20-22 January 2009
Abu Dhabi, UAE

Who sets the global agenda? The global organization of knowledge (socially, topically, and geographically) determines humanity’s capacity to decide, to act individually and in concert, and to cope with the challenges we face. Yet we live in an age of warring visions of the world, an era of proliferating expertise and diminishing common sense.

We know a lot! And yet knowledge remains fragmented. Expertise is specialized. Do advances in knowledge lead to advances in policy (by governments), or in practice (by all of us)? The knowledge that does support action is produced with an issue or problem focus...which is useful for particular issues and problems, but which resists reassembly into a holistic view. Issue- and problem-based knowledge is appropriated selectively by advocates (corporations, NGOs, agencies, voters) promoting particular interests. Advocates compete for broader attention via mass media and other channels. Fragments of knowledge reach potential actors on an ad hoc basis, as attention shifts from issue to issue following crises, vocal advocacy, or changing fads.

While knowledge producers (universities, institutes, think tanks, task forces, R&D groups) are fragmentary, the use of knowledge in decision-making is based primarily on national administrative units, even at the international level. This means that knowledge users may miss those issues that nation-states cannot see. States may sometimes make policy drawing on new knowledge, and other times based primarily on interests, habit and tradition, or non-controlled experimentation. The link between what we know and what we do is weak.