Civil Society in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Preparation and Response

The report examines the role of civil society in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, detailing how organizations use technologies like AI, drones, and blockchain to improve service delivery and community understanding. It identifies critical tensions—such as maintaining independence while using private-sector tools—and argues that civil society must evolve into diverse roles, including watchdogs and standard-definers, to ensure technology is deployed ethically and inclusively.

• Civil society organizations are utilizing a wide range of emerging technologies to enhance their operations, including artificial intelligence for chatbots, drones for medical delivery and forest monitoring, 3D printing for prosthetics and sanitation, and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) to reduce money transfer fees.
• The report identifies five functional categories of technology use in the sector: understanding community needs, providing precision service delivery, communicating information, tracking and verifying evidence, and forecasting trends to influence decision-making.
• Civil society must adopt a diverse set of roles to remain relevant, acting as advocates for fairness, watchdogs for institutional accountability, solidarity supporters for universal values, representatives for marginalized voices, definers of ethical standards, and capacity builders.
• Organizations face five primary tensions when integrating technology: maintaining independence from private-sector platforms, ensuring motivations are driven by community needs rather than donor hype, designing innovation architectures, balancing short-term and long-term investments, and managing the tension between global best practices and local contexts.
• To lead a human-centred Fourth Industrial Revolution, the sector needs to invest in rights-based technology use, inclusive social innovation, and the ability to translate complex technology issues across different disciplines and lived experiences.
• The report emphasizes that civil society cannot transform in isolation and requires multistakeholder cooperation, including portfolio-based funding and new legal frameworks, to accelerate its readiness for technological change.

APA

World Economic Forum (2019). Civil Society in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Preparation and Response. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Civil_Society_in_the_Fourth_Industrial_Revolution_Response_and_Innovation.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Civil Society in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Preparation and Response. 2019. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Civil_Society_in_the_Fourth_Industrial_Revolution_Response_and_Innovation.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Civil Society in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Preparation and Response |date=January 2019 |url=http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Civil_Society_in_the_Fourth_Industrial_Revolution_Response_and_Innovation.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2019civil, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Civil Society in the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Preparation and Response}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2019}, month = jan, url = {http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Civil_Society_in_the_Fourth_Industrial_Revolution_Response_and_Innovation.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }