is included in the Appendix of this chapter.
Scenarios can come in many forms from a brief paragraph to a multi-page essay. The decision depends on whether one is using the scenario as a way to tell its completed story or as a way to open up people's thinking to further planning. The weakness is that some people simply find scenarios uncongenial. They do not like the scenario approach and often consider it beneath their attention. In that case, one must always have a complementary, more formal analytical presentation of the same goals.
III. HOW TO DO IT
The approach to doing a normative forecast in part depends upon the institution doing the forecasts. A private corporation, government agency, a non-governmental organization (NGO), a public interest group — each would have different resources available and, in all likelihood, for different purposes. Therefore, an important consideration is the time available, the purpose of the normative forecast, and the budget or other resources at the organization's disposal. Furthermore, if one is dealing with a scientific or technological area, the opportunities for the use of many futures techniques is crisper, cleaner, and more certain, and is well-described in the above material and in several references. In many situations, one will use normative forecasts in a social institutional context rather than in a technological context. While the techniques are applicable, the domain in which the forecasting is done influences the who and how of participation. In either case, the generic approach is: 1. Define who is responsible for doing the forecasts. Make clear what their charter is and what the purpose of the forecast is. Is it to look at a particular industry, a social program, to set an objective for a province, or to determine some major developmental objective for the nation? 2. Assign clear and unequivocal authority and responsibility and budget to that group. 3. The group should then begin to assemble all relevant information, giving strong emphasis to trends and factors likely to influence the area under consideration. It should gather as much solid data as available from national, corporate, international, or other sources.
At this stage, the group can also begin some early outreach to a broad constituency, perhaps by setting up a broadly based advisory group, by running surveys, reaching out to newspapers and
Normative Forecasting 11 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 other publications, asking for inputs, holding conferences, and engaging appropriate organizations, businesses, churches, associations, and so on to feed ideas into the group.
With all that in hand, the group should then be able to define a range of desired futures for the subject at hand. One of the clearest ways to clarify those alternative futures is to move to an exploratory mode and, using the various tools described above and elsewhere, lay out the alternative futures that might develop. Having understood those, one is in a better position to say what would we really like the future to be like. The answer to that question is the normative goal(s).
Setting the normative goal depends upon broad understanding, wide-scale data-gathering, understanding of trends and forces at play, and the exploration and development of exploratory forecasts to see what would happen without a normative intervention. With all of that in hand, one can then move toward establishing the normative goal. 4. At this point, one has to look at how one can get to that normative goal, which has to do with the time set for the goal. The time can be a fixed year or an interval, i.e., a range of years. What are the resources to help one get there? What is the state of science and society that would allow one to move in that direction? One then lays out a plan for moving to the goal. Then one continues that analysis to identify barriers—the things one does not know, does not have, or is incapable of doing. With those absent components, one has to lay down the specifics required to meet them. For example, it may turn out that one does not have the right education base or doesn't have the right work-force training to achieve a goal. Therefore, a subsidiary set of goals and plans for the necessary level of education has to be developed, and that becomes an important part of the plan.
In contrast, one might find an absence of energy or raw materials required to meet the objectives. How does one get that? What is necessary to overcome that barrier? This illustrates the second component of normative forecasting—what must be done to reach the goal? 5. One then moves on to the details, setting specific objectives, subsidiary goals, and action plans to meet those needs. Accompanying this, one lays out a schedule—what must be done, where, and when—and how these things converge on each other to achieve the goal. 6. The plan must also include a well-thought-through monitoring activity to ensure that things are moving along to converge at the right times and places. If they are not converging, the plan should allow for a substantial intervention so that they move in the right direction. 7. As with any elaborate, complex plan, one must frequently revisit the whole forecast to be sure that nothing significant has changed to influence the forecast or that no new development will either accelerate it or put it off track. 8. The reader by now recognizes that no single tool or technique is subsumed by the concept of a normative forecast. It can draw upon any resource or technique to meet the two objectives of the normative forecasts and the associated planning.
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9. As the forecast matures, going back to the various groups dealt with earlier is important to get further input into the feasibility, enthusiasm, and objections concerning what is proposed. Then one must move into the ever important broad constituency-building for the plan. One must always have in mind that the costs, whether direct economic or indirect social, have to be integrated into the plan. They become an important component in building constituencies for the work.
IV. STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE METHOD
We have noted each technique's primary strengths and weaknesses. Overall, the strength of normative forecasting is in being indispensable to any complex systems planning by government, large corporations, or complex systems, such as transportation, water, and manufacturing. Its strength is that planners and decision makers are systematically pushed into an awareness of a wider range of possible choices. When done well, normative forecasting can give them a sense of the relative feasibility and practicality of alternatives. A further strength is that it provides guidance and direction for the more detailed exploratory forecasts, which are directed at the questions of how do we get to the goals.
Intrinsic to the normative forecast is its celebration of human efficacy. Therefore, it has the very valuable purpose of getting people out of a rut, getting them to think in new ways, and to recognize that separately and, more important, collectively, we have the power to shape and influence the future. Normative forecasting carries a positive sense of potential accomplishment.
Its weakness is in being too easy, doing a partial job or bringing in too narrow a range of goals to consider because one draws on too narrow a range of people in the process. Another potential weakness is that the complexity of normative forecasting may lead to an unfortunately complex presentation. The fact that the process of forecasting is complex should not result in reports so opaque that the reader is confused.
The most common weakness is not bothering to gather the necessary data to work through the scheduling, time, and specific objectives that must be met in order to achieve the normative goal. This intensely concentrated task involves many scientific, technological, and social components as well as a wide range of more specific futures techniques. Thus, the most common weakness is simply not to do that job. To get some sense of the importance of this, when President Clinton began to formulate his health plan for the nation, which has a primary normative goal of universal health insurance coverage, some 500 people around the federal government as well as public volunteers were involved in understanding the situation, laying out alternatives to reaching the goal, and understanding what the barriers and obstacles were to success. Only after all that was done, did it enter the broader combat arena of the Congress. Upon entering the Congress, various objections appeared, and further public policy innovations were generated and explored. This example illustrates the open-endedness of many forecasting activities, particularly normative forecasts.
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APPENDICES
Bibliography
Ascher, William, Forecasting: An Appraisal for Policy-Makers and Planners, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. This presents a very informative and critical account of forecasting techniques applicable to policy planning, including critiques of normative forecasting.
Cetron, Marvin J., Technological Forecasting: A Practical Approach, Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1969. This useful hands-on book reflects experience with the use of these tools in the U.S. Navy.
Glenn, Jerome C., Gordon, Theodore J., and Florescu, Elizabeth, ―Chapter 3.7 Middle East Peace Scenarios‖ (in the CD section). 2008 State of the Future CD section . The Millennium Project of the World Federation of UN Associations, Washington, DC, 2008. The CD-ROM section contains details of how the Global Normative 2050 Scenario and the Middle East Peace scenarios were constructed
Jantsch, Erich, Technological Forecasting in Perspective, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris, 1967. Along with the Martino reference below, this is the classic work on forecasting.
Martino, Joseph P., Technological Forecasting for Decision Making, North-Holland, 1983. Along with the Jantsch reference above, this is the classic work on forecasting.
Mendell, A.S., Nonextrapolative Methods in Business Forecasting: Scenarios, Visions, and Issues Management, Greenwood Press, 1985.
Schwartz, Peter, The Art of the Long View, Doubleday, 1991.
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Periodicals
American Planning Association Journal, American Planning Association, 1776 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036.
Business and Society Review, Warren, Gorham & Lamon, 870 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10019.
The Journal of Business Strategy, published quarterly by Warren, Gorham & Lamon, Inc. 210 South Street, Boston, MA 02111.
Futures, is an international journal published six times a year by Butterworth Scientific, Ltd., Guilford, United Kingdom.
World Future Review, published bimonthly by the World Future Society, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
Long-Range Planning, the Administrative Staff College, Greenlands Henley-on-Thames, Oxon, United Kingdom (editorial), Pergamon Press, Fairview Park, Elmsford, NY 10523.
Planning Review, The Planning Forum, 5500 College Corner Pike, PO Box 70, Oxford, OH 45056. This publication of the Planning Forum of the International Society for Strategic Management and Planning is an excellent continuing source of information on planning techniques.
Strategic Management Journal, published quarterly by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158.
Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier North-Holland, 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017.
Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, Carfax Publishing Company, PO Box 2025, Dunnellon, FL 32630.
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EXAMPLE OF A GLOBAL NORMATIVE SCENARIO
The 2050 Global Normative Scenario Background
Although the following may look like three alternative normative scenarios, they are intended to be one scenario with three interdependent themes. Each theme represents a different perspective on how change occurs. Some believe technology is the key force that has made change occur. Others argue that changing consciousness and the human capacity is more fundamental to long-term systemic change. Still others say that political and economic policies create the conditions for changes in both technology and human capacity. The following global normative scenario assumes that all three themes are important to the realization of the normative future of 2050.
The two-year process that created this scenario was initiated in 1998. A more detailed explanation can be found in State of the Future or at www.millennium-project.org/millennium/normscen.html. Very simply, Millennium Project participants identified and rated norms that formed the core of the normative scenario. In order of preference, the participants selected the following top four norms around which to form the scenario: environmental sustainability, plenty, global ethics (the identified and accepted), and peace. The others in order of preference were health, freedom, universal education access, equity, preservation of the human species, enlightenment, exciting and meaningful life, self-actualization, longevity, everyone has everything they want, and security.
The body of the normative scenario is composed of the actions to address the 15 Global Challenges in State of the Future. These actions connected the present world to the normative future of 2050 and provided another medium for sharing the thinking of the Global Lookout Panel. A scenario review panel was formed of long-term normative-oriented participants of the Project to review and improve the draft of the scenario. As this is an ongoing process, your suggestions for improvements are welcome and may help shape next year’s edition. Even though the following normative scenario takes into account many of the world’s pressing problems, it is intended to illustrate very optimistic possibilities for our common future over the next two generations.
A Normative World in 2050
By 2050 the world had finally achieved a global economy that appears to be environmentally sustainable while providing nearly all people with the basic necessities of life and the majority with a comfortable living. The resulting social stability has created a world in relative peace, exploring possible futures for the second half of the 21st century.
Different explanations have been given for the series of astounding successes achieved by 2050. Some believe that breakthroughs in science and technology were the keys, others that development of the human potential was more fundamental, and still others that political and economic polices made the difference. All three themes were important and mutually reinforcing.
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Technological Theme
Internet has become a right of citizenship. Businesses give free accounts to all customers; employers give them as an employee benefit. The connection of virtually all people to the global information and communications systems accelerated the pace of scientific research and the introduction and diffusion of new technology. Biotechnology, nanotechnology, and closed-environment agriculture fed the world. New and improved sources of energy made for cleaner economic growth. Brain-like intelligent systems used neural networks to augment human intelligence and improve decision making. Molecular manufacturing (nanotechnology) lowered manufacturing unit cost, requiring less volume of materials and energy usage, and hence, lowered the environmental impact of a population that had reached almost 10 billion. Vaccinology and genetic engineering eliminated most acquired and inherited diseases, further reducing the need for more frequent pregnancies to have a similar sized family. This was a factor in further lowering fertility rates, even though generational mini-booms have continued from the great population explosion in the mid-20th century. Cyberspace had become a major medium of civilization creating a constantly growing, non zero-sum economy and had changed day-to-day life as significantly as the industrial revolution had changed life 200 years earlier. The success of the International Space Station had led to other orbital habitats, the lunar base, and the pioneer communities on Mars. Nearly 250,000 people now work in space communities in orbit, on the moon, and on Mars, giving a new frontier for human imagination and advances in civilization.
Breakthroughs in the unified theory of matter and energy have led to a deeper understanding of mass, inertia, gravity, and quantum behavior. Experiments have begun in the field of anti-gravity and faster-than-light communications through the use of quantum phenomena. There are perhaps a hundred scientists who are studying possibilities of extracting intrinsic, resting energy from space and using it in various forms of propulsion. Cosmologists are adding more rigor to their theories of the origin of the universe and have duplicated the earliest time in computer simulations that seem almost exact, but the search still continues. Some signals of apparently extraterrestrial origin have been detected but debates continue over whether they are truly extraterrestrial or human artifacts, and if extraterrestrial, over their precise meaning.
The debates about the potential of extraterrestrial contact have forced us to think beyond our geographic and ethnic boundaries. Additionally, scientific breakthroughs, the ease of international and near-space travel, and the constant global communications among people of different views on earth and near-space have also helped broaden our perspectives. As a result, people began replacing their more parochial views and consider global ethics more seriously. Not all people value love, truth, fairness, family, freedom, and belonging, but far more than in the 20th century and enough to keep a relatively peaceful world. The field of conflict resolution, which has made great progress since its earliest applications a hundred years ago, recognizes these simple points and its councilors build on them in resolving disputes. Interestingly, the Great Cyber Games played by one out of every three people alive today were instrumental in the identification and acceptance of these global ethical norms that provide much of the common ground for today’s global cooperation. Although ethnic prejudice still exists, it has been held in check more effectively than in the previous century.
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Progress in information technology has been astounding. Microprocessors have continued to increase in capacity; they are speeder, smaller, and less expensive. Today computers are built into and integral with almost everything we make from machines and appliance to buildings and artificial eyes with zoom lenses. Computer elements are molecular in size, and their operations utilize quantum behavior.
Much of the computing capacity today makes machines simpler to use. Rather than requiring everyone to learn to use them, the machines have been taught to listen and act to needs and wishes of their users. The digital world’s vast amount of data has been translated into computers and related technologies with access so easy and natural that people use them without even knowing it, making them seem truly transparent.
Health is a widely accepted human right; equity in coverage and accessibility to quality health services and health information exist regardless of capacity to pay, culture, race, geographic location or social ascription. Tele-health and tele-medicine is widely available and easily accessible. Health care providers adopt new paradigms to forecast and prevent potential health problems through personal and public health approaches; early detection through biomonitoring enhances management of problems that do occur.
Some people used to believe that computers would regiment us by forcing us to conform to their specifications in order to use them. Today computers and the machines that use them have supported diversity through mass customization. Manufacturers make very short production runs of products that are tailored to the specific needs of very small segments of consumers, differing in detail, but matching their criteria. The software technology that uses one’s body as passwords has eliminated toll-booths, credit cards, and passports since people can be recognized by machines. Shopping is now augmented by personal data bases of everything from your buying history to clothing measurements, allowing the online or in-person to say, "This jacket will match the slacks you bought last month," or "Don’t you want to get some matching clothes for your niece’s doll for her birthday next week?
All of these improvements in information technology have resulted in an intricate system of communications that some have called a "global brain" and planetary "nervous system" which has improved the prospects for humanity. As access expanded, diminishing costs of educational software (edutainment), any motivated person could obtain a college education and continue to learn about everything they wanted. Individuals cross political and corporate boundaries in pico-seconds forming new alliances unknown to traditional power structures. Rich and poor have nearly equal access to cyberspace almost anywhere and anytime. The old distinctions between First and Third Worlds are meaningless in cyberspace.
The old one-way media tended to be conflict-oriented––audiences were held by the drama of disagreement. Interactive media tended to be cooperation-oriented, users were held together by the satisfaction of collaboration. Cyberspace distributed the new wealth of information more democratically than previous systems. As a result, anyone can get the training, market research, planning, credit, and other resources to start their own unique businesses and sell to the global cyberspace market. Over the past fifty years, this development has been a major factor in reducing unemployment worldwide.
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The invention of secure electronic money revolutionized retail transactions, international trade, and provided extraordinary growth of employment. Individuals felt confident in creating businesses and selling worldwide. While retail use of the Internet got most of the early publicity and attention, business-to-business transactions have grown phenomenally. Today, businesses of any size identify suppliers and partners worldwide, and barter, order, and track order status simply and instantaneously around the world. Rules preventing wild currency fluctuations limited financial crises and allowed small business growth with security around the world. A fee-based system for central banks made currency transactions transparent and online prices, information on counterparties, and purposes of trades reduced speculation.
The synergy of telematics and micro-genetics provided a jump in human evolution eliminating many diseases and increasing human capabilities. Robots, both giant and nano, do the dangerous, repetitive, and precision work in surgery, security, health care, space industrialization, house cleaning, sewer pipe clearing, bridge inspections, mining, laboratories, and even the preparation of fast food. These robots are for the most part adaptive to their environments, single purpose, and employ biosensors that are derived from both living cells and manufactured microprocessors.
