Byline Asanga Abeyagoonasekera, Senior Fellow, The Millennium Project asangaaa@gmail.com

UN reform to make the international organization more future-oriented was assessed by 189 futurists and related international experts from 54 countries. They overwhelmingly endorsed and will support the five foresight elements of Our Common Agenda, as an integrated and interdependent system: the success of each one affects the success of all the others. The five elements are:

•             UN Futures Lab

•             UN Summit on the Future

•             UN Envoy for Future Generations

•             Periodic UN Strategic Foresight and Global Threats reports

•             Re-purposed UN Trusteeship Council as a Multi-Stakeholder Foresight Body

…Humanity faces a stark and urgent choice: a breakdown or a breakthrough,” says UN Secretary-General António Guterres.”  Our Common Agenda details how the UN can play its part in creating breakthroughs and preventing breakdowns. It is expected to be discussed at the UN General Assembly annual meeting next month.

If the five foresight elements in Our Common Agenda are implemented along the lines of our study, it could be the greatest advance for futures research and foresight in history,” says Jerome C. Glenn, CEO of The Millennium Project. 

The report: Five UN Foresight Elements of Our Common Agenda Results of a Real-Time Delphi Study is available at: 

https://millennium-project.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/UN-Foresight-Elements-report.pdf