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Al-Ahram Weekly 22 - 28 April 1999 Issue No. 426 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 22 - 28 April 1999 Issue No. 426
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Special Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The 'Egypt 2020' project
By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed
Forecasting the future has always been a tricky business. The only available clues are facts related to either the present or the past which we assume can be extrapolated to reveal trends likely to emerge in future. This presupposes, however, that current trends will continue. But how to guarantee that the future does not carry surprises that no one is now in a position to predict?
The Cairo Bureau of the Third World Forum has just published the second in the series of papers it is putting out in connection with its project, 'Egypt 2020', which aims at casting light on Egypt's future in the twenty years to come. Presenting the paper as an 'invitation for more debate', the project's director, the noted scholar Dr Ismail Sabri Abdallah, explained that the options the paper puts forward -- incidentally, the product of a collective endeavour undertaken by experts in a wide range of disciplines -- are just preliminary options aimed at encouraging Egypt's scientific community and, more widely, all concerned citizens, to come forward with their own input.
The paper deals first with what could be described as 'preliminary conditions', or elements that a first, and necessarily incomplete, survey will reveal and which constitute initial building blocks. These are only temporary, and can be totally revised in the light of a subsequent, more thorough, analysis of Egyptian reality. Actually, the unfolding of the project is seen as a dynamic process in the course of which an ever better understanding of Egypt's societal characteristics can gradually take shape. However, this raises the question of whether we are trying to construct an image of what Egypt will be in the year 2020, or using that year in future as an arbitrary reference point to better comprehend what Egypt looks like at every given moment in the present. If so, we are entitled to ask why 2020 should be the date of reference.
The paper defines a 'scenario' as a package of 'preliminary conditions' which characterise society at a given moment, described by the paper as the moment of 'the lifting of the curtain'. Thus any given scenario includes three moments: that of its preliminary conditions, followed by the moment they unfold according to a given internal logic and, finally, the future picture of society at a pre-determined date -- in our case, the year 2020 (provided, of course, that no incident disrupts the scenario beforehand). But this too raises a question: is the 'scenario', at the moment of the lifting of the curtain, an accurate reflection of Egypt's realities, with all they can include in the way of random elements, inconsistencies, contradictions, incoherence, etc, or is it a local reproduction of an abstract paradigm that is shaped mainly by global and regional developments, and not the product of indigenous developments only?
The paper puts forward the five scenarios it considers most plausible: the business-as-usual scenario, the Islamic state innovative scenario, the neo-capitalist innovative scenario, the neo-socialist innovative scenario and the social solidarity popular scenario. Each of these is defined very specifically. Still, it is worth probing the dialectical relationship -- if any -- between Egypt's concrete societal reality and the abstract scenarios assumed to represent it. Which of the two factors constitutes the driving force, the ultimate element in shaping the future? Moreover, can this question be considered open to investigation if the inquiry is limited to Egypt alone, without including the changes in Egypt's environment, whether regional or global?
Actually, moving from the concrete to the abstract does not help detect scenarios not on the cards, which entail sudden mutations and qualitative changes. It is precisely those scenarios we should try to unearth and it is they which make the Forum's sophisticated machinery worthwhile. It might seem that the systematic sifting of all available information on society is not, in all cases, the most rewarding approach. It might be more useful on occasion to proceed from given assumptions and build up specific scenarios even if they are not perceived in the present as the most likely, and then consider how they fit into the overall picture. This last approach, however, will not be comprehensive -- or effective -- unless the changes taken into consideration are not only internal, but also regional and global.
Fundamental changes have occurred on the global scene with the shift in the world order from bipolarity to unipolarity, the upgrading of globalisation and the downgrading of state sovereignty. In this new context, growing credence is given to the assumption that all conflicts can -- and should -- be solved by peaceful (political) means. However, discrepancies between the developed and the backward parts of society are increasing worldwide, not the opposite. Even though global warfare at the summit of the world community is less likely in the post-Cold War era, violence has not disappeared and is, indeed, on the increase. And with double standards dominating world politics, scenarios of unpredictable future developments are bound to proliferate.
This is all the more true in an age marked by groundbreaking achievements in the fields of science and technology which are opening wholly new and totally uncharted avenues for humankind, whether beneficial or harmful. Thanks to the Information Revolution, future scenarios are bound to become yet more complex with the introduction of virtual reality. On the other hand, the Forum's paper has not considered the issue of growing water shortage at both the global and regional levels -- a crisis bound to have particularly serious repercussions on a region that has been battling desertification since time immemorial. Whatever the hopes pinned on a project like Toshka, Egypt cannot consider itself immunised against the looming threat of water scarcity.