Telecitizens, born in poorer areas but working in richer ones, helped their original countries as tele-volunteers, accelerating the development process. The development of artificial intelligence and its use in communications provided individuals with needed and timely medical, financial, and other information. Software for multi-language translators increased communications among different language groups.
The image of people walking by vending machines, reaching in their pockets, but finding no coins and walking on, drove distributors in the early 21st Century to create voice-activated machines that billed at the end of the month on people’s cybergame accounts. The televendors had a simple voice recognition and synthesis program that let people speak to the machine, use their body patterns as their password, order their sandwich and soft drink, communicate worldwide, and play in the Great Cyber Games while they drank or ate alone or with friends.
The Great Cyber Games contained links to databases that described global problems, opportunities, challenges, strategies, and tactics. Players received points as they identified answers that matched or improved on those in the database or identified new problems judged to be critical enough to add to the database. When a person scored enough points, they won "reality." They got a prerecorded message from a policy maker working on the issue in which the player had received the highest score. The message challenged the player to play in the "real world game." The current real world situation was given to the player by the policy-maker, researcher, or potential employer. When the player came up with something that was considered valuable, the player got connected live to discuss their insight. Winners got to play in the real global game with real actors and many got new jobs and careers.
The Great Cyber Games were attractive to policy- and other kinds of decision-makers because they filtered out all the noise of computer conferences, journal articles, and got right to the person with the ideas. The players liked them because they had the potential to see their ideas
Normative Forecasting 19 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 realized and earn a living at meaningful work. Basic research labs used them to identify the young scientists with the greatest potential to participate in their research. An unintended by-product of the games was a global personnel selection system that today is credited for contributing to the phenomenal growth in new theoretical principles that have led to many improvements. Another surprise was that they performed the role of a global employment agency.
The Great Cyber Games also became an informal way to prevent some of information warfare’s destruction by promoting more precise, honest, and compassionate thought around the globe where it was needed, when it was needed, and in the form that was needed, so that constructive action has had a chance to keep ahead of destructive action. Granted, it continues to be a software race to keep ahead of the bad guys.
When it was scientifically demonstrated that certainty of discovery was the most effective deterrent to dishonesty and crime, means for improving certainty of discovery and positive identification, based on voice analysis and cross-referencing, were instituted, global data bases were created, and the crime rates fell. International protocols were established for sharing police data banks and the use of non-lethal weapons such as sticky foams and aerosols that induce sleep.
Nanotechnology transceivers with voice stress software were incorporated into clothing and jewelry; these systems alerted the user when people were lying or becoming aggressive. Although counter-software will always be a problem, requiring constant upgrades, people have become more honest, or at least behave more honestly than in the last century. It is difficult to imagine a return of dictatorships and to the organized crime networks of the past with today’s global connectivity and honestware universally available.
The field of miniaturization has been extremely important to the success of our world. Nanotechnology helps produce low cost and custom-designed food. As Nature breaks down dirt, air, and water and reassembles the molecules into potatoes, nanotechnology "universal assemblers" break materials into molecules or atoms, then follow the instructions from custom- designed food molecules to manufacture food. With nanotechnology, whatever we can design, we can build. The same technology that had been used to produce integrated circuit chips was used to produce tiny machines. For example, a mass spectrograph, complete with all valves and analysis apparatus was made on a silicon chip. Motors are now constructed with diameters of less than a millimeter; accelerometers used in automobile air bags are too small to be seen with the naked eye. It is commonplace to use biological materials in such chips now to sense the reaction to various contaminants or initiate actions based on their presence. Technologists have learned about forces that occur uniquely at this scale (e.g. lubricants can have molecules that are too large to work properly in such machines) and have developed special molecular forms (fullerenes) that have desired properties. Some applications today are sensors for transition from laminar to turbulent flow on the surface of wings, and the distortion of the airfoils to delay transition, measurement of the purity of water supplies with micro "fish", telemetry transmitters that can be swallowed to measure reactions in the body, and measurement of the stress induced in buildings by earthquakes using sensors that were cast into the structural concrete.
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All of this activity has had a great effect on materials science. After a plateau that lasted for several decades, superconductivity is being experienced at higher and higher temperature; now thin film superconductors exist at -100 degrees Celsius. The developments in this field included bio-molecules, low pressure diamond coatings, ultra-light solids that float in air, and composite materials strong and light enough to form the skin of a large-scale rocket designed to enter orbit with a single stage.
New forms and mechanisms of the distributed global economy began to emerge in the early 21st century. A whole new lexicon was developed to describe the digital life forms that built cyber culture and the collaborative economies of today. Software agents assisted our transition. They sought new opportunities for collaboration, alerted us to synchronicity to discover the value of new and counter-intuitive ideas, and coached us in new forms of self-organization. They even produced images of fields of people, places, and opportunities of cooperative intent. Such "fields of cooperative intent" are one of the new units of social organization and entrepreneurial effort. Knowledge and wisdom have become added measures of wealth and value.
Global idea management systems were integrated into the Great Cyber Games, further accelerating the progress of more environmentally friendly economic and technological development. Common data protocols for unconventional science and an international registry of new and unconventional ideas with national copyright protections were connected to clearinghouses that reported success, failure, and inconclusive research. Use of software that prompted the user to see potential synergies of their work with research in other fields that they might not have otherwise considered has now become a useful protocol in all fields.
Biotechnology has created high-yield plant species that are disease- and pest-resistant, use less fertilizer and are more tolerant of drought and brackish water. More recent applications of biotechnology are completely changing the 10,000 year traditional use of seeds, water and land to grow crops. Today large-scale production of food in factories using genetic techniques produces much of the world’s food. Food factories use genetically altered micro-organisms to organize raw materials into nutritious food. The inputs are primarily sunlight or other energy forms, carbon dioxide, water, and nitrogenous materials. The output is amino acids and directly consumable food. In another approach, cells from natural foods such as carrots or meat are cloned and the outputs of the food factories are edible replications of the parent cells. Such techniques make agricultural production possible without land. They are also beginning to reduce the need for farmland for meat by producing novel protein, replacing meat from cows and chickens. Such meat substitutes for fish have promoted the recovery of ocean fisheries and the establishment of ocean plantations. Perhaps equally important, inventions in this field have also produced the current counters to biological weapons and removal of pathogenic microbiological agents from food.
The mapping of bacterial, human, and plant genomes, provided knowledge of genetic processes and, to some extent, information about how to control them. The tiny interior robots of nanomedicine repair cells, tissues, and organs. Some of the diseases that have be eliminated or controlled are cancer, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, rheumatoid arthritis, AIDS, hypercholesterolemia, and some forms of mental illness. Monoclonal antibodies, sometimes mounted in bio-chips, are being used in sensitive diagnostic tests and in drug delivery systems
Normative Forecasting 21 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 that pinpoint specific sites in the body. Techniques in this field have led to genetic medicine in which the genetic properties of humans are modified in vivo to cure or ameliorate diseases caused by genetic anomalies. Disease diagnosis based on the analysis of one’s genetic material is routine; these diagnoses not only relate to existing diseases, but also the propensity for future disease and in some cases, the propensity for aberrant behavior.
The traditional view of human reproduction is still undergoing changes simultaneously with the increasing progress toward self-determination, equal rights, economic autonomy of women, and the evolution of male and female roles. Some of the more controversial advances have centered on long-term male and female contraceptives, the ability to select the sex of a child before conception, and the ability to influence genetics and biochemical processes. The world became quite alarmed in the early 21st Century when low-cost and portable methods for determining the sex of a baby before conception became commonly available. Many feared that parents in some cultures would select only males, distorting the future demographics of the human race. After several years of intense debate, threats of international sanctions, interventions of leading personalities, and a short but rapid increase in male births in some countries, the number of female and male births returned to balance. This left many uneasy about unforeseen consequences of new technology. As a result, technological forecasting and assessment has become a normal part of the work in advanced institutes today.
