Earth4All

This project considers the interpenetration of criminal and lawful economic activities, with new technologies and unregulated terrains offering new opportunities for new types of interpenetration. We explore the possibility of differentiating, regulating, and controlling criminal and legal activities and markets, the level of control technically feasible and socially and economically desirable, among other relevant issues.  We analyse the following issues, among others: Is there a possibility of differentiating and controlling criminal and legal markets and economic activities? What level of control is technically feasible and (at the same time) socially and economically desirable?  To some extent is it possible to establish the lawful origins of funds used in every transaction?  The project is relevant for several reasons:Crimes have wide-ranging, major impacts on the economy, society and environment, when connected to lawful economic activities. Quite often these connections (“interpenetrations”) are not detected  - or not reported for various reasons.Economic hardship and crises are likely to reinforce the incentives for committing criminal economic activities.New technologies might offer new opportunities for new or “refined” criminal economic activities.Economic criminals are often innovative and enter unregulated terrains (e.g., some commons, metaverse, etc.).Lack of resources and skills to fight economic crime is a major hurdle.The project is one of eight foresight deep dives of the project 'European R&I foresight and public engagement for Horizon Europe' carried out by the Foresight on Demand consortium.

The project explores futures of science for policy; practices and processes by which information is exchanged between knowledge actors and policymakers with the intention to produce scientifically-informed policy in Europe. We are making a deep dive into developments which are currently underway and will take us to different possible 2030s, according to events largely unpredictable and decisions bound by a number of constraints of diverse nature. The project is one of eight foresight deep dives of the project 'European R&I foresight and public engagement for Horizon Europe' carried out by the Foresight on Demand consortium.

The project focuses geographically on Europe and looks toward 2050, on regimes of stewardship of land and sea and address the role of ownership, access and use rights in rural areas (cities excluded), multiple uses of spaces (both land and sea), biodiversity, food (both aquaculture, fisheries and agriculture), energy (use of renewables), raw materials (mining etc.), carbon removal and storage, adaptation to climate change. While the challenges are global, they are addressed especially from the European research and innovation policy perspective.   The immense social and technological evolution of the Anthropocene continues transforming the Earth’s surface and its dynamics through extensive (mis-)use of its resources, both on the land and in the sea. This policy brief develops scenarios on rural and marine areas in Europe in 2050 and subsequent implications to today’s R&I policy in Europe. Each scenario considers i) Economy and technology, ii) Demographics, lifestyles and values, iii) Governance and iv) Environment. In Scenario A, European Civic Ecovillages pursue self-sufficiency and contribute to establishing a cooperative, locally oriented, caring economy restoring the ecosystem carrying capacities in land and sea. In Scenario B on Sustainable High-tech Europe, European businesses enjoy global leadership in regenerative and multi-functional high-tech solutions for energy, aquaculture and agriculture. In Scenario C on the United States of Europe, centrally planned Europe is divided between intensive use of land and sea and large conservation areas. Scenario D on European Permacrisis portrays Europe in a post-growth and politically scattered context that leads to low rates of innovation and fragmented use of land and sea. None of the scenarios features a decisive solution to the global climate and biodiversity crises. Scenario A forcefully targets the resolution of the biodiversity crisis in Europe, by aligning human practices with nature, but provides little support to global climate and biodiversity crises. Scenario B proactively tackles the biodiversity crisis both in Europe and internationally but struggles with the fragmentation of efforts and with scaling up good practices and wider impact to curb the crisis. Scenarios C and D with intensive use of nature reduce biodiversity. Thanks to European-wide coordination Scenario C can protect vast areas with positive impacts to biodiversity, whereas Scenario D also struggles with the major fragmentation of conservation efforts and its detrimental impact on biodiversity. Such challenges illustrate the importance of balanced approaches in developing both local and global solutions to climate and biodiversity crises. All scenarios depict a future of rural and marine areas in the context of extreme weather events and ecological crises, all be it with different intensities. Social developments, instead, range from major social confrontations to more collaborative and inclusive practices. Their policy implications include, among others, the need to address major risks of patchy land use that hamper the sufficient size of ecosystems and diminish resilience. The scenarios also touch upon integrated spatial planning of urban, rural and marine areas, and how the effective use of spaces can benefit from the further extension of user rights. Future research could explore if and how land ownership models in some rural areas could be replaced or complemented with public ownership and user rights. Furthermore, policy implications include a need for balancing sustainability with food affordability and security in different modalities of agriculture and aquaculture. The challenges of climate and biodiversity crises addressed by the scenarios suggest that balanced approaches are needed in developing both local and global solutions. This brief is the result of one of eight Deep Dive Foresight Studies in the project ‘European R&I Foresight and Public Engagement for Horizon Europe’ conducted by the Foresight on Demand’ consortium for the European Commission. During the spring of 2023, an expert team identified factors of change and organised two scenario and one policy implications workshops also engaging experts from academia, business and public administration around Europe. The process was also supported by discussions in the Horizon Europe Foresight Network.

This deep dive is part of the European R&I foresight and public engagement for Horizon Europe project. A number of tendencies seem to conspire together to threaten societies with forms of social dysfunction and perhaps breakdown. Social cohesion and social capital have declined very substantially over the last generation or so. So too have levels of trust – not only in how much people feel they can trust others, but also public trust in government and in major institutions.  Many occupations command much less respect than they used to, including politicians, the media, the police, banks and big business.   At the same time democracy is increasingly threatened by factors such as growing political polarisation, caused not only by the increasing numbers of people who believe in conspiracy theories, but also by the growing importance of money in politics, by the growth of inequality and the rise of populism and the far right. To this mix will be added high levels of disruption caused by the development of AI and other new technologies. This expert group on social confrontations is intended to draw attention to issues which may give rise to disruptive social confrontations in the future within the EU – regardless of the parties involved.  Indeed, factors such as the political complexion of governments may change whether a dispute is between social movements and civic authorities, within governments and parliamentary assemblies, or between social groups. We have tried to identify the likely root causes of disruptive confrontations while acknowledging that most forms of confrontation are likely to be multi-causal. Four scenarios depict diverging paths how the development of social confrontations in the EU might shape our future society. From these scenarios we derived policy implications with a link to issues for research and innovation.