Long-Term Vision

Close your eyes for a second and think of something that happened over the last 20 years and you would have never expected to occur. Be it the pandemic, smart phones or something else, the truth is that the future likes to surprise us.
Our world is in a perpetual state of change. There are always multiple versions of the future—some are assumptions, others hopes and fears. To prepare, we have to consider not only the changes that appear most probable, but also the ones that we aren’t expecting.
Inspired by the ground-breaking 2001 Schooling for Tomorrow scenarios, this book provides a set of scenarios on the future of schooling, showing not a single path into the future, but many. Using these scenarios can help us identify the opportunities and challenges that these futures could hold for schooling and education more broadly. We can then use those ideas to help us better prepare and act now.
Whether parents or students, teachers or educational leaders, researchers or policy makers, this book has been written for all those who want to think about futures that haven’t occurred to play their part in shaping the future that will.

In this summary, Dr Franck Debié outlines his views of the key findings of the three ESPAS reports (2012, 2015, 2019) on long-term trends to 2030 for the Ideas Network 2030.

This paper presents long-run economic projections for 46 countries, extending the short-run projections of the Spring 2018 OECD Economic Outlook. It first sets out a baseline scenario under the assumption that countries do not carry out institutional and policy reforms. This scenario is then used as a reference point to illustrate the potential impact of structural reforms in alternative scenarios, including better governance and educational attainment in the large emerging-market economies and competition-friendly product market and labour market reforms in OECD economies. Flexibility-enhancing labour market reforms not only boost living standards but, by raising the employment rate, also help alleviate fiscal pressures associated with population ageing. Another scenario illustrates the potential positive impact of linking the pensionable age to life expectancy on the participation rate of older workers, and in particular that of women. Additional scenarios illustrate the potential economic gains from raising public investment and spending more on research and development. A final ‘negative’ scenario shows how slipping back on trade liberalisation – returning to 1990 average tariff rates – might depress standards of living everywhere.

Thinking about the future is vital but hard. Crises keep intruding, making it all but impossible to look beyond daily headlines to what lies over the horizon. In those circumstances, thinking “outside the box,” to use the cliché, too often loses out to keeping up with the inbox. That is why every four years the National Intelligence Council (NIC) undertakes a major assessment of the forces and choices shaping the world before us over the next two decades.
This version, the sixth in the series, is titled, “Global Trends: The Paradox of Progress,” and we are proud of it. It may look like a report, but it is really an invitation, an invitation to discuss, debate and inquire further about how the future could unfold. Certainly, we do not pretend to have the definitive “answer.”
Long-term thinking is critical to framing strategy. The Global Trends series pushes us to reexamine key assumptions, expectations, and uncertainties about the future. In a very messy and interconnected world, a longer perspective requires us to ask hard questions about which issues and choices will be most consequential in the decades ahead–even if they don’t necessarily generate the biggest headlines. A longer view also is essential because issues like terrorism, cyberattacks, biotechnology, and climate change invoke high stakes and will require sustained collaboration to address.

The Global Risks Report 2017 features perspectives from nearly 750 experts on the perceived impact and likelihood of 30 prevalent global risks as well as 13 underlying trends that could amplify them or alter the interconnections between them over a 10-year timeframe.
2016 saw a crystallization of political risks that have led to the election of populist leaders, a loss of faith in institutions and increased strain on international cooperation. We should not be surprised by this: for the past decade, the Global Risks Report has been drawing attention to persistent economic, social and political factors that have been shaping our risks landscape.
This year’s report will examine the five greatest priorities facing the world in 2017, their interconnections and the actions necessary to avoid their harshest fall-out.

In 2015, the European Commission invited key personalities from European industry, government, the European Parliament and academia to advise it on establishing a Preparatory Action on Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP)-related research.

The primary mission of this Group of Personalities was to help establish recommendations for a long-term vision for EU-funded CSDP-related research which can boost European defence cooperation. These recommendations address the overall scope and governance of future EU-funded CSDP research and highlight possible collaboration and coordination mechanisms. The overarching goal of the Preparatory Action and CSDP-related research is to create a framework that would facilitate a collaborative approach to defence among the member states.

This report is the result of several months of regular conversation and consultation among a group of experts encompassing the ‘sherpas’, officials from the European Commission and the EUISS.