The World Energy Organization, created in the early 21st century, coordinated research and helped improve policy leading to today’s safer mix of sources that have reversed the greenhouse effect. These include hydrogen, third generation fission plants, solar power satellites, and renewable energy source. Hydrogen has become a major source of energy for automobiles as a medium for transporting energy from origin to use. In its gaseous form it was stored at high density in metal hydrides and later released by a modest amount of heat. In addition to extracting it from natural gas, it is also produced from water by electrolysis (the focus here was on a new form of catalysis) and by high temperature disassociation of water, processes that use a great deal of electricity or very high temperature. The former method of extraction from water has provided the basis for an argument to build second and third generation nuclear plants and solar power satellites, while the latter suggests large-scale solar thermal plants. An additional benefit of the production of hydrogen from seawater has been desalination to produce fresh water and hence prevent water conflicts in the Middle East and other potential crisis regions.
Thousands of 100-mile long robotically managed closed-environment agricultural tubes, interspersed with photovoltaic strips across the Sahel, produced sufficient food for Africa and exports to Asia. Surplus energy from the strips is currently exported by microwave to earth orbit and relayed worldwide via the satellite energy grid.
The synergies of advanced research in biology and physics necessary for human space flight have generated an extraordinary number and range of inventions, stimulated thought about the meaning of life, history, and our common future, and created many opportunities for peaceful international cooperation. International R & D cooperation led by INSPACECO (the international public-private consortium) lowered launch costs to under US$500 a pound making it possible for an individual to move to a space community with a basic support package for a quarter of a million dollars. This, plus the growing space tourism and space lottery business (winners get a
Normative Forecasting 22 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 free visit to an orbital space vacation center), has opened a political debate on space migration. Some argue that migration from earth is inevitable; it is in the myths of many cultures. People advocate accelerating the construction of alternative habitats in space as insurance for the human species should an earthly catastrophe threaten life on earth. Others argue that life always moves to new niches and our curiosity will drive us one day beyond the solar system.
Space-related inventions have created new industries and tax sources for social programs, improved living standards, expanded access to tools by miniaturization and production processes that have lowered the costs of many technologies from satellite communications to medical diagnostic techniques. Income from satellite communications, solar power satellites, orbital energy relay satellites (orbital electricity grid), lunar and asteroid mining, weightless manufacturing, and space tourism has led to an enormous growth of private sector ventures in space. This acceleration of the privatization of space applications has avoided the public cycles of interest and uninterest in space support, so common in the last century.
Hierarchical institutions of the 20th century have given way to network organizations and a plethora of short-term, task-oriented, individually-initiated teams made possible by intelligent software agents in cyberspace. Cyber-UN and other international organizations can only be understood in cyberspace, because "employees" are not concentrated into one building or geographic center from which they operate. Instead people are connected around the world under the cyber umbrella of the international organization, but they may also be working for other institutions such as NGOs, corporations, universities, other UN systems, and traditional systems like nation-states and regional organizations. These cyber organizations are better thought of as executive information systems, with knowledge visualization, that are available in cyberspace for improved decision making by a user or group of users. This is the medium through which harmonization of global standards was achieved and through which accountability, transparency, and participation in the range of human enterprise today is reinforced.
Despite the technological progress and scientific insight on which today’s society is based, most scientists and engineers believe that there is still more to come, that the future holds further excitement, progress and discovery.
Human Development Theme
The acknowledgment that education was the solution to many problems and that the knowledge economy was spreading rapidly, stimulated governments and corporations worldwide to increase their investments in education, training, and applications of cognitive science. The race to educate the world began after the World Summit on Cognitive Development in 2010. Most institutions that had even a peripheral association with education began debating the most equitable and cost/effective ways to make everyone knowledgeable, virtuous, and intelligent. Internet access became a right of citizenship. Educational software was imbedded into nearly everything that could hold a computer chip. The World Cyber Games permeated daily life, blending entertainment and education.
The transition from a mostly illiterate global population to a mostly educated world was achieved by the mid-2040s. The interconnection of many separate programs into a global system
Normative Forecasting 23 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 of education created a cyberspace in which all could get the best education at their own pace, learning style, and in their own language. Ethical and effective decision making was a new focus of education. The availability of data of all sorts, married with an integrated global scholarly and scientific knowledge base, increased the speed of problem solving in all fields, by providing a logically structured framework into which existing and newly acquired knowledge could be placed and assimilated in a non-redundant way for examination, discussion, and extension by scientists and scholars worldwide and for a full range of educational applications. Academic and business interests collaborated to create a sophisticated body of principles and techniques for knowledge visualization and the use of artificial intelligence to make it possible to rapidly navigate the knowledge of the world. This allowed for content and context to be connected, reducing confusion and culture shock in cyber space.
The Global Cyber Games were integrated with the knowledge systems so that one could move easily between play and education. An unanticipated consequence of the games was the large number of people they helped to identify and acknowledge global ethics, and the growth of responsible behavior and compassion.
In addition to the vast improvements in educational technology, the content of conventional public education also changed during the early 21st century. Education successfully linked human ecology to decision-making in an increasingly global society, including the moral basis for decisions, the nature and management of risk, and dealing with uncertainty. It emphasized compassionate behavior and socially acceptable values such as tolerance and diversity. Instruction in "how to learn" and the scientific method was given greater prominence in both educational systems and professional training programs. Multi- and trans-disciplinary techniques and non-linear thinking approaches became common in most curricula. It is generally accepted that the creative process included failure, chaos, uncertainty, and holding of contradictory positions. The speed of feedback from inquiry to intelligent response is so fast today that curiosity has become a normal mental state for adults.
Advances in cybernetics and human cognitive development increased the use of machine intelligence to augment human intelligence, while emphasizing social and emotional development for improved decision making. In short, it became fashionable to be intelligent and virtuous.
It was not enough to learn and understand the history and current status of an item; in the world of 2050 an educated person also knew a range of possible futures for that item. Many reasons have been given for the addition of future-oriented curricula in education. Some argued that we were simply forced into it by the increasing complexity of issues, growing numbers of people involved in decisions, accelerating rate of change, and lead-times involved with environmental solutions. Others pointed to new opportunities in globalization and other unprecedented conditions, such as the international millennium celebrations and events that stimulated increased corporate, political, academic and personal thinking about future possibilities. Futurists had used the year 2000 as an opportunity to introduce futures methods and perspectives through global television and Internet events. Future-oriented university courses in and around cyber space became popular. As a result, nearly all institutions began providing routine updates on near- and long-term future dynamics. Long-term perspectives and improved futures methodology
Normative Forecasting 24 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 were increasingly applied to address the full range of global issues and opportunities. This contributed to the improved conditions enjoyed in the mid-21st Century and expected for future generations as well.
In addition to the popularization of executive training seminars in long-term perspectives, the many National Futures Academies popularized and improved the quality of instruction of futures studies through networks of universities. They helped integrate futures-oriented, creative, non-linear thinking into educational curricula that addressed decision-making. The moral basis for decisions, the nature of risk, and dealing with uncertainty were also integrated into these courses. Futures research methods were converted into teaching methods to help future-orientd instruction.
The millennium provided the focus to foster collaboration among the various inter-religious dialogues on human values and morals that continued over several decades and through all forms of media. This accelerated the inter-religious studies that found common moral values and attitudes acceptable to all cultures. Religious leaders publicly acknowledged the existence and value of a variety of approaches to spiritual enlightenment and becoming a virtuous person. These public acknowledgments and dialogues helped to reduce the hatred created by the many ethnic conflicts of the late 20th century. The personal intervention of some religious leaders who condemned those who called for violence in the name of religion reduced the use of religion as a justification for ethnic conflict.
Although cultural and religious conflicts will still need more time to fully disappear, these new initiatives have help to keep them in sufficient check to prevent the kinds of wars so prevalent in the last century.
Philosophers and artists created terminology and imagery that communicated the strength of diversity is its underlying unity and our ethical responsibilities to future generations. Global ethics have become generally understood and scientifically documented for social stability. This did not mean that all people adhered to global ethics, but that it became a force for social stability. Advertising and social marketing taught tolerance and respect for diversity and equal rights. All managers today have received training courses in ethical behavior in a multiethnic context. As a result, thinking globally includes responsibility about global impacts.
Psychonauts exploring the mind and cybernauts exploring cyberspace helped create new forms of notation and symbols that enabled the general public to understand the sophisticated world of 2050. These new forms made the global education systems more intelligible to a broad range of people. These notations and symbols helped transcultural collaboration in creating the cultures of peace we enjoy today. Many of the new kinds of perceptions of reality and ways of knowing that helped this transition could only have emerged through human interaction using these new forms of notation.
