Scientists have a duty to make their knowledge available for the betterment of humanity. UNU has the mandate to link the two normally isolated worlds of scholarship and policy-making. The January 2000 conference held at the UNU in Tokyo was one item in the ongoing effort to fulfill that mandate. The Millennium Conference was organized to showcase new ideas and fresh thinking of relevance to the United Nations and, in a wider sense, to the challenges faced by humanity. The goal was to put all important issues on the table in order to set the scene for discussions and decisions in the millennium year, and to offer solutions that were creative, integrative and good examples of lateral thinking.
Globalization refers both to process and outcome.
National frontiers are becoming less relevant in determining the flow of ideas, information, goods, services, capital, labor and technology. The speed of modern communications makes borders increasingly permeable, while the volume of cross-border flows threatens to overwhelm the capacity of states to manage them. Globalization releases many productive forces that, if properly harnessed, can help to uplift millions from poverty, deprivation and degradation. At the same time, and indeed partly in reaction to globalization, communities are beginning to re-identify with local levels of group identity. Recommended solutions to the dilemma include decentralization and subsidiarity, on the principle that the locus of action and solution should be where the loci of the problems lie.