In only its second year, the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils has established a reputation for bringing together experts from all stakeholder groups to identify new ways for technology to reshape our future.

This year, the 35 councils’ brief is to focus their collective knowledge on creating a vision for the year 2030 that overcomes current and future challenges, with the ultimate aim of creating a future more sustainable and human-centred than the world in which we live today.

In building their vision for 2030, council members will be joined by leaders from the public and private sectors from the United Arab Emirates.

Focus areas that have been singled out are: · Future of work: Redesigning labour markets and social security systems in ways that grow economies and protect societies · Human health: Applying personalized medicine and enhancement technologies to ensure people not only live longer, but stay healthy longer · People and mobility: Managing increasing levels of human migration in ways that benefit people on the move, their place of origin and their destination · Infrastructure investment: Finding new ways of financing the massive investments needed to upgrade infrastructure in the age of autonomous vehicles and additive manufacturing · Our global commons: Preserving and protecting the Earth’s natural capital at a time when it is coming under increasing pressure · Decarbonization: Identifying the technologies and infrastructure needed to accelerate the shift to a carbon-free global energy system · Food sustainability in 2030: Meeting the nutritional needs of a global population of 8.5 billion · Information ubiquity: Ensuring a sustainable flow of content and information that adds to, rather than detracts from, the inclusiveness of societies · Governance in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Maximizing the benefits of new technologies by adopting governance models that are innovative, agile and inclusive · Ethics and values in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Deciding the values that help us make responsible choices when we develop technology and ensure that it is only used as a force for good