Diversity and shared ethical values were encouraged by the countless celebrations of humanity-as-a-whole at the millennium. People and institutions learned the painful lessons generated by the many ethnic conflicts that followed the fall of the USSR. Polycultural views were created from shared beliefs and interests that enhanced peaceful coexistence.
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Polyculturalism also helped smooth the transition of nation-centric states to regional and global institutions. Global economic success diminished the importance of excessive materialistic desires and people looked for more meaning in their lives. Experience -- more than information -- became the key economic value. By 2050 enough people understood that ethnic diversity is a comparative advantage in a global economy and society, and has made our world far more peaceful today than in the past. Diverse views from many cultures provided the insights to manage an increasingly complex world and shared ethical values promoted cooperation and stability.
Changes in global frames of reference and philosophies due in part to understanding of the interaction of population and economic growth with environmental degradation gave rise to the more enlightened age of today. The merger of the environmental movements and human rights groups in collaboration with many leading multinational corporations made possible the global educational campaign that made clean air, water, and land accepted as a human right. As a result, many changes in environmental policies and behaviors have been made. It became unthinkable to establish an environmentally dangerous project.
In the late 20th century, it was scientifically documented that the behavior and values of most astronauts changed as a result of the "breakaway phenomenon", the psychological reaction to leaving earth. Seeing the earth from space caused psychological and even neurological changes that created new neural connections associated with the concept of humanity; and, hence the value-forming process. Human consciousness became more compassionate with the daily flood of images of Earth from orbital communities, the lunar base, and the Mars pioneers. Many children born in space have developed careers related to conflict prevention and reinforcing the value of ethnic diversity. Their increasing interaction with the Earth-based groups has provided a calming influence on potential social conflicts.
Others believed that the increasingly aging population in the global labor force helped to provide wisdom for increasing ethical considerations in business and daily life. Still others point to the NGO global dialogs and studies on ethics that scrutinized and encouraged improvement of ethical standards in business as the reason for the more humane use of free markets.
Whatever the reasons, the 20th century self-centered greed and welfare attitudes were replaced by a more moral entrepreneurial spirit, environmental consciousness, and compassion. Growing numbers of experienced, energetic and active older men and women are respected and occupy important positions shared with younger groups. The traditional "linear life paradigm" where people pass sequentially through education, work, leisure and retirement is replaced by "cyclical life paradigms". A safety network exists to protect the elderly in need. Thanks to a variety of public and private options, social security is robust.
Nearly all formerly less advantaged groups (the poor, the elderly, women, ethnic and racial minorities) participate in the cybercash economy; universal literacy and Internet access allows people to learn and work at home. Poor women were especially helped by these changes which contributed to decreases in infant mortality rates and generated government support for childcare, contraceptives, and family planning, as well as by the powerful role models for women provided by various media. Inter-religious dialogs about the changing role of women,
Normative Forecasting 26 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 birth control, and religion were also credited with these changes. Equal pay for equal work is now a universal norm. Disabled persons are able to live functional lives and participate indiscriminately in society.
The interest in assessment of the past and visioning of the future became so popular at the time of the millennium that inquiry into new and sometimes counter-intuitive ideas became much more acceptable. As a result, much more was learned about how to increase natural abilities by self-control of inherent human healing power, cognition-enhancing strategies, and conscious involvement with computer-generated artificial "life".
By the end of the 20th century, many norms underpinning peace were widely accepted, such as territorial integrity, non-use of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, the immunity of civilian aircraft and ships, international obligation to help refugees, the inadmissibility of colonial rule, the unacceptableness of officially sanctioned and racial discrimination, the undeniable equality of woman, and human rights. However, not until the world education system became more efficient, did these norms become almost universally perceived as normal today.
The transitions from authoritarian regimes to democracies was smoothed by advanced training programs and seminars for senior political officials to discuss with their international peers successful transition strategies in the areas of the rule of law, respect for human rights, free media, tolerance of political opposition, free elections, and an independent civil society.
Because of the speed and ubiquity of communications systems, decision-makers and the general public became increasingly aware of the consequences of their decisions -- almost as they occurred. Feedback on the results of actions is so rapid, which in turn allows for new, self-correcting decisions. This has reduced the time from early warnings to timely and effective responses, and contributed to the solution of many of the seemly intractable problems of the 20th century.
Just as bodybuilding became fashionable among many in the late 20th century, so too mind building has become fashionable in the early 21st century. Parents learned that giving their babies diversity of environment with consistency of love enhanced cognitive development. Nutritional supplements known as "brain food" became common. Rumors persist that we have crossed the threshold of using gene therapy to increase intelligence.
Cognitive science and behavioral sciences increasingly intermingled, helping policy makers to understand how to improve mental as well as social well being. One of the most successful software applications of cognitive science was "Think Smart", a self-customizable virtual reality program with telepresence options that directly stimulated neural development. Eye tracking, voice commands, and neural output in a virtual reality eyepiece allowed users to visualize their capacities as virtual icons and use their mental strengths to improve their weaker areas. The more adventurous used this software interactivity when connected to telepresence global education systems and the Great Cyber Games. Tele-robots give the telepresence sense by letting users hear and often feel what a remote robot is seeing, hearing and feeling at the time. Such telepresence makes people actually feel that they are swimming in the deep ocean, walking on the surface of Jupiter, or living in an ant colony, when they are sitting a home. Unfortunately
Normative Forecasting 27 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 some people prefer these simulations to real life. However, despite the problems it has generated, simulation is a new educational tool of great power.
Synergies from research in cognitive science and sociology gave NGOs better methods to promote peace, engage in conflict resolution, and build consensus. New knowledge of brain reasoning and decision processes was applied to enhance the brain’s ability for complex reasoning. The philosophy of science and cognitive science helped society reach a better understanding of objective vs. subjective truth.
With global consciousness (awareness that everyone is aware of the world as-a-whole) institutional forms continuously reinvented themselves. Few hierarchical or network institutions existed in a continuous sense as in the 20th century. Instead they became fields for collaborative actions of varying time duration. Every four years the Olympic movement reinforced this consciousness through its games in both cyber and three-dimensional space. In 2040, when the Mars Pioneers won the first Olympic competition in solar sailing between Earth and lunar orbit, humanity seemed to pass some threshold of consciousness. We became aware that we were no longer an Earth-only species but will become a spacefaring one.
Our human capacity is just now beginning to be understood. The current debate about a possible signal from extraterrestrial intelligence is revolutionizing our values, philosophy, and views of the human potential as we enter the second half of the 21st century.
Political Economic Policy Theme
The number of wars decreased as democracies and respect for cultural diversity increased in the early 21st century. Although old cultural conflict wounds of the past still flare occasionally, we can successfully avert them or prevent them for growing into larger conflicts. The resulting social stability nurtured economic growth and created 2 billion people in the global middle class by 2010. This increased conditions for further stability and sustainable growth that moved over 5 billion people into the middle class by 2050.
The UN Secretariat’s early warning and monitoring system coupled with a new rapid response capability were instrumental in preventing international and internal wars. Its indicators of peace and security are transparent for cross-referencing by media, governments, NGOs, and the public. This transparency - especially with the media - connected early warning with appropriate and timely action. Instead of a standing UN Army, nations agreed to identify troops which would be immediately available for rapid response peacekeeping and peace building missions which have been trained together with other such national troops and which use compatible equipment and communications. NGOs cooperated with this system by establishing networks to monitor indicators of conflict and discuss and link strategies for rapid deployment of non-military resources. States were able to reduce their military budgets by paying a "security insurance fee" to the UN Security Insurance Agency to work in tandem with UN Peacekeeping as a rapid development and peace making contingents. The UNSIA was able to avoid the veto by being governed by a public-private-civic governing council that worked in partnership the UN Security Council.
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As the complexity of global issues and the number of people involved in the decision-making process increased, institutions found new approaches to management and decision making. Most hierarchical institutions have evolved into network organizations and have increased their public accountability, transparency, and participation in management. Many network organizations have evolved into fields of common interests as individuals cross political boundaries electronically, making new alliances unbeknownst to traditional power.
The UN Secretariat and Security Council have been streamlined and are now supported by advanced executive information management systems, software agents, and knowledge visualization systems. Nearly all the work of the UN now occurs in "Cyber UN," leaving the Secretariat building in New York more for ceremonial duties. Some of the UN’s specialized agencies have been merged while others have increased in importance like the WTO, WHO, WSO (World Sustainable-development Organization), and INSPACO. These global institutions have harmonized international standards, protocols, and coordination among international organizations, governments, corporations, and NGOs. Both multi-national corporations and NGOs have become transnational in their policy influence. Regional institutions have also grown in importance.
