 
Home
Presentation
Program
Speakers
Partners
Venues
Cultural Events
Practical
info
Committee
Contact
Miami
2002
Home
History
Press
Reviews
Newsletter
Civil
Society
 Directory
Contributions
TA
Incorrect
Forum
Contact
|
| Summary
1.
Seminar "Middle East 2020 - Shaping up alternative
visions" (Miami 2004)
- Coordination committee
2. Rationale
3. Example of what a common dream may be
4. Europe 2020 Anticipation Method - Description & Specific
examples
5. Project Timing - a three year framework
6. Top Links on Middle East organizations, associations,
actions, programs … |
|
|
1. Seminar "Middle East 2020 - Shaping
up alternative visions" (April 27th, 2004)
Coordination
Committe :
|
Top
|
2. Rationale
Essentially
the first idea of this concept is to start from tomorrow to
come down to today; rather than doing the contrary as did
all the current and past peace building attemps in the region.
Simultaneously, the second idea is to identify stakeholders,
not only Israeli-Palestinian civil societies, but Middle East
civil societies, European and American ones.
Both core ideas are pretty new to the topic. Knowing that
till now all other attemps have failed we think that it is
time to dare options that may look like a bit irrealistic.
Though
this approach is based upon very realistic assumptions:
1. One needs a common dream of the future to build peace.
One only needs memories to keep on fighting wars.
2. The European Union was made possible because of these
two kind of constraints: thinking of a common positive future,
outside pressures from USA and USSR to prevent continuation
of intra-European wars which were leading to world wars.
Analogy
stops there, as of course each situation is particular. The
end result of the Middle East 2020 project should be a a product
(text, image, ..) targeting the 15/35 years old all around
the Middle East. Not something for experts. Experts don't
dream! -) With internet and a large group of partnerships
with civil society operators (universities, ngos, schools,
medias, local authorities, companies, ...), we should be able
by 2005 (end of the project) to direclty reach out hundreds
of thousands of young people in the region, as well as in
Europe and the US.
Europeans
and Americans are both needed too because as situation is
today they offer two entries in the region which are complementary.
Even if it is not a positive thing, the fact is that the US
appears more and more as Israel's sponsor, while the EU looks
like Palestinian's sponsor. We have to use this situation
for the better and get access to the two communities ... with
the same project.
As
TIESWeb is the only existing large scale network between
Europe and US civil societies, we have the opportunity to
try to build such an initiative. |
Top
|
3. Example of what a common dream maybe
'Press
Release: Amman - January 1st 2020 - Creation of MEFTA (Middle
East Free Trade Area)
Today
marks the implementation of the Middle East Free Trade Area
(MEFTA) negotiated two years ago in Beirut at the Middle East
Free Trade Summit. Ratified by Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine,
Egypt, Syria and Iraq, it will gather around 180 million people
(and almost 250 million more if we include the associate countries
like Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Iran, which have signed specific
trade agreements). MEFTA headquarter has opened its new building
in Amman where 500 civil servants from all participating countries
will progressively move in.
MEFTA represents a milestone in moving toward Middle East
regional integration after long years of discussion. Indeed,
previous years have seen numerous concrete steps in that direction:
•
the free circulation of goods and people through bilateral
agreements involving Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine
and Egypt;
• the creation of the Middle East Water Community
(MEWACO) between Turkey to Egypt with its managing office
based in Beirut;
• the HAYTHAM Programme in which 50,000 science and
technology students from Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Palestine,
Egypt, and Iraq study in one of the other countries. Special
agreements in the field of diploma recognition are being
negotiated between HAYTHAM and existing European and North
American higher education programmes.
• the Middle East Data Transmission System, opening
next year, allowing connections between universities, research
centres, governments and companies across the region at
speeds up to 5 terabits of data per second. It will also
enable interconnection with other world fast networks and
will coincide with the completion of the second branch of
the Middle East High Speed Train Network, linking Baghdad
to Tel Aviv via the existing Beirut-Cairo line.
• the first major industrial hydrogen plant, MIDROGEN,
opening in 2025 in Israel. It goal is to provide a hydrogen
fuel supply for the entire Middle East through support by
the "EuroDollars Project" funded by Arab Gulf
States as well as by members of MEFTA.
Visions for a Peaceful and Prosperous Middle East
in 2020
Join
the Middle East 2020 Project to help in the transformation
of the region through peaceful, citizen-initiated action.
The Middle East 2020 Project is targeting individuals, associations,
foundations, and universities in the United States, European
Union, and Middle East who share the conviction that it is
time for citizens to contribute to the peace process.
