Dr Parag Khanna (Photo: His website
www.paragkhanna.com)
Speaking at the
Straits Times Global Outlook Forum on Friday (29 Nov), Dr Parag
Khanna, Senior Fellow at the Singapore Institute of International
Affairs and Adjunct Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public
Policy, said that Singapore can fit 8 million people or more by the
year 2030.
He said, “There
is a much more physically devolved Singapore in which the towns
play a much stronger role, in which there’s much more local
economic activity and vibrancy, in which everyone is not cramping
down into Orchard or CBD every single day. And that Singapore can
most certainly accommodate a couple million more people.”
Population
aside, he said that Singapore is also on its way to becoming a
leading information state, using technology to canvas information
and public opinion.
“As part of the
national conversation here, people were creating stories about
certain towns and areas within Singapore, and even geo-coding their
emotions through various iPhone apps. There are all sorts of ways
to harness these technologies.”
Who is
Parag Khanna?
According to
his own website (www.paragkhanna.com),
he is a leading global strategist, world traveler, and best-selling
author.
Born in India,
he grew up in the UAE, New York, and Germany. He has travelled to
more than 100 countries on all continents. Some of his lengthy
journeys include driving from the Baltic Sea through the Balkans
and across Turkey and the Caucasus to the Caspian Sea, across the
rugged terrain of Tibet and Xinjiang provinces in western China,
and eight thousand miles from London to Ulaanbaatar in the Mongolia
Charity Rally. He has climbed numerous 20,000-foot plus peaks, and
trekked in the Alps, Himalayas, and Tien Shan mountain ranges.
His resume
states that he is a Director of the Hybrid Reality Institute,
Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, Adjunct Professor in
the LKY School of Public Policy at the NUS, Visiting Fellow at LSE
IDEAS, Senior Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations,
and Senior Fellow at the Singapore Institute of International
Affairs.
He is co-author
of Hybrid Reality: Thriving in the Emerging
Human-Technology Civilization(2012) and author of How
to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next
Renaissance(2011) and The Second World: Empires and
Influence in the New Global Order (2008). In 2008, he was
named one of Esquire’s “75 Most Influential People of the 21st
Century,” and featured in WIRED magazine’s “Smart List”.
Parag lectures
frequently at international conferences and gives executive
briefings to government leaders and major corporations on global
trends, systemic risks, future scenarios, economic master planning,
emerging market strategies, and technological disruptions. He has
been an adviser to the U.S. National Intelligence Council’s Global
Trends 2030 program. Previously, he served in the foreign policy
advisory group to the Barack Obama for President campaign. During
2007 he served in Iraq and Afghanistan as a senior geopolitical
adviser to United States Special Operations Forces. From 2002-5, he
was the Global Governance Fellow at the Brookings Institution; from
2000-2002 he worked at the World Economic Forum in Geneva; and from
1999-2000, he was a Research Associate at the Council on Foreign
Relations in New York.
His website
states: “A widely cited global intellectual, Dr. Khanna appears
regularly in media around the world.”
He is a
contributing columnist on CNN.com, regular guest host of CNBC, and
the first video-blogger of ForeignPolicy.com. His essays and
articles have appeared in major international newspapers and
journals such as the Wall Street Journal, International Herald
Tribune, Washington Post, Financial Times, TIME, Forbes, The
Atlantic, Quartz, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, Harper’s, BusinessWeek,
Harvard Business Review, The Guardian, The National Interest,
McKinsey Quarterly, Prospect, Esquire, Slate.com, Die Zeit, and
Strategy+Business. He has been featured on CNN, BBC, PBS, Al
Jazeera, CCTV, Russia Today, National Public Radio (NPR), and other
media all over the world. From 2008-9, Parag was the host of
“InnerView” on MTV. He spoke on “Invisible Maps” at TED Global 2009
and was a guest host of TED Global 2012.
Parag holds a
PhD from the London School of Economics, and Bachelors and Masters
degrees from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown
University. He has been a Distinguished Visitor at the Munk School
of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, Distinguished
Visitor at the American Academy in Berlin (2008), Next Generation
Fellow of the American Assembly (2007-8), Visiting Fellow at the
LKY School of Public Policy in Singapore (2006), Non-Resident
Associate of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown
University (2004-5), and a Visiting Fellow at the Observer Research
Foundation in New Delhi (2004).
He has received
grants from the United Nations Foundation, Smith Richardson
Foundation, and Ford Foundation. He currently serves on the
executive boards of Independent Diplomat and the Micro Equity
Development Fund, the board of trustees of the New Cities
Foundation, Innovation Advisory Board of DBS, advisory board of the
WEF’s Future of Urban Development Initiative, the advisory board of
Ergo, and the editorial board of Global Policy.
In 2009, Parag
was honored as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.
He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, International
Institute for Strategic Studies, and a Fellow of the Royal
Geographical Society. In 2002 he was awarded the OECD Future
Leaders Prize. He speaks Hindi, German, French, Spanish, and basic
Arabic.