The transition from dictatorships to democracies is now complete. Authoritarian regimes cooperated in the transition realizing that democratic processes were increasingly necessary for social stability and the generation of wealth on a par with global norms. Improved information technology helped make UN Electoral Units instrumental in this transition by providing effective election design, management, and monitoring. Threats to make development assistance and loans from international organizations dependent on progress toward democracy sometimes proved counterproductive. The incentive of participation in the Global Partnership for Development (GPD) proved effective as a partnership between high income countries and those with less industrial and entrepreneurial cultures to improve economic development. GDP membership required respect for human rights and policies to address environmental security. If they were abridged or thwarted sufficiently, intervention by UN peacekeeping forces could be authorized by the Security Council. A little-noticed article in the GPD called for acceptance of periodic NGO assessments of progress on democratization and the reduction of corruption. The corruption reports have become an annually anticipated event and have proven to be an effective instrument through which countries have reduced corruption.
As the world progressed toward peace, the reduction in arms R&D, production, stockpiling, trade, and military personnel was accelerated along with the efforts to convert military technology to civilian uses. This contributed to government debt reduction. The synergies of advanced research in biology, physics, and engineering necessary for human space habitation have created new industries and tax resources for universal education programs. This helped to justify government investment into research that lowered launch costs. While government funds for the initial solar power satellites, orbital habitats for space manufacturing, lunar base, and the Martian station were necessary, the majority of space applications are financed and owned by global corporations, INSPACECO, or a combination of both.
The International Criminal Court was established with enforcement powers to punish those convicted of atrocious collective and communal violence. In close cooperation with the court,
Normative Forecasting 29 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 the UN Secretariat created a parallel early warning system focusing on potential and emerging crime threats.
Internet access became a right of citizenship as governments realized that it was a logical extension of the public library. Telecommunication monopolies were replaced by local, regional, and global enterprises as new technological capacities were introduced. Content and use of international networks are regulated as little as possible, although there are many specialty groups that make blocking software that prevents the reception of offensive materials to those groups. Imbedded software code strengthened the enforcement of intellectual property rights.
Participatory processes informed by futures research continue to develop and improve national and corporate visions of the future. Socio-cultural indicators were developed to improve analysis. The interaction of these indicators with global scientific, economic, political and environmental factors is now standard. This led to the creation of the common protocols used at regional intergovernmental meetings and countries to share their futures perspectives and communicate the implications of decisions to the public.
NGOs contributed to confidence building, conflict resolution, and preventive diplomacy. NGOs are now regularly included in decision making of international organizations.
The growth and integration of regional trade groups has nearly completed the transition to the WTO objective of free trade with common standards of behavior. The globalization of markets, media, information technology, education, urbanization, and the harmonization of international standards seem to be sufficient to prevent regression to dictatorships and national wars. The IMF issued new SDRs (Special Drawing Rights) that made it easier for developing countries to pay off their debt. Standard central bank rules on the issuance of currency were finally observed by all countries,, which now helps control inflation. The Global Securities and Exchange Commission was established to tame currency markets, and central banks made currency transactions sufficiently transparent to reduce speculation. Small business was promoted through access to land, credit, technology, and training. Special attention was given to women.
Increasing numbers of people now accept that access not possession is the measure of wealth. This new cultural norm helped to change consumption patterns. Global dialogs about ethics and common values have helped the New Wealth Indicators (NWI) which replaced GDP as the primary focus for national accounting. This has stimulated more ethical and free markets. The increasing participation of those 65-85 in the labor force provided additional wisdom for increasing ethical considerations in business.
Entrepreneurial spirit and stewardship replaced the welfare attitude. Employee ownership is now common in the many forms of Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) which made corporate shares available to employees. Employees access their own company’s Intranet to see elements of their planning system, work flow, production indicators, etc.; this allowed them to more intelligently participate in the business.
NGOs identified, monitored, and publicized sources of the constraints to free markets and unethical business practices around the world. Participatory processes between labor,
Normative Forecasting 30 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 management, and consumers helped better match training and future work to keep employment high. Public voting on political elections and potential corporate decisions of global importance via global networks has become a common practice. A side benefit was the continual identification and acknowledgment of the many hidden and delayed costs assumed by government, which in turn led to the acceptance of full cost accounting today.
The Internet gave equal access to rich and poor as prices for computers, software, and telecommunications fell, capacity grew, and ease of use improved. It accelerates economic development by providing greater and faster access to the world’s knowledge, and became the medium for participating in the world’s economy. It distributed the wealth of information more democratically than previous systems. Electronic money made international commerce more secure, which allowed instant global delivery of many services. Tele-citizens from poorer countries working in richer ones can help their original countries as tele-volunteers to the development process.
The Great Cyber Games helped to distribute the workload from those who were overloaded to the underemployed. The cyber game’s Work Unit allowed people to bid on work from the overloaded.
Although the 1999 World Conference on Science was not initially hailed as a great success, it did initiate the discussions that laid the foundations for the political agreements to create and accept the UNESCO-ICSU definitions of terms, standards, and measurements that proved necessary for effective political and economic polices that eventually achieved sustainable development by the mid-21st century. The use of environmental tax incentives, product labels, and international sanctions on violators of a series of UN treaties related to sustainable development required these scientifically determined definitions and measures. With these changes in policy and an increasingly informed global market, businesses competed to show their environment correctness. The more successful companies got a jump on the competition by creating their own labeling programs prior to government policies.
Although "sustainable development" had become the most internationally accepted goal for humanity, it was not realized until several powerful personalities provided the spark to move the world from "lip service" to more serious action. Companies created their own green labels as a competitive advantage with those who didn’t use environmentally sound production practices. Consumer groups helped the knowledge and service companies find the industrial supplies and products for their businesses that were created in more ecologically sound ways. "Green" producers and consumers united in political movements that changed waste-subsidizing economic policies. (For example, providers began charging for the real costs of water, nuclear energy, etc.). The global inter-religious discourses helped to make reasonably clean air, water, and healthy soil a human right rather than a factor in economic cost/benefit analysis.
The World Sustainable-development Organization (WSO) was created to provide a global focus for business, government, and individual efforts to invest into sustainable development. The International Court of Environmental Arbitration and Conciliation has become the key instrument for advising the UN Security Council on environmental security actions. UN Peacekeeping forces were deployed when the ICEAC ruled against a state that was unwilling to
Normative Forecasting 31 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 stop the leakage of nuclear waste that endangered several countries. Since then the threat of UN military intervention has been sufficient to cause remedial actions. Intergenerational equity has become a major global value and legal principle.
The WSO provided a global collection point for contributions and investments into alternative sources of energy, energy storage, and efficiencies to extend non-renewable energy sources. In response to global warming, it worked with oil companies to help them expand into renewable energy sources. It also provided political leadership for INSPACO to place earth rectennas for solar power satellites in China and India. WSO helped local authorities in cooperation with farmers, agribusinesses, and environmental NGOs provide natural habitat corridors and integration of habitat in agriculture to protect biodiversity. WSO’s collaboration with local authorities helped them set goals or limits for percent of land-use for natural pristine reserves, low-intensity agriculture, and high-intensity agriculture.
Ecological and energy taxes were initiated to create disincentives for inappropriate energy use and tax incentives for less polluting alternative energy sources. All stages of the production process were included (extraction, production, distribution and consumption). Corporate-NGO partnerships developed model sustainable communities in different settings around the world that were designed around reduced consumerism, sustainability, community values, traffic-free, sylvan spaces, with fewer than 2,000 people. Buying clubs and consumer unions encouraged consumers to purchase from service industries that drew from more environmentally friendly industrial processes.
Better government policies were stimulated by the establishment of national accounts that included the economic, social, and health impacts of the depletion of natural resources. National laws were developed to compensate victims of pollution and other environmental damage. Tradeable pollution permits were used to insure international compliance to fix global emission limits for countries and industrial sectors. With broad public support, governments entered into voluntary agreements with industry to commit themselves to go "beyond regulation" in exchange for a relaxation of administrative and compliance costs of regulations (data collecting, reporting, verification).
