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The Millennium Project was designed during a three-year feasibility study to provide a global capacity for early warning and analysis of long-range issues, opportunities, and strategies. Approximately 200 futurists and scholars from 50 countries participated in the feasibility study which was funded by the US EPA, UNDP, and UNESCO.
The feasibility study had three phases. Phase 1 began in 1992 with funding from US EPA to identify and link futurists and scholars around the world to create the initial design of the Project and conduct a first test on population and environmental issues. In 1993-94, during Phase II, a series of reports were created on futures research methodology and long-range issues important to Africa, funded by UNDP. Phase III, conducted in 1994/95 under the auspices of the UNU/WIDER and funded by UNESCO through the AC/UNU, concluded with the final feasibility study report, which is available on the Internet at http://nko.org/millennium.
The study concluded that the purpose of the Project should be to assist in organizing futures research, up-date and improve global thinking about the future, and make that thinking available through a variety of media for consideration in public policy making, advanced training, public education, and feedback to create cumulative wisdom about potential futures. The work of the Millennium Project is being performed under the auspices of the American Council for the United Nations University in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution and The Futures Group. The project is not intended to be a one-time study of the future, but to provide an on-going capacity as a geographically and institutionally dispersed think tank.
The Project connects individuals and institutions (U.N. Organizations, governments, corporations, universities, research institutes, and NGOs) around the world to collaborate on research through a coordinating office. To optimize the Project's research resources of a relatively small staff, nodes of individuals and institutions have been created around the world to assume some regional or/or substantive responsibilities for the work of the Project.
1.2 Millennium Project Nodes
A node of the Millennium Project is a self-organizing group of individuals and institutions that take some geographic and/or content responsibilities for the work of the project. In this capacity, each node participates in the identification of evolving world issues and opportunities, studies their prospects and potential resolution, as well as deriving methods for accomplishing such research, and innovations in futures research and prospective.
Nodes currently exist in Beijing, Buenos Aires, Cairo, Lismore (Australia), London, Moscow, and Tunis; others are under discussion. These nodes have provided assistance by disseminating the Project's materials, recommending persons for the panels, translating, and conducting the Round 4 interviews with political and policy leaders in their regions.
Each node of the project:
Additionally, nodes may initiate their own futures research, methods
development, and advanced training with the results shared with the Project
as-a-whole, as they are produced. For example, a node might create scenarios
that are germane to their specific geographical orientation or priority
issues. These scenarios could be components of larger scenarios produced
by other nodes or in the Project's global scenarios. Similarly, if a node
produces a regional "state of the future" report, it could become a component
of another node's report or included in the Project's annual report.
Planning Committees, organized by the nodes, review their organization's
plans and research findings; two persons from AC/UNU Millennium Project
Coordinating Office participate as ex officio members of these committees.
Further, each node is responsible for the quality of its work, assuring
that the research is apolitical, and publishing the results to promote
public
awareness and discussion. More detailed background and plans of the
nodes can be accessed at: http://nko.org/millennium/nodes.html
1.3 Products
The Millennium Project's primary products include:
