Futuristic General Assembly
Futuristic General Assembly
William Chen, Director
Dear Delegates,
I am very excited to welcome you to the Futuristic General Assembly of the 2012 Harvard Model United Nations conference! I am thrilled to be your director and look forward to meeting you all this upcoming January at the newly renovated Sheraton Boston. For all the returning delegates, welcome back and look forward to engaging topics unlike those you’ve seen before, and for all the new delegates, you’ve chosen a fantastic committee where you can start your very own Model UN future. ;)
My name is William Chen and I am a sophomore majoring in Mathematics and Statistics. I’m from the sunny San Francisco Bay Area and very much miss the nice Californian weather. When I’m not thinking about the future, I can be found doing competitive Ballroom Dancing or speedsolving Rubik’s Cubes. While I can speculate endlessly about what terrific and terrible things the future may bring to us, I have not the least sense what the future brings for me.
As January approaches, I hope you are excited about participating in the newest and most forward-looking committee of the General Assembly! I have collected a study guide of the issues that you will be debating at conference, with summaries of the two topic areas listed below. You will be debating issues that are already implemented in the present time, from GM foods to PMCs, and issues that are currently only in research and development stages, from climate engineering to robots at war. I envision a world in 2050 where these issues become the forefront of international controversy, in a situation where a corporation nearly gains pseudo-sovereignty with a strong military force and control over the local the agricultural industry.
The situation requires a nuanced understanding of the materials in the study guide, which will include backgrounds in various future developments and the situation on hand. I’ve detailed events that will happen in the future that will pave the road to the 2050 situation. I look forward to creative solutions and evidence of your thoughtful consideration of the world situation as you debate issues far ahead of your time. This situation is much in need of a resolution passed by delegates like you, and I hope you will join me in mediating the conflicts of 2050.
It’s my job to make this conference engaging and enjoyable for all of you! If you have any questions or comment, please do not hesitate to email me. I look forward to seeing you all in the future!
Sincerely,
William Chen
Director, Futuristic General Assembly
Harvard Model United Nations 2012
_
Topic Area Summaries
Topic Area A: Genetically Modified Foods and Climate Engineering
It is the year 2050. The climate of Saharan Africa is remarkably transformed: socially, economically, politically, and literally. Large swaths of the Saharan desert are cultivated to grow agriculture for export and to feed much of the population of Africa. The Saharan region of Africa is now a major player in the world’s agricultural industries, featuring booms in settlement densities and a rapid development of infrastructure. This rapid economic and social development is facilitated by rapid developments in both climate engineering technologies and genetically modified organisms, mostly sponsored by heavy research and questionable political maneuvers by Monsanto, a U.S.-based multinational agricultural biotechnology company. In the late 10’s, Monsanto buys very large swaths of Saharan land long thought to be near useless. With cloud seeding, better groundwater tapping technologies, and vast attempts to grow in the sand to prevent erosion, Monsanto slows and slowly reverses desertification in the African Sahara, changing climate patterns in Africa and Europe and making the African desert reasonably farmable, hospitable, and yielding.
In the 20s through the 30s, as the Saharan Desert becomes more temperate, Monsanto seeds their crops, starched-based biennial crops with heavy modification to adopt cactus-like properties to survive in the modified desert environment. Some crops are grown in Monsanto’s own fields, while the rest are licensed to Saharan farmers to plant and sell for a yearly fee. The world erupts in conflict about the presense of Monsanto in Africa and its effect on the world climate and food supply. In the 2040s, The EU completely bans the import or production of GM foods in the concern of safety and lack of biodiversity, and concern for disruption of natural climate patterns, causing massive protests from workers in Africa’s agricultural industry and objection from Monsanto. Africa is almost entirely dependent on these crops for its economic wellbeing. Monsanto’s relationship with its migrant farm workers is also unstable, with PMCs, Monsanto sometimes forcibly evicts migrant farm workers settling in private Monsanto land. In other desert regions of the world, including South America, Central Asia, and the Middle East, smaller and less controversial GM food firms develop desert land and desert agriculture, benefitting local economies.
Topic Area B: Future Wars: Private Military Companies
Private military companies offer military services as a commercial good and are the modern day equivalent of mercenaries. They are tasked for operations domestically and internationally as a supplement or replacement for a country’s traditional military forces, to perform training, security, operations support, investigations, and more. Over the early decades of the 21st century, private military companies play an increasingly important role in global conflict, partly because of their boom in usage during the United State’s operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is despite an earlier UN resolution from 1989 denouncing PMCs as illegal mercenary sources. That resolution, which came into effect in 2011, is widely regarded as outdated, as the UN now regularly hires PMCs to provide security for its travelling members and at various Sudanese refugee camps, citing that the services are necessary to protect travelling UN members and to maintain peace in areas of high sociopolitical strife. PMCs continue growth in usage and in spread, not only because of country’s increasing dependence on them for military services, but also because of corporations contracting PMCs as “security forces.”
This causes issues especially for corporations that own large bodies of land, especially Monsanto. PMC forces, combined with influence on local governments and land ownership, give large corporations the equivalent of a military force. PMCs completely re-define the landscape of international diplomacy, as corporations ascend in power to threaten sovereignty of nations.
Also, future wars will have robots!
Click here for this committee’s background guide (password required).