There is no escaping the need to educate the public, who could in turn elect more global future-minded politicians. International responses to SARS, the September 11th attacks, and Iraq have increased global thinking, but their impacts seem short-lived and have not had the same impact on long-term thinking. Yet the completion of the Human Genome Project, management of the International Space Station, globalization of the news media and Internet, and the evolution of the WTO, NATO, and the EU-all relatively unthinkable just 25 years ago-are some of the factors that demonstrate acceleration, complexity, and globalization, which increase the need for global, long-term perspectives. Globalization increases our awareness that we are all part of the "great chain of being," which will increase our compassion and global long-term thinking.

Unfortunately, the daily complexities of politics and the need to manage current problems still leave little time to consider the bigger picture. Narrow, short-term thinking is reinforced in all sectors of society. Corporate stockholders want quick profits, forcing corporate leaders to focus on actions that can improve the next quarter's profits; government leaders give priority to immediate issues to keep in power; NGO leaders who may look at the longer term often tend to do so only from the perspective of a single issue; leaders of international organizations also tend to focus on one issue and can be overwhelmed by the difficulty of addressing multiple issues on a global basis; and news executives are driven by daily deadlines and the need to keep people's attention by emphasizing the drama of the moment. As a result, decisionmakers feel little pressure to consider global long-term perspectives. Nevertheless, long-range goals like landing on the moon or eradicating smallpox that were considered impossible did excite many people who went beyond selfish, short-term interests to great achievements. An international assessment of such goals is found in Chapter 7 on the CD accompanying the 2004 State of the Future. 

 

Countries should establish standing parliamentary "Committees for the Future," as Finland has done, and governments should establish structured interactions among their departments with more coherent, high-level guidance and coordination, while providing executive information management systems and dashboard software the reinforces global long-range thinking. We need a global institution to coordinate global long-range strategic foresight. In addition to annual allocations, government budgets should have some 5-10 year allocations attached to rolling 5-10 year scenarios and strategies.

Each of the 15 Global Challenges in this chapter and the eight UN Millennium Development Goals could be the basis for a different transinstitutional or international coalition composed of the governments, corporations, NGOs, universities, and international organizations that are willing to commit the resources and talent to address a specific goal. Since the annual calculation of the global State of the Future Index (treated in Chapter 3 of the 2004 State of the Future) is based on indicators that relate to progress on global challenges, a 10-year forecast could imply that decisionmaking is increasingly taking global long-term perspectives into account. If national SOFIs were constructed and used in policymaking, then in order to make the index rise decisionmakers would have to pursue policies that address the longer term. Incentives need to be created to use SOFI, such as a criteria in World Bank loans or as the basis international awards to recognize the best efforts for global long-term decisionmaking. Maybe politicians' pensions should be dependent on their nation's GDP or SOFI.

We also need to create participatory processes informed by futures research, increase training and education courses in futures thinking, convert futures research methods into teaching methods to future-orient instruction, and organize data for easier use in foresight and policy analysis. Decisionmakers should be trained in futures research methods and required to communicate the longer-term implications of their decisions. This could lead to the use of futures methods in all forms of policymaking to develop, communicate, and revise future visions interactively among all sectors of society.

As the world becomes too complex to manage by nation-state hierarchies alone, new systems will emerge to better manage global long-term decisionmaking. National and international awards and recognition could be given to highlight global long-term consistent achievements (e.g., Nobel Peace Prize, MacArthur Fellowship, UN medals, and specific country awards). In addition to educating government, NGO, and corporate leaders, it is essential to empower and train local leaders and to encourage the movement toward identifying local issues with international counterparts.

 

Africa: Nigeria announced plans to have most government services available online by 2008. Although UNDP/African Futures produced Africa 2025 scenarios that have contributed to long-range thinking among governments, the project was closed last year; its mission was to work with African governments to incorporate long-term perspectives into their mid- and short-term planning. Since the early 1980s, when some African countries had to launch structural adjustment programs, the issue of orienting policymaking toward a global long-term perspective has continually been raised.

 

Asia and Oceania: China is just beginning to emerge as a global long-range decisionmaker in the international arena. There is a tendency for Japanese people to think Japan is so different that they have difficulty thinking about global issues, but Japanese corporations and the Keidanren are famous for long-term planning. South Korea is a world leader in broadband penetration due it its global long-range planning.

 

Europe: The debate about the contents of EU's constitution is also a debate about long-term perspectives. International diplomats and negotiators struggle each day to reach agreements that reflect long-term and global thinking. New ideologies are likely to evolve as a result of criticism of uncurbed capitalism and various forms of authoritarian regimes. European implications of aging populations for public finances and health systems, restructuring of energy systems, transport problems, sustainable development issues, and major geopolitical shifts such as the emergence of China are forcing global long-term thinking. The EU has increased funding for futures research.

 

Latin America: UN conferences on global issues and education exchange programs help sensitize government officials. Recent and pending political changes in the region may force longer-range thinking. A new generation of leaders is emerging, which is opening the door to more long-term global perspectives.

 

North America: As a technologically dynamic society, the United States bears a special responsibility for systems analysis, futures research, and technological forecasting and assessment. To improve acceptance of the long-term perspective, it would be useful to develop a collection of high impact cases in which foresight led to demonstrable benefits or lack of futures thinking proved costly. (See the 2004 State of the Future CD's Chapter 10 for an initial study on this suggestion.) Recognition of future-oriented studies as a responsible scholarly field of study and inclusion of its study in educational curricula should eventually translate into decisionmaking that takes global long-term perspectives into account.