Websites to Watch for Future Challenges

FutureChallenges.org is already covering a bunch of very important topics, and there are many more to come. But we also know that there are lots of other interesting and credible sources that deal with future challenges, be it in a narrow or in a broader sense. Here is a small digest of websites that are worth reading.

Urban Future provides a peephole into the cities of tomorrow. For the first time in history more people are living in urban than in rural areas, and this trend is likely to continue. Tomorrow’s megacities will be a tremendous challenge concerning the supply with resources, environmental sustainability and a lot more. What will the cities of tomorrow look like?

Shaping Our Future has been set up by the newspaper The Australian in cooperation with IBM. It examines challenges and opportunities of the coming decades. In the course of a few weeks many Australian key thinkers have been interviewed about emerging trends. The website offers an Australian perspective but it is also interesting for those who are interested in future challenges in general.

The Millennium Project is an independent non-profit global futurist think-tank. Scholars, business planers and policy makers from all over the world contribute to the work of the Millennium Project. The project’s flagship publication is the annual “State of the Future.” The Project connects individuals and institutions around the world to collaborate on research to address global challenges. The website provides an extensive and fact-based overview of future global trends.

Living Climate Change is a website hosted by Ideo. It invites users to participate in generating ideas of what the world could look like in 20 or 30 years. How will climate change affect us, how will we adapt? There are already some interesting solutions and ideas presented.

The Global Economic Symposium aims to provide a new collaborative setting to analyze the world’s most important challenges, create shared visions of the future and formulate innovative strategies to achieve these visions. The Global Economic Symposium is action-oriented. Its central question is “What is to be done?”. It aims to formulate and review policy and business strategies for addressing global problems.

7 Billion Actions Recently the world population has reached 7 billion. A world of seven billion people poses tremendous challenges in terms of resources, environmental sustainability and other areas. 7 Billion Actions aims to raise awareness of the challenges and opportunities that arise from a world of 7 billion people. FutureChallenges is also focusing on demographic change, since it is a cross-cutting issue that intersects with many other trends that futurechallenges.org is dealing with.

Hot Cities is a landmark documentary (8 episodes) from the Rockefeller Foundation which has been aired on BBC. It explores the impact of climate change on urban areas. How does climate change affect urban water supply? How does it affect the food supply chain? What will be the costs of climate change? You will find answers to these and other questions in this exciting documentary.