As the global population grows to 9 billion people over the next two decades, will we be able to harness technology to produce enough food sustainably and have meaningful jobs for future generations while creating more inclusive and participatory economies? Will our future be one characterised by cooperation in solving daunting global challenges like climate change and openness in terms movement of goods and people, or will we live in a world where technological advance exacerbates inequality and exclusion?
There is an increasing temptation in the political discussion across the world to suggest that the way to manage these pressing issues of the present is to look to the past. While the return to an idealised past offers a strong simple narrative for the public, it is also a recipe for paralysis and regression. To avoid this temptation, we need to learn to manage from the future and instill into our discussions a strong narrative of progress that is rooted in an assessment of what is politically, economically and technologically achievable and at the same time socially desirable.
Three principles are fundamental to this approach: The first is to be proactive in facing long-term challenges. Most of today’s crises — from inequality to climate change — result from long-term trends that accumulated over time. We may have seen them coming, but often fail to overcome inertia and vested interests that prevent us from addressing them. Managing from the future means adopting an agile governance process that allows for swift action and meaningful participation.
Last year, when the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Councils met in Abu Dhabi, our council on Software and Society came out with a paper that argued governance should shift “to an outcome-oriented approach that can respond to changing dynamics. Implementing policy and executing on goals should evolve through incremental changes that are tested and measured for effectiveness as they are developed.” Like in software development, governments need to be able to act swiftly, iterate and learn in the policy process rather than being paralysed by the multitude of competing demands and interests.
The second principle is to embrace convergence. Most of our political institutions were built with the purpose of addressing single, isolated issues. The effects we are dealing with, however, don’t have a single cause that can be addressed in isolation. What’s more, these causes are increasingly converging to form new, unexpected phenomena. Think about the rise of food prices caused by the introduction of biofuel subsidies for example. This is even more the case now that we are entering the Fourth Industrial Revolution where an acceleration of this convergence is making the discrepancy with our capacity to govern even greater.
The answer, in the words of our Council on Global Governance, is an ‘all-of-society’ approach, formed of different partnerships across all number of different stakeholder groups. It sounds messy but it’s a necessity in our networked age. This is also why we at the Forum these days focus on public private partnerships in a series of interconnected systems, rather than individual technical solutions.
Which brings me to the third principle: long-term focus. Global warming, the productivity paradox, water insecurity — our greatest challenges are not going to be fixed overnight, or by one actor working alone. This means patience, which means teamwork: stakeholders working together that might not otherwise have done so. Our Council on values took on this challenge when they met in the UAE last year. They identified three values common to all cultures, religions and philosophies that could serve as benchmarks for this: “The dignity of the human person, whatever their race, gender, background or beliefs; the importance of a common good that transcends individual interests; and the need for stewardship of the planet.”
A proactive, systemic and long-term approach opens up so much more potential than problem solving alone. It creates a space for human agency to imagine radically different ways in which our societies, governments, corporations can work. It empowers us to understand and face the choices we need to make today in order to deliver on our collective aspirations for the future.
Against the reactionary reductionism we see in much of the political discourse today, we need a renewed sense of progressive holism: a capacity to shift the focus of our societies on co-creating the future we want to achieve. This is the aspiration for the newly created Network of Global Future Councils.
Stephan Mergenthaler is Head of Knowledge Networks and Analysis at the World Economic Forum