Starting on January 1st 2003 and lasting for 3 years, the
Middle East 2020 Project will try to lay the groundwork for
the future of the Middle East that operates outside official
governmental channels. The project seeks to answer two questions:
- What could a peaceful and prosperous Middle East in 2020
look like?
- What do we need to go from now to then?
To
build a common future, people need a common dream. It is this
dream we are hoping to define !
Post-liminary
Remarks
When everything has failed, only imagination can succeed.
Prior attempts never involved the citizen level as the force
promoting change in the Middle East. While exporting expertise
in building democratic and open societies is less profitable
in the short term but much more profitable on the longer term
than arm deals. |
Top
|
4. Europe 2020 Anticipation Method - description
& specific examples
"
To anticipate is to foresee in order to act "
" To anticipate is not to foretell the future, but to
foresee the problems "
" The worst is less probable if it has been envisaged
"
The specificity (and hopefully key to success) of the Middle-East
2020 project lies in the fact that it aims at adapting Europe
2020’s efficiency-proven “method of anticipation”
to the specific case of the Middle-East.
But what’s so special about the method of anticipation
?
Since its creation in 1999, Europe 2020 draws the specificity
and on the various experiences relative to the Prometheus-Europe
network.
This new approach of forward thinking aims at meeting the
increasing requirements of our more and more complex societies:
anticipating the problems to try and prevent them. Indeed,
today, once they are there, problems often become unsolvable
due to the multiple interactions and side-effects that are
difficult to foresee. The situation reached in the Middle-East
is particularly expressive in the matter.
Beyond literary or movie references, anticipation is taken
here as the capacity to evaluate tomorrow in order to define
what is to be done today. It is a help-tool to decision-making
and not a vain intellectual speculation on the future. It
appears more and more as a key requirement for decision-making
in the 21st century and a great field of research.
Fed on the one hand by economic and scientific models designed
to understand the rapid developments of complex systems and
their consequences, and on the other hand by the best-of social,
political, cultural or technical visions of Science-Fiction
literature, anticipation still severely lacks efficient tools
and methodology to serve decision-makers.
However, even the simple citizen today regularly experiences
this fundamental phenomenon that considerably reinforces the
need to anticipate in decision-making: the " time paradigm
" or the increasing weight of the future factor on present
decision-making, as opposed to the previous centuries when
the past was the key factor weighing on the present.
A simple decision such as buying a Personal Computer exemplifies
this increasing weight of the future (is it not better to
wait 6 more months to get better and cheaper?); the terrible
constraints related to pollution issues are another example.
This characteristic of the increasing complexity of modern
societies forces each of us to become aware that our relation
to time has considerably changes in a bit more than a generation,
and that today the present is strongly determined by the future
(environment, technology, social systems…), resulting
in the increasing importance to give to the future; and to
recognize that innovation or future trends are more often
out of reach of the current experts and analysis tools and
that new approaches involving new operators and combining
them in new ways, should be explored: all these fundamental
hypotheses preside to the thinking of Europe 2020.
History imposes to think the unthinkable, to imagine what
could seem incongruous or "politically incorrect".
It requires to imagine the ruptures, the trend reversals,
not necessarily because they " will " be tomorrow's
reality but because they "could" be, and because
the mere possibility of their happening is not a risk to take.
This possibility, as scarce as it may be, in a highly dense
and interconnected world, compels us to examine the scenarios
to understand how they could chain together and what could
be their first signs.
The future in under our eyes; but our eyes are not enough
exercised to identify heavy trends, used as they are to contemplate
the present or the past.
After 4 years of seminars, conferences, debates using this
method to the purpose of identifying future-bearer track for
Europe in the 21st century, Europe 2020 has been able to publish
a synthesis which gives a good idea of what can come out of
a systematic use of anticipation : Project
Vision 2020 - Reinventing Europe 2005-2020.
Europe 2020 has recently launched a new work-field again based
on the application of this method to EU’s external policy
region by region : the
GlobalEurope 2020 series of 7 anticipation seminars. |
Top
|
5. Project Timing - a three year framework
The
project is divided into five phases:
Phase
1: January 2003 - March 2004: Building a network
of partners who register online here.
Phase 2: April-October, 2004: Identifying
4 to 10 "Middle East 2020 Scenarios" about possible
alternative visions for the region in 2020.
Phase 3: November-December, 2004: Selecting
two of the scenarios to constitute the projects to be implemented.
Phase 4: January-June, 2005: Finalizing the
scenarios through input from official and citizen-based organizations.
Phase 5: July-December, 2005: Publicizing
the scenarios in the EU and the USA through a massive communication
process. |
Top
Top
|
|