Similarly, there are now government incentives for smaller and healthier families, effective long-term contraceptives, and low infant mortality rates. Since family planning or spacing has become acceptable in nearly all cultures, it is unlikely that birth rates will increase in the near future. Birth rates have fallen sufficiently that now more people worry about sufficient population growth to support the world’s increasingly aging population.
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EXAMPLE OF A REGIONAL NORMATIVE SCENARIO
A Normative Scenario for the Middle East
Two other Middle East Peace Scenarios are available online at: http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/ME-Peace-Scenarios.html
Foreword
A new story is needed for the Middle East.
The old story seems like "bite hands," a game played in the Middle East by two boys. Each puts a hand in the other's mouth. Both bite hard until someone gives up. "Give me justice or I bite harder!" "Give me peace or I bite harder." The following three normative scenarios provide new stories for the Middle East intended to stimulate and be a resource for new discussions and actions for peace.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has to be one of the most studied and contested issues in world affairs today. Surprisingly, there are no well-researched, objective, plausible peace scenarios - not frameworks, ―in other words‖, or objectives, analyses, proposals, proclamations, accords, treaties, or road maps, but scenarios: stories with causal links connecting the future and the present like a movie script. It is easy to imagine many scenarios that describe alternative ways the current conflict continues. But what is needed is a set of alternative peace scenarios created by participants with a range of views. In this way, many ideas can be woven together into a story to see how a culture of peace might emerge in the region. The Cairo Node of the Millennium Project at Cairo University in Egypt suggested this void had to be filled by taking a futurist "backcasting" approach to the problem: imagine peace is achieved, and then look at how we got there.
The following normative peace scenarios were created through a unique process. A series of literature reviews and interviews identified seven conditions that seemed required by all sides prior to the emergence of peace. The review also found a set of actions to help establish each precondition. An international panel of several hundred participants was asked to rate the importance of each action for achieving the precondition, the likelihood that the action could occur, and the possibility that it might backfire or make things worse. Additional actions were also collected and rated subsequently in a second-round questionnaire. The results were used to write draft alternative peace scenarios and submitted in a third round to the panel for critical review. The drafts were then edited based on the results. Details of the process and results are available in Chapter 3 on the CD included with the 2008 State of the Future.
The questionnaires that generated the scenarios are available at: http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/rd1-mepeace.html http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/rd2-mepeace.html http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/MEPS-rd3.html
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While writing these scenarios, it became increasingly clear that the speed of building better conditions must be so fast that the voices of those who would have us understand the past before we move forward are less audible than before. It is a race. It is easy to say there are many alternative scenarios for the Middle East that show variations on the current violence, but without plausible stories of how peace could evolve with cause-and-effect relations woven into peace scenarios, it is difficult to motivate people to move toward more cooperative pursuits to build a new story for the region.
Scenario 1. Water Works
Now that peace seems to have been finally achieved in the Middle East, everyone is claiming credit for the success. Historians will document the many causes, but most agree today that when the First Lady of Egypt responded to the worsening water crises by inviting UNEP, UNDP, and the Quartet (EU, United States, Russia, and the UN) to be the co-conveners of an exploratory conference on Middle East water, a new sense of hope began to grow in the region.
Since the previous leadership in Israel had said it would take no significant steps in the Quartet's Roadmap until attacks on Israelis stopped, and since the more militant Palestinians had said they would not stop until Israel withdrew from the occupied areas, a new approach had to be found.
Going beyond the mid-1990s water agreements between Israel and the PLO, the Middle East Water Conference concluded that a series of regional water negotiations would be chaired by a UN Envoy appointed by the Secretary-General and funded by the Quartet. The conference would include delegations from Israel, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and Lebanon, plus the Quartet and observers, and would proceed from the premise that regional water scarcity was inevitable without major desalination; the focus had to be not just redistribution of unsustainable current sources but increased water supply. The US representative stressed this throughout the conference, saying that water-sharing agreements alone would not lead to peace, even if the United States agreed to referee infractions. Producing more water was the key to building trust.
Others believed that the real watershed event leading to peace was the resignations of both Sharon and Arafat, which cleared the way for the establishment of SERESER to coordinate the extraordinarily complex set of agreements, projects, study commissions, joint corporations, and oversight of the fund for joint projects in cooperative research that evolved over the years. Quiet talks among moderates on both sides produced the Geneva Accords, which led to further quiet talks sponsored by the Quartet that spelled out the conditions for SERESER-a body that took its name from the first letter of seven preconditions for peace: Secure borders for Israel, Establishment of a viable and independent Palestinian state, Resolution of the Jerusalem question, an End to violence by both sides and an effort to build confidence, Social and economic development, Education, and Resolution of Palestinian refugee status.
Still others said that without secret negotiations by the hardliners, none of this would have been possible. Just as Switzerland provided good offices for moderates to meet in secret and produce
Normative Forecasting 34 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 the Geneva Accords, Switzerland welcomed the meetings of hardliners, which took a circuitous route getting to the negotiations table.
It all started in Iraq. Sunni Muslims did not want Iraq to become the second Shia Islamic Republic, so representatives of the International Muslim Brotherhood (Sunni) approached the US Administrator in Iraq to offer cooperation, which included efforts to resolve the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. The United States had to give greater emphasis to democratization than military management in Iraq and had to prevent breaking Iraq into Switzerland-like cantons, which would give the Shia the upper hand.
Since it was better to have peace with Israel and a democratizing Iraq than an Iran-Iraq Shia juggernaut, Sunni hardliners agreed to meet secretly with Israeli hardliners. The US-Swiss insistence that the meetings begin where the moderates left off in the Geneva Accords delayed the negotiations, but in retrospect turned out to be the only workable framework for them.
Regardless of what historians finally credit as the key trigger for peace, the water negotiations provided a consistent side channel for keeping hope alive. Since water is the most universally recognized human need and the negotiations were more focused than general peace negotiations, they helped to build confidence among the Israelis and Palestinians that peace might be possible. For example, the section of the Wall that enclosed the western mountain aquifer that provides Palestinians in the West Bank with over half their water was rebuilt as a result of the water negotiations. This confidence spilled over into other negotiations in the region, but when these became deadlocked, the Middle East focus returned to the water meetings to restore trust. As water agreements were reached, the Arab Integrated Water Resources Management Network, USAID, the Arab-Israeli joint Regional Center for Research on Desalination in Oman, and UNDP quickly implemented authorized programs, such as emergency water relief systems in Gaza.
The first major success in increasing water supply was the agreement that dramatically accelerated construction of reverse osmosis desalination plants to counter future water scarcity. A commitment to finance the Dead Sea canal and a desalination plant at the Dead Sea to produce water for equal distribution to Jordan, Israel, and Palestine was the first partnership of Israeli technology and Arab oil money. Another agreement followed to build an aqueduct, an irrigation system, and a network of channels from Turkey to Syria, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. These and subsequent projects have made water available to all today through a common infrastructure for the region. Joint Arab-Israeli educational institutions were established to focus on hydrology, hydraulic engineering, and systems for the transport and distribution of the desalinized water. This also provided the confidence to begin building new oil pipelines from the Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea, with an outlet in Palestine and another in Israel, which will reduce dependence on geographic pinch points in the Gulf and the Red Sea and will help Palestinian economic development.
Meanwhile, many of the 4.1 million registered Palestinian refugees were in desperate need of education. The collapse of the USSR, the expulsion of Palestinians from Arab Gulf countries, and the closing of most PLO institutions after their forced departure from Lebanon in 1983 meant that access to secondary, informal, and higher education became more and more difficult
Normative Forecasting 35 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 for refugees. At the same time, the UN Relief and Works Agency had less money to provide refugees with basic services, let alone quality education. The construction of the Wall further complicated access to education, so tele-education seemed the only reasonable course. With UN and EU endorsements, the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian diaspora gained the political will to raise the initial money from wealthy Arab donor states and personalities to create tele- education programs and initiate an education Peace Corps to support tele-education in refugee camps. As these programs began to show signs of success, such as students getting scholarships to universities and others creating online businesses, Israel - as a sign of good will - contributed to expanded operations. This triggered matching funds from Arab countries.
