Message from Ms Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, on the occasion of World Futures

教科文组织总干事奥德蕾·阿祖莱世界未来日致辞

Day2 December 2022

2022年12月2日

When, last November, the Member States of UNESCO adopted a resolution to establish World Futures Day, they were underscoring the importance of imagining and anticipating what the future could look like in order to build more inclusive and more balanced societies together.

教科文组织总干事奥德蕾·阿祖莱世界未来日致辞2022年12月2日教科文组织会员国在去年11月通过设立“世界未来日”的决定，希望强调为了共同建设更加包容与平衡的社会，如何想象和展望未来至关重要。

We are living in increasingly complex times marked by profound existential changes. And we have often been late in coming to grips with them.

我们生活在一个日益复杂的时代，充满着存在意义上的深重动荡，而我们对这些变局的把握却往往姗姗来迟。

In order to avoid succumbing to a bleak future we must re-examine how we think about the present, unleashing the power of our imagination so that we can seize every opportunity available to us. Futures literacy is entirely in keeping with UNESCO’s role as the United Nations’ laboratory of ideas. Opening our minds and thinking about tomorrow – and both the risk and the promise which come with it – are exactly what the Organization’s futures literacy programme is all about.

为了不受制于这样的未来，有必要重新审视我们对当下的思考方式，解放我们的想象力，以把握出现在我们面前的所有可能性。开拓视野，思考未来，包括其风险和前景在内，这正是教科文组织所开展的未来学素养计划的意义所在，而该计划完全契合教科文组织作为联合国思想实验室的作用和使命。

With futures literacy we are fostering an approach which can serve as a powerful tool for innovation and transformation; we are encouraging a perspective on the future which is rooted in humanity’s diversity of knowledge, humanity’s diverse cultures and humanity’s diverse worldviews. We are working steadily throughout the world, organizing more than 100 workshops – or “laboratories” - and collaborating with the researchers who are part of the 37 UNESCO Chairs which help to develop and spread this approach.

通过提倡未来学素养，我们旨在推动采用一种方法并获得一种技能，由此掌握一种可以促进创新和变革的有力工具，即：将自己投射到未来，并植根于知识、文化和世界观的多样性。这是我们在世界各地开展的一项不断深入的工作，为此我们组织了100多个讲习班（在教科文组织我们称之为“实验室”），并与助力拓展和推进这一方法的教科文组织37个大学教席的研究人员开展合作。

We are shaking up – “freeing”, if you will – the future in pursuit of a prime objective: a more effective response to the great challenges of our time.

通过以这种方式解放未来、撼动未来，我们正在追求一个基本目标：更有效地应对我们时代的挑战。

Thinking about the future this way allows us to take anticipatory action with greater clarity. This was the case, for example, in 1997, when we adopted the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights, or in 2021, when we adopted the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. Most recently, September’s Transforming Education Summit, held in New York and based on a Futures of Education report, served as yet another example of such far-sighted action.

如此走近未来，可以让我们做到未雨绸缪，正如1997年我们通过《世界人类基因组与人权宣言》以及新近通过《人工智能伦理问题建议书》所做的那样。也正如我们刚刚通过9月在纽约举办的教育变革峰会所做的那样，该峰会的筹备恰恰得益于一份关于“教育的未来”的报告。

As Canadian novelist Steven Erikson has written, “the future can ever promise but one thing and one thing only: surprises”. We, however, can see to it that these surprises are not unpleasant ones. Thus, to inaugurate World Futures Day, UNESCO calls on all its Member States and all the world’s societies to use their imagination, to explore the possibilities, and so to “free” the present.

加拿大小说家史蒂芬·埃里克森曾经写道：“未来只承诺一件事，而且只有一件事：意外”。但我们可以努力做到不让这些意外成为令人不快的意外。因此，值此首个世界未来日，教科文组织呼吁其所有会员国和我们的社会发挥想象力，开拓可能性，从而将当下解放出来。

来源：UNESCO