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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 October 1999 Issue No. 450 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 October 1999 Issue No. 450
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Interview Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters A better world, or a brave new world
By Federico Mayor and Jerome Bindé *As we inch closer to the year 2000, our global future seems increasingly difficult to decipher. Can humanity survive the 21st century? We can't predict the future, but we can prepare for it. However, are we ready for the 21st century? It is because we have our doubts about this that we decided to provide the international community with an instrument of observation: a future-oriented world report entitled The World Ahead: Our Future in the Making. Our idea was to attempt to answer a few simple questions. For example, are we really threatened by a demographic time bomb? Will there be enough to eat for everyone? Will it be possible to eradicate poverty? Are we heading for widespread urban and social apartheid, which would relegate democracy to the museum of history? Will women find their rightful place? Other questions include: how are we to fight global warming and desertification? Will wars be waged for water? Will we succeed in harnessing solar and renewable energy sources? Will new technologies create a widening gap between rich and poor? Or will they perhaps enable distance-learning to develop? Will 50 or even 90 per cent of languages become extinct by 2100? Will there be an African miracle? How are we to move from a culture of violence toward a culture of peace? Will the 21st century have a human aspect, or the more grim attire of a "brave new world"?
At the dawn of the 21st century, four unprecedented challenges await us. The first is peace. The Cold War is over, but the present peace remains "hot". Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, some 30 wars, mostly intra-state, have ravaged vast areas of the globe. The illusions of perpetual peace and the end of history have vanished. Second challenge: will this century witness the development of an unparalleled degree of poverty alongside unprecedented wealth? Today, more than half of humanity lives in poverty, on less than $2 a day. The share of the income of the wealthiest 20 per cent compared to that of the poorest 20 per cent of world population has risen from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 61 to 1 in 1991 and 81 to 1 in 1995. The "one fifth" society is thus consolidated.
Third major challenge: sustainable development. Three planets earth would be necessary for the whole of the world population to reach North American consumption levels. Will our development models not irremediably compromise the development of future generations? Who will teach us to "master mastery"? Fourth challenge: the "drunken boat" syndrome. As a result of globalisation, most problems do not stop at border posts and now call for worldwide solutions. Do we have a long-term plan? We may well ask. Many states appear to have mislaid their maps, piloting equipment and even the will to set themselves goals. Has history fallen into the hands of "anonymous masters"?
As Einstein said, "in moments of crisis, only imagination is more valuable than knowledge". That is why we must rebuild a planetary society if we wish to humanise globalisation and give it a real meaning. Four contracts should form the pillars of new international democracy.
First of all, we must conclude a new social contract. Priority must be given to rebuilding a sharing society through the eradication of poverty, in line with the commitment made by governments at the Copenhagen Summit on Social Development. We must harness the third industrial revolution and redistribute the dividends of globalisation. The second contract is the natural contract, founded on an alliance between science, development and environmental preservation. Beyond the social contract, negotiated between contemporaries, we must conclude a natural contract of sustainable development and codevelopment with the earth. Science must be freed from its Promethean complex of dominating nature.
The third contract: the cultural contract. Lifelong education for all should be a top priority for governments and for society: each citizen, like Socrates, should never stop learning and learning to learn. The already rampant school and university apartheid will have to be reversed and education rebuilt as a citizen's project. The revolution in new technologies constitutes a fundamental challenge but also a decisive tool at the heart of the cultural contract. We shall have to convert the information society into a knowledge society, in places where telephones are still a luxury. By 2020, will distance learning turn educational institutions into virtual worlds? Will electronic education include the excluded and reach the "untouchables" of knowledge? Will we be wise enough to draw up a cultural contract encouraging cultural plurality and conviviality rather than promoting cultural conformity?
The fourth contract: the ethical contract. How can we encourage the growth of a culture of peace and intelligent development, which, instead of crushing human beings, would be synonymous with growth based on knowledge and on the networking of knowledge and of competence? Can we give democracy a firmer hold in time and in space, by promoting this anticipatory and forward-looking concept of citizenship and by inventing a democracy which, like the market, has no borders in either space or time?
But this new ethical contract cannot be concluded without sharing. In order to bring the benefits of globalisation to everyone, as called for by the G-8 members, the dividends of peace should be used to abolish the debt of the largest number of heavily indebted states from 2000 onwards, in order to enable Africa and other parts of the world to make a new start. Lastly, there is the vast field of the ethics of the future. How can we reinstate the long term and free ourselves from the hegemony of the short term? How can we strengthen our ability to anticipate and foresee? A political leader must not only have clean hands, he must also have clear eyes. How can we introduce into our children's education, and that of future leaders, an ethics of the future conceived as an ethics of the present for the future?
We have solutions to the problems of the 21st century, and we know how to implement them, provided that political will is exercised. Will the cost be too high? We think not. Let us remember that global military spending amounts to $700-$800 billion per annum, and considerable savings could be made by reducing this unproductive expenditure, by improving the productivity of public services, abolishing a number of ineffective subsidies and fighting positively against corruption. Let us remember that the United Nations estimates at only $40 billion per annum the cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education, adequate nutrition, drinking water and elementary sanitary infrastructures, as well as gynaecological and obstetric care for women. This sum represents less than four per cent of the total wealth of the world's 225 largest fortunes. On the one hand, $40 billion are denied needy countries while, on the other hand, $700 to $800 billion are spent each year on defence. Are there two sets of rules? Is the price of peace, development and democracy too high? "Expect nothing from the 21st century," said Gabriel Garcia Marquez. "It is the 21st century which expects everything from you."
* The writers are the director general of UNESCO and the director of UNESCO's Analysis and Forecasting Office.
