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Applied Futures Big rise in interest needed to improve Oz futures
Applied Futures Big rise in interest needed to improve Oz futures | Big rise in interest needed to improve Oz futures |
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| Written by Jan Lee Martin | |
| Tuesday, 14 November 2006 | |
 Australia will lose countless opportunities for more productive, healthy and harmonious futures unless it begins to show more interest in exploring the future, says Dr Paul Wildman, chairman of the Australasian node of the worldwide Millennium Project. He was launching the Project’s 2006 State of the Future Report (www.stateofthefuture.org) for the Futures Foundation, which hosts the project in Australia.
For example, Dr Wildman quoted a number of missed opportunities to address the water crisis in south east Queensland since the annual State of the Future Report began highlighting water as a critical global issue ten years ago. “Even after the water crisis had been recognised and publicised internationally, construction of new dams was cancelled, tanks were declared in breach of local bylaws, and single use water systems were entrenched,” he told his audience in Brisbane. “The end user – that is, us – ends up having to deal with the problem, yet globally households account for less than 20 per cent of water use. Meanwhile governments decline Freedom of Information calls for public disclosure of principal water users and causes of water waste through broken mains etc. “Dealing with the problem through ‘water police bureaucracy’ won’t fix it either. We need proactivity, which is very difficult in democracies. That’s why the State of the Future report is aimed at decision-makers rather than politicians, bureaucrats or academics,” he said. The Millennium Project is a unique global thinktank auspiced by the American Council for the United Nations University in Washington. Its 2006 State of the Future Report has 125 pages of print and another 5,400 pages in CD format which includes all the research behind the print edition, plus an annotated bibliography of 650 possible future scenarios. In summary, it lists 15 major challenges facing humanity and opportunities to address those issues (see panel). According to Dr Wildman, it “distils the collective intelligence” of more than 2,000 leading scientists, futurists, scholars and policy advisers who work for governments, corporations, non-government organizations, universities and international organizations. Copies of the Report, including the CD, are available from the Futures Foundation for $75, ($50 for members). Requests should be emailed to Charles Brass at cab@fowf.com.au. |
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 15 November 2006 ) |
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