The EXTRA Information Hub

The EXTRA Information Hub is a new initiative of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences (WAAS).

The World Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1960 by eminent intellectuals to provide a forum where pressing challenges could be discussed objectively for the common good of all humanity. It had faith in the power of new and creative ideas to change the world. Its mission is to promote cross disciplinary dialogue of original ideas and integrative perspectives that comprehend the root causes and remedies for our common problems. It believes that the world needs aspirational leadership that transcends the partisanship and limitation of self-interested political, economic and cultural perspectives.

EXTRA, Existential Threats and Risks to All, is a WAAS Working Group addressing the threats and risks to the survival of humanity. At the WAAS conference in July this year, it introduced the EXTRA Information Hub, a website providing a state of the art overview of the area. The carefully curated selection of short abstracts and links is made available in a Directory with several hundred entries, complemented by a summary of 10 key ideas and 20 notable reports, a listing of more than 80 relevant organisations, and occasional key analyses on pressing existential concerns. A regular eNewsletterwill present new additions to the Directory as well as keeping the website up to date with other current material. The point of the initiative was summed up by one of the speakers when he said, “Together as a species we don’t know where we’re at.” The importance of seeing the big picture was stressed, and an integrative world view was needed.

A presentation to London Futurists in September by two of the EXTRA team elaborated on all this. Thomas Reuter of the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne, stated that their definition of existential risk encompassed risks that threatened a substantial proportion of the human race, and that the EXTRA Information Hub was a space for people to share knowledge and insights. Ortwin Renn, former Scientific Director of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies at the Helmholtz Center in Potsdam, laid stress on the problem of “contagion and cascades”. One risk could impinge on another and lead to cascading effects. Interactions between risks could render probability assessments obsolete, and the probability of an individual event causing something outrageous had to be considered. Before a tipping point occurred, there might be no obvious sign that anything was seriously amiss, after it the whole system might collapse. There needed to be a better way of communicating complexity, better narratives. A common point of understanding, good interdisciplinary understanding, was required.

But how much difference would another ‘information clearing house’ make? The whole subject came to life in the Q and A session that followed the presentation, when the second question concerned how the speakers envisioned the InfoHub improving global decision-making in actuality.

Professor Reuter responded by saying that that changing global decision-making was a political issue. Bodies such as industrial lobbies, reactionary media and vested interests of one sort or another were powerful. The voice of science was not really heard: there was pressure to tone it down. The political system was not simply going to act on truth. Yet:

“There are also powerful actors, elites in government, in business and elsewhere, who are open-minded, who are interested, who want to do the right thing, and it's for these people that we provide the best available information in one spot, because they are all very, very busy people and we want to enable their decision making to become better, but we can't make people want to make good decisions. …

“There’s a lot to be said about social change and how it happens, and how political scenarios change through public pressure …

“There are many, many considerations that come into this, and I don’t think there’s a lot of that happening elsewhere. I don't know a lot of organisations in existential risks that really openly speak about political issues.”

London Futurists chairman and founder, David Wood, said that in his view unless we solved politics, all our other ambitions were likely to be dashed. The degradation of democracy was a key catastrophic risk.     

Professor Renn added that improved public participation would enable politicians to make very painful trade-offs which then needed to be implemented. Professor Reuter added that as an anthropologist, he had carried out a five-year study of how politicians actually operated and made decisions in practice. While some behaviour turned out to be shocking and ruthless, politicians were not a “monolithic block”. Decisions were made at multiple levels, and in his view, by and large, politicians were not different from the general public. Professor Renn continued that we needed to have a coalition of those who understood the challenges and wanted to progress society in a more benign way. This could be a counterweight to populism. He concluded that we needed to have:

“A coalition of those who are willing to serve society and who have the competence and the insights to learn.”

David Wood concluded that in his experience away from the cameras politicians were often surprisingly worried about things that publicly they would never admit. This underlined the need for the public landscape to be changed.

The present writer can only endorse this view: a better public debate is necessary to change the nexus between leaders and led. The EXTRA Information Hub is another step in the right direction. Anyone wishing to contribute should use the contact form to get in touch with the EXTRA working group.

Written by Tony Diggle, SAMI Associate. He writes in a personal capacity.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily of SAMI Consulting.

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