Planning Committee of the Millennium Project
1. Olugbenga Adesida, African Futures, UNDP, Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
2. Mohsen Bahrami, Amir Kabir Univ. of Technology and National Research Council of Iran, Tehran, Iran
3. Peter Bishop, Program for the Study of the Future, University of Houston, Clearlake, Texas, USA
4. George Cowan, Founder, Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
5. Francisco Dallmeier, Biodiversity, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., USA
6. James Dator, University of Hawaii, Hawaii, USA
7. Nadezhda Gaponenko, Dir. Future-Oriented S&T, Center for Sci. & Ind. Policy, Moscow, Russia
8. Jerome Glenn, Executive Director, American Council/U.N.University, Washington, D.C., USA
9. Michel Godet, Conservatoire d'Arts et Metiers, Paris, France
10. Horacio Godoy, Pres., INFODEC, Buenos Aires, Argentine
11. Theodore J. Gordon, Founder, The Futures Group, Vero Beach, Florida, USA
12. Hazel Henderson, Futurist, Author and Consultant, St. Augustine, Florida, USA
13. Hiro Komoda, Dentsu Institute of Human Studies, Tokyo, Japan
14. Neil Kotler, Office of the Provost, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., USA
15. Qin Linsheng, Director, Chinese Society of Future Studies, Beijing, P.R. of China
16. Bruce Lloyd, South Bank Polytechnic, London, U.K.
17. Pentti Malaska, President, World Futures Studies Federation, Turku, Finland
18. Eleonora Masini, Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, Italy
19. Shan Pu, Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, P.R. of China
20. David Rejeski, Office of Science & Technology Policy, the White House, Washington, D.C., USA
21. Saddig Salih, United Nations Economic Committee for Africa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
22. Mihaly Simai, World Institute of Economics, Budapest, Hungary
23. Robert Smith, President, The Futures Group, Washington, D.C., USA
24. Allen Tough, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
25. Hassan Wageih Hassan, Al Azhar University and Al Arham Press Institute, Cairo, Egypt
26. Rusong Wang, Director, Urban Systems Ecology, Chinese Acad. of Sciences, Beijing, P.R. of China
27. Norio Yamamoto, Counselor, Mitsubishi Research Institute, Tokyo. Japan
1996 Donor Representatives on the Planning Committee
Don Barns, Science Advisory Board, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA)
Kate Fish, Director, Public Policy, Monsanto Company
Michael Kaericher, Director of Corporate Economics and Strategic Issues,
Ford Motor Company
Peter Rzeszotarski, Army Environmental Policy Institute, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Hazel Henderson, Alan F. Kay and Hazel Henderson Foundation for Social Innovation, USA
Additional Donor Representatives in 1997
Vincent Serritella, Director, Planning, Quality, Communications, Motorola University
Stan Rosen, Director of Strategic Planning, Hughes Space Communications
Roger Rainbow, V.P. Global Business Environment, Shell International (Royal Dutch Shell)
Connie Tooman, Director Integrated Marketing, Pioneer Hi-Bred International
Some of these individuals also participated in the Global Look-Out study; and hence, they are also are included in the list of Millennium Project Participants in the appendix.
1.4 The First Year's Operations
The Millennium Project formally began with a meeting of the Planning Committee and Sponsors at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. on February 14, 1996. The purpose of the meeting was to draft the first year's plan. Financial support for the first year was provided by the Ford Motor Company, Monsanto Company, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Alan F. Kay and Hazel Henderson Foundation for Social Innovation, and the Army Environmental Policy Institute. A portion of the Project's methodology work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Russian Federation and computer support from the Maui High Performance Computer Center in Hawaii which provides the project's homepage on the Internet. The project's first book Frontiers of Futures Studies: A Handbook of Tools and Methods, published with funding from UNDP, is expected to be available shortly.
The techniques and methods used during the first year to generate this report included:
Global Look-Out Study
The first two rounds of the Global Look-Out study divide the collected developments into six domains:
The panel consisted of futurists, scholars, policy advisors, and others who engaged in a multi- round "Look-out" study of early signaling of opportunities, problems and policies. The initial 200 panelists were those who participated in the feasibility study. Others were added through literature searches, observations at conferences, and recommendations of others in the field, or professional organizations. The global look-out panelists received three rounds of questionnaires asking the participants to identify developments in their areas of experience, which suggested new issues or opportunities on the horizon. The Planning Committee tested the questionnaires and added to their content before the panel received it. The questionnaires were sent by e-mail, airmail, or fax. The names of the participating panelists and their institutions appear in the Appendix.
The first questionnaire (Round 1) asked the respondents to describe developments they saw as existent today in their areas of expertise, which could grow to global importance, but are not yet generally known outside their field, or misunderstood, and/or not being properly addressed. The criteria for identifying important developments included the number of people affected, and the severity, permanence, and immanence of the effect. The participants were also asked for literature references if any existed and the nature of the consequences flowing from these issues. Finally, the questionnaire asked for statements about reasonable goals for each suggested issue.
The second questionnaire was based on the responses to the first. It requested feedback on the newly suggested developments. The respondents were also asked to add to the list of developments and to suggest policies they thought might be effective and practical.
The third questionnaire grouped and synthesized the 182 developments of the first two rounds into a set of 15 high priority issues. These were defined in some detail and the respondents were asked to add plausible actions to address the issues and rate those actions suggested earlier. Additional actions were also collected.
The fourth round was a set of carefully designed interviews of policy makers worldwide selected by the staff and project nodes. The interviews were designed to collect judgments about the issues and actions rated in Round 3. Policy makers were asked what seemed likely to be effective, why, and what common threads seemed to connect them. These interviews were administered by ten Millennium Project participants in their language in about 20 countries. A sample interview was video taped and sent to these interviewers to demonstrate how to conduct the interview protocol, and thus improve commonality
among the interviews.
All of the questionnaires and the interview protocol are available on the Millennium Project Internet home page: http://nko.org/millennium. The results of these activities are also summarized in the following Section 2.
Global Scenarios
Using a systematic approach, explained in Section 3, a set of three scenarios was constructed in collaboration with The Futures Group to define self consistent but widely divergent images of future worlds. These scenarios are sketches rather than elaborate descriptions, but the technique used methods that broke new ground indicating the potential of this approach for later works by relating results of the Look-Out study and more conventional scenario construction process. Abstracts of the scenarios appear in Section 3 and the more complete scenarios are in the Appendix.
Scanning
In addition, a review of the literature was conducted to identify previously developed global scenarios that depict potential issues, opportunities, and policies. This work led to the Annotated Scenario Bibliography in the Appendix, augmenting the issues backgrounds in the Look-Out study, and identification of additional project participants.
This year's scanning work was an introduction to what might be possible in the future. Ideally, a scanning system would have the capability of identifying potential world issues and possible solutions based on logical inferences derived from a diverse panoply of on-line data. The system would be capable of operating continuously, searching automatically, and suggesting conclusions which result from the synthesis of ideas contained in the data bases. In this first year's work, we tested several search engines and meta-engines in tasks designed to identify new issues and provide detailed information about issues already identified. We were particularly interested in finding ways to limit the number of references returned to those that were most meaningful- that is - eliminating the "noise" from searches. The work is summarized in Section 4.
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