There are many web sites related to global issues to be faced during the 21st century, especially within the UN systems. One of the most interesting is the Millennium Project on global futures studies and research. It functions under the auspices of the World Federation of United Nations Associations (WFUNA), an "independent, non-governmental organization with Category One Consultative Status at the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and consultative or liaison links with many other UN organizations and agencies." The following is a high level synopsis of the Millennium Project web site:

The Millennium Project World Federation of UN Associations The Millennium Project is sponsored by the World Federation of UN Associations (WFUNA). The WFUNA website states: "Inspired by the opening words of the United Nations Charter "We the Peoples", the World Federation of United Nations Associations was established in 1946 as a peoples’ movement for the United Nations." The State of the Future (SOF) is the flagship publication of the Millennium Project. Published annually since 1996, the 2007 SOF (recently published) is the eleventh edition. Each blue box in the rectangular logo (at the top of the front page) of the the Millennium Project web site is a link to a section of information content. This provides the experienced visitor with a convenient shortcut to the information of interest, but the first time visitor may get lost clicking on the links in random order. The best navigation path for the first time visitor might be to start with "What's New" and then proceed counterclockwise. For the numerically inclined, one of the most interesting sections is the State of the Future Index (SOFI). The 29 factors included are listed below. SOFI projections do not constitute formal statistical inference at a given confidence level. But, in exposing the rationale for the number crunching, useful insights emerge. Current Nodes: Argentina (Buenos Aires) Australasia (Melbourne) Azerjaijan (Baku) Belgium (Brussels) Brazil (Sao Paulo) Canada (Montreal) China (Beijing) Cyber-Collaboration Czech Rep (Prague) Egypt (Cairo) Finland (Helsinki) France (Paris) Germany (Berlin) Gulf Region (Kuwait) India (New Delhi) Iran (Tehran) Italy (Rome) Japan (Tokyo) Korea (Seoul) Mexico (Mexico City) Russia (Moscow) Slovenia (Bratislava) South Africa (Pretoria) Turkey (Istanbul) UK (London) Venezuela (Caracas) USA (Silicon Valley) USA (Washington DC)

According to the website home page, "the Millennium Project of WFUNA is a global participatory futures research think tank of futurists, scholars, business planners, and policy makers who work for international organizations, governments, corporations, NGOs, and universities .... The purpose of the Millennium Project is to be an international utility to assist in organizing futures research by continuously updating and improving humanity's thinking about the future and making that thinking available for feedback as a geographically and institutionally dispersed think tank."

The website serves as point of convergence for integrating an enormous amount of information, data, and insights that continuously emerge from a worldwide network of 27 research nodes, including the central node in Washington, DC. This array of resources is coordinated by Jerome C. Glenn, Director of the Millennium Project. A review of the resources available in the other 26 nodes dispels any notion about them being informal groups of flaky "futurists" with tennis shoes. The caliber of the node members (see their resumes and affiliations), and the research and educational activities undertaken each year, makes this one of the best "special forces" in the struggle to overcome the most critical global issues facing humanity.

Links to the sections where the content resides are provided at the top of the front page:

