A new common vision for Europe- what we can do with global futures?

EIN & Martens Center joint 'Food For Thought' Seminar

European Parliament, Brussels

1 February 2017

Dr. Angela Wilkinson

angelawilkinson@yahoo.com

A new “normal” – connected, complex, TUNA contextDeepening turbulence, at scale, presents novel governance challenges

10 years ago who would have predicted:

• Global financial crisis of 2008 (and slow recovery)

• Brexit referendum (and outcome)

• Incursion of ISIS into Iraq

• A sustained low oil price

• A “super-hot” Arctic winter

• A migration crisis in Europe

• The global success of Uber, AirBnB, Facebook

• The world’s first trillionaire

The global future matters to the future of Europe and isn’t what it used

to be!

Europe in a shifting global context – a megatrends type framework

Markets

Mother Nature

Moore’s Law

Global accelerations shaping the

future

1

2

3

Source: ’Thank you for being late’ – Thomas L. Friedman, 2016

Big KISS - Markets, Mother Nature, Moore’s Law

• Explosion of economic interdependency and global value chains

• Financial globalization - faster accumulation of wealth and new extremes in inequality

• Technological globalization – winner-takes-all dynamics of internet economy

• What will be traded in future?

• Global – climate change momentum is still increasing (Paris Agreement shaky)

• Local – increasing water stress, habitat destruction, species extinctions, ice-melt

• Transboundary - ocean acidification, shifting circulation patterns

• Getting ahead of connected challenges?

• Digitalization – Big Data, Internet of Things

• Multiple frontiers converging - robotics, nano-, bio-, AI, materials, genomics, synbio

• Can social, political and institutional innovations keep pace?

curve shows transistorcount doubling everytwo years

2,300

10,000

100,000

1,000,000

10,000,000

100,000,000

1,000,000,000

2,600,000,000

1971 1980 1990 2000 2011

Date of introduction

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RCA 1802

8085

8088

Z80

MOS 6502

6809

8086

80186

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Pentium

AMD K5

Pentium IIPentium III

AMD K6

AMD K6-IIIAMD K7

Pentium 4Barton

Atom

AMD K8

Itanium 2 CellCore 2 Duo

AMD K10Itanium 2 with 9MB cache

POWER6

Core i7 (Quad)Six-Core Opteron 2400

8-Core Xeon Nehalem-EXQuad-Core Itanium TukwilaQuad-core z1968-core POWER7

10-Core Xeon Westmere-EX

16-Core SPARC T3

Six-Core Core i7

Six-Core Xeon 7400

Dual-Core Itanium 2

AMD K10

Microprocessor Transistor Counts 1971-2011 & Moore's Law

Tra

nsis

tor

cou

nt

Markets Mother Nature Moore’s law1 2 3

Comprehensible vs. comprehensible – who decides and how?

Markets

Mother Nature

Moore’s Law

(re)Militarisation

(mass) Migrations

Global events, shifting demands and new actors

interacting

1

2

3

4

5

Motivations6

Source: ’Thank you for being late’ – Thomas L. Friedman, 2016

Migration, Militarisation, and Motivations….uncomfortable/less tangible….

• A rise of me-ism/instant gratification

• A shift from growth to well-living

• A new global vision – no one left behind; universal and multi-dimensional

• A redefining of progress - inclusive vs. exclusive, pragmatic vs. ideological

• Historic levels of flow – new waves in multiple world regions (not just into EU)

• More lone children and families

• Increasing pressures – conflict, economic, environmental

• Defence spending in Nato (Europe and Canada) has been increasing since 2012, with the sharpest rise in 2016

• IHS Jane’s forecasts spending in the Asia-Pacific region will climb 23 percent to $533 billion annually by 2020

MotivationsMigration (Re)Militarisation 64 5

Source: Author

A growing list of “connected challenges” facing Europe

• A declining and ageing population

• Prospects of lower global growth

• Increasing inequalities (within countries and intergen.)

• Return of populism

• Decreasing trust in EU institutions

• Declining geo-economic influence

• Immigration ‘crisis’

• Youth unemployment

• Regional instabilities and new security threats – ISIS, cyber security

• Big data vs. data monopolies and privacy issues

Foresight on this topic is fragmented and there is little consensus around possible scenarios and their implications

• Over 15+ studies

• 45+ different sets scenarios

A fragmented foresight landscape – more producers & products

8

3 Scenarios:

• Standstill in European Integration – ‘Nobody cares’

• Fragmented European Integration – ‘EU Under threat’

• Further European integration – ‘EU Renaissance’

• Europe will have to operate in a context of shifting wealth and power from west to east and north to south

• Between now and 2030, both the United States and Europe will increasingly have to pursue their goals in a world of diffused power

• The economic backdrop may complicate efforts to rejuvenate the European project over the coming generation

4 Scenarios:

• Muddling through the Crisis: the Eurozone remains a house without a protecting roof

• Break-up of the Eurozone.: the Euro house falls apart

• Core Europe: evolution of two-level integration with a smaller and stable, but exclusionary Euro house

• Completion of the Monetary Union by a fiscal and political union

Global Europe 2050, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities, 2012

Global trends 2030: Challenges and opportunities for Europe, Atlantic Council, 2013

Future Scenarios for the Eurozone, 15 Perspectives on the Euro Crisis, Scenario team Eurozone 2020, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, March 2013

