GAIA 2048—A ‘Glocal Agency in Anthropocene’: Cognitive and Institutional Change as ‘Legal Science Fiction’

To assess a future scenario of the world without a WTO, the present chapter projects the reader into the distant future of the year 2048 by which time the global community is aiming to establish GAIA, the so-called “Glocal Agency in Anthropocene”. GAIA is designed as the first truly integrated global institution with a universal character with the aim to tackle the complex and multiversal governance challenges of humanity and the planet as a whole. This chapter marks both a legally and a scientifically fictitious account of the years from 2020 until 2048, from a dystopian and a utopian perspective, with the aim of highlighting the importance of cognition for legal and institutional change. The need for cognitive change is driven by changes in the environment, and by the challenges resulting from a perceived acceleration of the pace of change and the unprecedented levels of technological complexity. Both change and complexity increase the relevance of cognition, as laws and policies adopted in one area are more likely to affect their success or failure and that of the global governance system as a whole. Thus, this chapter predicts that the foremost necessity for law in the future is to build on novel and enhanced modes of human cognition to deal better with complexity and rapid change.