• What's NEW: 2007 State of the Future Report (SOF2007)
• Millennium Project Overview (in 8 languages)
• Planning Committee
• Sponsors and Affiliated Institutions
• Millennium Project Nodes (27)
• Futures [Information Collection] Matrix
• Global Challenges for Humanity
  1. How can sustainable development be achieved for all?
  2. How can everyone have sufficient clean water without conflict?
  3. How can population growth and resources be brought into balance?
  4. How can genuine democracy emerge from authoritarian regimes?
  5. How can policymaking be made more sensitive to global long-term perspectives?
  6. How can the global convergence of information and communications technologies work for everyone?
  7. How can ethical market economies be encouraged to help reduce the gap between rich and poor?
  8. How can the threat of new and reemerging diseases and immune micro-organisms be reduced?
  9. How can the capacity to decide be improved as the nature of work and institutions change?
  10. How can shared values and new security strategies reduce ethnic conflicts, terrorism, and the use of weapons of mass destruction?
  11. How can the changing status of women help improve the human condition?
  12. How can transnational organized crime networks be stopped from becoming more powerful and sophisticated global enterprises?
  13. How can growing energy demands be met safely and efficiently?
  14. How can scientific and technological breakthroughs be accelerated to improve the human condition?
  15. How can ethical considerations become more routinely incorporated into global decisions?
• State of the Future Index (SOFI). Factors included:
  1. Population lacking access to improved water sources (percent of population)
  2. Literacy rate, adult total (percent of people aged 15 and above)
  3. Levels of corruption (15 largest countries)
  4. School enrollment, secondary (percent gross)
  5. Poverty headcount ratio at $1 a day (PPP) (percent of population) (Low and Middle Income Countries)
  6. Countries having or thought to have plans for nuclear weapons (number)
  7. CO2 emissions (global, kt)
  8. Unemployment, total (percent of total labor force)
  9. GDP per unit of energy use (constant 2000 PPP $ per kg of oil equivalent)
  10. Number of major armed conflicts (number of deaths >1,000)
  11. Population growth (annual percent)
  12. R&D expenditures (percent of national budget)
  13. People killed or injured in terrorist attacks (number)
  14. Energy produced from non fission, non fossil sources (percent of total primary energy supply)
  15. Food availability (cal/cap)
  16. Population in countries that are free (percent of total global population)
  17. Global Surface Temperature Anomalies
  18. GDP per capita (constant 2000 US$)
  19. People voting in Elections (percent population of voting age)
  20. Physicians (per 1,000 people)( surrogate for Healthcare Workers)
  21. Internet users (per 1,000 pop)
  22. Infant mortality (deaths per 1,000 births)
  23. Forest Lands (percent of all land area)
  24. Life expectancy at birth (years)
  25. Women in parliaments (percent of all members)
  26. Number of Refugees (per 100,000 total population)
  27. Total debt service (percent of GNI) (Low and Mid Income Countries)
  28. Prevalence of HIV (percent of population)
  29. Homicides, intentional (per 100,000 population)
• Project Participants
• Internships Available
• Millennium Project public discussion group (listserv)
• About WFUNA
• Millennium Project Press Room
• Global Scenarios
• Global Lookout Studies
• Books and Reports

There are a number of additional links at the bottom of the front page. Most of them are redundant with the main navigation paths listed above. Others seem to be old and lead to pages that cannot be found. This may be a temporary result of the recent porting of the web site from the AC/UNU server to the WFUNA server.

By far the most informative and insightful content is the annual State of the Future (SOF) report, which has now been produced by a team directed by Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. Gordon for eleven consecutive years. The 2007 State of the Future (SOF2007) report has been published, and both the Executive Summary and the Table of Contents are free downloads. The full report comes with a CD and can be ordered for $49.95. This may exceed the budget of many scholars, which is unfortunate.

One of the most useful information gateways provided by this web site is the Futures Matrix, which provides links to information content relevant to several dimensions of the Global Challenges. On the other hand, since the WFUNA Millennium Project is fully supportive of the MDGs, it is surprising not to find a mapping between the 8 MDGs and the 15 Global Challenges. Figure 4 shows one possible way to build such a mapping. The rows are Global Challenges, the columns are MDGs. The marks in the cells could be links to knowledge content that is relevant to both the Global Challenges and the MDGs. But please note that Figure 4 is just a straw man, not a fully analyzed matrix with links to information sources.

A classical square matrix analysis (see Section 3) also could be done for the 15 Global Challenges. Figure 5 shows an example of precedence and partitioned matrices. Again it is noted that these are just straw man examples. The marks in the matrix are bogus. It is simply suggested here that the resulting roadmap of information content (links in the black diagonal cells) and information flows (links in the non-diagonal cells) might be useful for a future edition of the SOF. If the 15x15 matrix is sparse (recommended at the beginning of the analysis) there is a higher probability of obtaining either a triangular or block-triangular matrix, as shown in Figures 1 and 2 for the MDGs. If the 15x15 matrix is too dense, then the entire matrix may turn out to be a block. But, as noted in Figure 5, it still can be very useful to identify smaller nested blocks of GCs that share a lot of the same information. If the small blocks are resolved first, then the larger blocks becomes more amenable to analysis as a total system.