Al-Quds Open University of Palestine and the Open University of Israel jointly implemented the unofficial tele-education program with help from several NGOs and UNESCO, enlisting renowned educators and providing new tele-curricula that emphasized respect and hope for the future. Tele-education reached more women and taught the next generation the value of individual efforts to succeed, since their education was self-motivated and self-paced. Tele- education joint learning activities among Palestinians and Israelis broke down stereotypes, led to enough trust to organize some face-to-face meetings, and increased the commitment and ability to achieve peace in the region.
These developments led to the Great Peace March organized by youth groups. Some of the youth leaders came from the tele-education classes; others were alumni of the Peace Child projects that quietly brought teenagers from both sides together over the years. The youth groups called on the political leaders of both sides to end the hostilities and sign the peace accords, the same accords that later some of these "next generation" leaders would implement as civil servants in the Governments of Palestine and Israel.
While the Great Peace March was being covered by Al Jazeera, CNN, and the BBC, the President of Katun stunned the UN Security Council in a closed session by advocating a medical solution: "Diplomatic, military, political, and economic strategies to make peace in the Middle East have failed. It is time to take a public health approach," he said. "All countries have processes to take mentally ill people into custody when they are a danger to themselves and or others, and give them tranquilizers against their will. If so for one person, then why not for two? If so for two, then why not for many?" The Security Council Members could not understand where the President was going with this. He continued, "Clearly much of the Middle East is mentally ill; therefore, I propose that the Security Council authorize a UN force to put tranquilizers in the air and water systems of the conflicting parties until peace is achieved."
No one knew what to say. Was he serious? The silence in the Security Council became unbearable. Finally the President of Katun said: "You know I am right and you know it will not happen. So I propose instead that a UN Peacekeeping Force be equipped with tranquilizer bullets, sticky foam, and other non-lethal weapons and be deployed in areas of conflict or potential conflict." The President pulled out a piece of paper and read: "This UN Force would: Enforce the UN General Assembly resolution that clearly defined the borders. Oversee the Israeli withdrawal from all areas occupied by it since the 1967 war.
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Protect the Quartet's pollsters who are assessing Israeli and Palestinian views on the proposed borders to make sure that the agreements would survive regime changes within Israel and Palestine. Enforce the agreement on religious rights that guaranteed access to holy places in Jerusalem to all creeds."
The UN Security Council approved the recommendations. Within weeks of the arrival of the UN Peacekeepers, SERESER's operations were expanded, all Arab states formally recognized Israel as an independent state, and the UN General Assembly welcomed Palestine as the newest UN member state. Hardliners on both sides of the secret talks in Switzerland insisted that some public process be created to "set the record straight," and through SERESER Archbishop Tutu was called in to help establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The commission, instead of the streets, became the focus of much of the heated debate. Then, like the water negotiations, the commission became a moderating influence to reduce the violence and to focus on issues of justice. "Town meetings" were held throughout the region to discuss the UN's role. The Israeli delegation in the hardliners' negotiations addressed the Israeli resistance to UN Peacekeepers by getting an agreement that UN forces would have a US commander.
Even before these political agreements were completed, the UN Special Coordinator's Office, or UNSCO, brought together the leaders of the Palestinian Elected Local Councils to design a comprehensive social and economic development process that included self-help participatory planning for local development in the Palestinian territories. People began to assume responsibility for developing their own communities, while seeking external technical and financial assistance.
UNSCO, in coordination with the Palestinian Authority and SERESER, helped bring in external assistance for this development process by calling representatives together from different international agencies (World Bank, IMF, EU, USAID, UNDP, and international NGOs) and the local coordinating committees representing the Ad-Hoc Liaison Committee, the Local Aid Coordination Committee, and several Palestinian NGOs. Business and religious leaders were also included. New Palestinian leaders who emerged from inter-religious dialogues and the water negotiations earned the respect of their Israeli counterparts, making cooperation possible.
Palestinian Elected Local Councils received training from Shorouk (the local participatory planning and development process in Egypt) on how to mobilize local groups of people, help them assess their resources, and plan their future. With UNSCO guidance, this self-help approach attracted resources and expertise. Some Palestinian youth from the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Canada returned to mobilize local Palestinian youth grassroots programs that were financed and launched by wealthy US and Arab millionaires who saw the benefits of bringing young people who had been fully exposed to democratic principles and the Information Age into direct contact with their Palestinian peers. The self-help participatory program ran in juxtaposition with tele-education to supplement each other, and the education Peace Corps and self-help volunteers worked together.
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As the local participatory planning processes became more popular, their results became connected to development budget decisionmaking of the Palestinian Authority and SERESER. As Palestinian young people began to see results, their faith in their future increased; this in turn focused their energy on development of their communities. As a result, Islamic militia groups found fewer volunteers. Natural local leaders emerged throughout the process in each community. Those leaders fed the evolution of representative government based on liberal economic principles. Regular transactions between Palestinians and government officials made the government more accountable to its citizens and provided a trust-building mechanism that was critical to the evolution of democratic culture.
Probably the most difficult issue other than the return of refugees was jurisdiction of Jerusalem. Proposals to declare Jerusalem an international city, establish a UN Trusteeship, and even set up time-sharing arrangements were debated. Finally it became clear that Israel would agree to return to its 1967 borders, including those within Jerusalem, and the Palestinians would agree to give up the right to return to Israel except in special humanitarian situations. All refugees did have the right to return to the new nation of Palestine. All agreed that a plan for peacefully sharing holy sites had to guarantee free access to these areas that would recognize the religious rights of all creeds.
However, it was not until a unique process created a time-sharing agreement that UN Peacekeepers could oversee the arrangement. A preliminary "calendar-location matrix" was proposed, which eventually identified all the possible "time slots" and holy sites. It included the times of day when the highest demand locations coincided with the highest demand times of year. Parties who wanted access to the various date/location combinations in the matrix were given the opportunity to rank their preferences from highest to lowest. Each party rank ordered all the cells in the matrix. Initially UNSCO and then SERESER (selected by agreement by all the parties) used the rankings to assign a party to each of the date-location slots. Statements by the respected leadership of the three religions supported the idea and accepted that only a lay administration of the matrix process could lead to an eventual agreement.
There were conflicts, but SERESER used its judgment to complete the matrix. Some seemingly impossible impasses were solved by giving jurisdiction for alternating years. Others were resolved by the special lay committee for ongoing disputes. Once the master calendar-location matrix was filled in, it was made public for final commentary. With minor modifications, the final Jerusalem Matrix is still used today.
One factor that helped heal the region was the Arabic television series "Salaam-Shalom" about two girls-one Palestinian and one Israeli. They met in a peace camp and made a pact to counter the hatred in their communities. Although the Peace Child exchanges between Palestinians and Israelis included only a small number of teenagers, it did stimulate conversations on both sides that added to the belief that peace might be possible one day. The idea was approved by the hardliners' talks in Switzerland, which, it was rumored, even suggested several story ideas.
Each week the girls on the television show confronted seemingly impossible obstacles, and each week they overcame them with extraordinary compassion and intelligence. Television sets across the world showed how the girls used cell phones connected to the Internet to create mini swarms
Normative Forecasting 38 The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0 of sympathizers who ran to the area and overwhelmed an impasse. "Copycat" peace swarms began to appear in the real world. Young people armed with their "peace phones" started to call everyone in their areas to calm emotions at checkpoints and other areas of confrontation.
Almost immediately after the first few peace swarms, a Peace Phone Internet weblog and photo gallery was set up, opening a worldwide window on the process and creating a near- instantaneous "global fair witness" to the outcomes of each swarm. The "before" and "after" photos on the weblog, together with the weekly "Salaam-Shalom" television shows, added global pressure for more rational negotiations that finally drew the lines for peace.
Radio talk shows were alive with discussions about each TV program. The one most vigorously discussed had the girls creating a peace swarm to support Archbishop Tutu's suggestions on how to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As "Salaam-Shalom" was recognized as a successful television series, an adults' version followed that had politicians and other leaders challenged to solve more sophisticated problems of balancing peace and justice. Dismantling settlements in the West Bank nearly caused a civil war. The Wall took a longer time. Both transitions were helped by the active involvement of the media and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
With the evolution of democratic processes in the region and continued security guarantees from the United States, Israel surprised many in the Middle East when it ratified the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty as a gesture of long-term good will and allowed IAEA inspectors to verify their dismantling of nuclear weapons. These actions led even the skeptics to nod their heads and say that this time maybe it really would be a lasting peace.
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