Dear Delegates,

Welcome to the Futuristic Security Council 2030. My name is Willow Latham and I am excited to be directing this committee at Harvard Model United Nations 2011, and I hope that you are also looking forward to working with your fellow delegates to confront tomorrow’s problems today.

I am a sophomore at Harvard College, with a concentration in Environmental Science and Public Policy and a possible secondary field in Government. I did Model UN only occasionally in high school, but I have rediscovered the joys of the committee at Harvard. I am a member of Harvard’s Intercollegiate Model UN team, where I have had the opportunity to enjoy and learn from other fine conferences on the MUN circuit. I have also staffed both of Harvard’s Model UN conferences last year, assistant directing for last year’s Futuristic Security Council.

Many may doubt the academic and intellectual value of a Futuristic Security Council, with rational basis. However, we have decided to create Security Council 2030 despite this because we firmly believe that looking to the future provides a uniquely suitable lens for thinking about the present. Rather than analyzing the decisions of the past or simulating those of the present, we encourage you to confront a world that has been shaped by events we see today. The year 2030 is also a time when you and I, our whole generation, could plausibly be major decision-makers in dealing with real crises. So, paradoxically, the Futuristic Security Council 2030 is in a way the most practical of committees.

We have done our best to make this year’s FSC as realistic as possible, drawing from international relations theory and current science to make predictions as to the structure and environment of the world of 2030. You will get the chance to experience the results of current crises: a world plagued by climate change refugees and natural disasters, and with a changing structure of power and alliances.

I look forward to meeting you at the conference. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me.

Regards,

Willow Latham
Director, Futuristic Security Council, 2030
Harvard National Model United Nations 2011

Topic Area: Open Agenda

Economic upheavals compete for media coverage with social unrest. Countries around the world grapple to deal with increasingly scarce natural resources. Climate change threatens to create some of the worst natural disasters the world has seen in centuries. Weapons of mass destruction make conventional warfare between the great powers all but obsolete, but wars still rage in the developing world. The threat of biological, chemical and nuclear weaponry is the subject of impassioned debate in governments worldwide.

Despite these threats, however, the world has, for the most part, ignored innovative solutions in deference to traditional means of problem solving. No effective resolutions for climate change have been passed or implemented. Nuclear arsenals still remain largely unprotected and incredibly vast, despite recent attempts to cut down on their size. Resources are diminishing at a rate that threatens many countries’ abilities to feed their populations.

Today, the world is already seeing the effects of this forbearance of innovation. Set twenty years into the future in the year 2030, the United Nations Security Council will sit in a world that is still reeling from the incredible triumphs and disasters of the next twenty years and one that, while still embracing a status quo mentality, has already begun to experience vast political, economic and environmental changes. With amendments to the structure of the UNSC, including the addition of three more permanent members and the end of veto power, the key world players are liable to change. With a European Union that is coalescing into a tight economic and political bloc, a China and India that have risen to the forefront of global power and a United States that is grappling to maintain its hold on international power, the seeds of 2030 are already planted even today.