Interest in and infancy of “global” and “inter-national” foresight

3 Scenarios:

• Islands

• Orbits

• Communities

• Europe is likely to remain a substantial

part of the global economy in 2045

• EU membership is likely to expand

• Europe is likely to face a range of security challenges

• Growing world population, ageing populations,

increasing migration pressures

• Centre of gravity of the world economy is

shifting east- and southwards, new emerging

state and non-state actors

• Digitalisation will drive economies and shape

the ways we work

New Lens

Scenarios, Shell

• Mountains

• Oceans

Global Trends,

National

Intelligence

Council, 2016

Strategic trends programme, Global

strategic trends – out to 2045, United

Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence

An OECD horizon scan of megatrends

and technology trends in the context of

future research policy, OECD, 2016

Global E-tailing 2025,

DHL

4 Scenarios

• Hybrid consumer

• Self presentation

• Artificial intelligence

• Collaborative

consumption

World Energy

Scenarios, World

Energy Council

3 Scenarios:

• Modern Jazz

• Unfinished

Symphony

• Hard Rock

Old order persists, new emerging order(s) and/or or global disorder?

Europa Myth and Curse of CasandraNot what experts think about the future but how “we” USE FUTURES to make movement

Foresaw the future but not

believed

Abducted but a happy ending

Who decides which trends/scenarios/disruptors need to be considered?

11

• Current economic, demographic and

military spending trends point to the

downsizing of the EU’s relative weight in

the international system by 2030

• The EU could become more a “super-

partner” than a superpower

• Future prosperity in Europe will depend on

the EU’s ability to become a technology

powerhouse

Empowering Europe’s

future: governance,

power and options for

the EU in a changing

world, Chatham House,

FRIDE, ESPAS, 2013

The future of

Europe, Chief

Investment

Office WM, UBS,

2016

The Future of

Europe, European

Issues n°402,

DGAP, Fondation

Robert Schuman,

2016

• Aging populations, longer life expectancy

and falling birth rates will dampen

Europe’s potential economic growth rate in

the coming decades

• Europe unlikely to fully leverage the huge

labor pools in its neighborhood

• EU set to lose position as world’s biggest

market by the next decade

• Populism is a giant growing in slow motion

• The weakening of the founding

narratives

• The economy is no longer necessarily

a unifying factor

• Rise of populism and the nationalist

far right

ESPAS – a good start on trends: how can we use and do even better?

ESPAS aims to strengthen the EU's collective administrative capacity for foresight:

• Seeks to identify the main global trends and to provide the decision- makers of the participating institutions with informed, up-to-date analysis of long-term policy challenges and options;

• Provides an inter-institutional system for identifying these trends, and to provide common analyses of probable outcomes on major issues for policy-makers;

• Promotes closer working cooperation between the services of the various EU institutions and bodies which are devoted to the analysis of these trends;

• Provides regular input to the EU institutions to nourish strategic thinking, including reaching out to academics, think tanks and other stake-holders to provide a broad perspective;

• Develops links with other countries and organisations undertaking global trends work, in order to benefit from their expertise, as well as providing its own expertise to other countries seeking to follow strategic trends and changes;

• Builds and maintains an open website and a ‘global repository’ for all relevant information to facilitate access to citizens, linking the site to other working websites on long-term trends across the globe.

Three Global Revolutions:

1. Economic and technological

revolution

• 15 years of lower growth

• Towards a society of

innovation

2. Social and democratic revolution

• Growing inequalities and lack

of trust in democracy

3. Geo-political revolution

• Decreasing political influence

of Europe

Global trends to 2030: Can the EU meet the challenges ahead?,

European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS), 2015

Engaging diverse communities of practice vs. dominance forecastingNot a simple change of tools, but mainstreaming a culture change

• Technological foresight

• Strategic foresight

• Scenario Planning

• Global/systemic risk

• Systems/services design

• Resilience – static/dynamic

• Transition management

• Social change labs

• ……….

Rethinking our theories of change

Chartres Cathedral Higgs Bozon Imaginal Cells A hack-athon!

Flourishing-in-Turbulence (FIT) governance implications“Futures FIT” not “Future-Proofed”

Static Resilience - problem solving Dynamic resilience - craftmanship

1. Stable equilibrium (shock = temporary)

2. Short term efficiency

3. Complexity reduction, taming uncertainty

4. Hierarchical structure

5. Exploitation and adaptation

6. Rational-adaptive planning

7. Dedicated units to buffer turbulence

Change likely to be highly path dependent,

equilibrium reinforcing. Inflexible in crisis.

1. Far from equilibrium (=multiple/open futures)

2. Long term reliability

3. Complexity absorption (requisite variety)

4. Real-time adaptability

5. Balance of exploration and exploitation

6. Emergent planning

7. Distributed buffering

Focus on process of continuous change through

hybridity, recombination and improvisation. Crisis

managed through informal structures.

Source: Ansell et al. (2016), Governance in Turbulent Times, OUP

Democratic institutions – using regional and global futures to create “our” new common future vision?

• Avoid top down blueprints and bottom up muddle through

• Keep the global future open and use it to forge new common ground

• Support my proposal for a Global Futures Commons Foundation• Hold national leaders accountable for the stories of the global future

they are telling/not considering

• Better prepare societies using multiple global futures• Engage and extend ESPAS role as an essential coordination and

engagement mechanism• Promote active exchange of global scenarios with others/other

regions• Move beyond discussing futures reports to strategic conversation and

interactive and collaborative strategizing

• Engage grassroots using the active pan-EU, change agents community

• imaginal cells are already in action (ask me about ICAN)

16

Thank you I would like to acknowledge the support of my colleagues at TGFG for the

review of European foresight included in this presentation