Trends Identified
Conflicts and violence
In the post-World War II period, while the number of external or interstate conflicts (conflicts between two or more states) declined, there has been an upsurge in internal or intrastate conflicts (conflicts between a government and non-state actors within a state) (IEP 2016). In 2015, for instance, there were 280 intrastate conflicts, in contrast to 74 interstate conflicts, with internal conflicts constituting about 80 percent of the global conflict count (HIIK 2015, 2016).
2017
Global trends
UNDP
Disasters
Disasters associated with natural hazards have become more frequent during the past 20 years (Figure 18).38 Between 1996 and 2015, the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) estimated a total of 8,104 disasters related to natural hazards across all continents, with 4.1 billion people affected by these events, which is almost twice the level recorded between 1976 and 1995.
2017
Global trends
UNDP
Disease outbreaks
Ncidence rates of HIV, malaria and tuberculosis (TB) have fallen since 2000 (Figure 19), and the number of deaths due to various types of infectious diseases, including parasitic diseases and respiratory infections, declined globally from 12.1 million in 2000 to 9.5 million in 2012.
2017
Global trends
UNDP
Hunger and food insecurity
The global demand for food is projected to increase by 50 percent by 2030 compared with the current needs in order to meet the increasing demand of the world’s growing population (Maggio, Van Criekinge and Malingreau 2015). The growing global population, along with accelerating urbanization and deteriorating natural resources, implies that there are more people to feed with less water, land and rural labour (FAO 2015). Finding a sustainable solution to providing more food to nearly 9 billion people by 2030 without harming the environment thus poses a great challenge for the 2030 Agenda and SDG 2 on ending hunger in particular.
2017
Global trends
UNDP
The Changing Context of Development Cooperation and Financing Sustainable Development
In order to achieve the universal 2030 Agenda, drawing on all sources of finance— public and private, domestic and international—in all countries will be essential. The challenge is to enhance the impact of available resources, while also catalysing additional sources of financing into investments in sustainable development.
2017
Global trends
UNDP
Technological Innovations for Sustainable Development
Rapidly developing technologies have reshaped the lives of communities, families and individuals around the world through providing new goods and services, including to “bottom of the pyramid”72 consumers, creating new industries and markets, and changing demand for labour and capital (Ramalingham et al. 2016). New technologies have been recognized by the 2030 Agenda as an important means for implementing the SDGs across economic, social and environmental dimensions, and as a critical instrument to address existing and emerging challenges. However, while technologies can bring many benefits to communities in both developed and developing countries, they can also carry significant risks, as discussed later in this chapter.
2017
Global trends
UNDP
Big data, the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence
Big data and IoT are new digital developments that make it possible to optimize business operations and facilitate the creation of new products, services and industries. The possibility of collecting unlimited amounts of data through Internet-connected sensors and monitoring of the web and social media allows prediction of demand, estimation of rural incomes (based on mobile phone activity) and anticipation of civil unrest. While such technologies add to the existing toolkit for development, the availability of fine-grained and increasingly personal data also introduces new risks (see section D.2). Such technologies therefore merit attention from policymakers. In the last few years, artificial intelligence has become a major focus of attention for technologists, investors, governments and futurists. Since it was first proposed more than 60 years ago, artificial intelligence has experienced periods of progress but also of stagnation, when it has been virtually sidetracked while other technologies advanced exponentially. However, recent breakthroughs have led to major advances, driven by machine learning and deep learning, facilitated by access to huge amounts of big data, cheap and massive cloud computing, and advanced microprocessors (Kelly, 2016:38–40).Artificial intelligence now includes image recognition that exceeds human capabilities and greatly improves language translation, including voice translation through natural language processing, and has proved more accurate than doctors at diagnosing some cancers.
2018
Technology and Innovation Report 2018
UNCTAD
3D printing
Another recent digital development, 3D printing, also offers potential economic, social and environmental benefits for developing countries. Invented three decades ago, 3D printing has become a viable technology for global manufacturers to produce critical parts for airplanes, wind turbines, automobiles and other machines as a result of huge reductions in its costs and complementary developments in computer-aided design, the Internet, new materials for manufacturing and cloud computing (Campbell et al., 2011).
2018
Technology and Innovation Report 2018
UNCTAD
Biotechnology and health tech
Advances in ICT have allowed an increasing integration of synthetic biology, systems biology and functional genomics into biotechnology. Through convergence of an ever-expanding range of “omics” technologies – genomics, proteomics (proteins), metabolomics (biochemical activity), etc. – computational biology explores the roles, relationships and actions of the various types of molecules that make up the cells of an organism (Emerging Technologies, 2014), allowing the functions of organisms to be better understood, from the molecular level to the system level, and advancing biotechnology applications. The cost of sequencing a complete human genome has fallen faster even than implied by Moore’s Law (section C.2) to around $1,000, and is expected to cost no more than a regular blood test by the early 2020s (Wadhwa with Salkever, 2017:123–124).
2018
Technology and Innovation Report 2018
UNCTAD
Advanced materials and nanotechnology
Nanomaterials are materials manufactured and used at an infinitesimal scale, on the order of one billionth of a metre, which behave differently from their larger counterparts, for example in terms of resistance, conductivity or chemical reactivity. They encompass a wide range of organic and inorganic materials, including nanocrystals and nanocomposites. Nanotechnology is a general-purpose technology with multiple applications, which has the potential to revolutionize many industrial sectors. Its applications include: (a) Water remedation and purification, for example through nanofiltration membranes used to treat wastewater in water-scarce countries; (b) Increasing the heat resistance of materials and the Flexibility and performance of electrodes in lithium-ion batteries; (c) Precise control of the release of agrochemicals, improving seed germination and reducing toxicity in the agriculture process, increasing agricultural yields and reducing environmental impacts; (d) Nanoelectronics include devices and materials that reduce weight and power consumption of electronic devices, for example the production of small electronic circuits, enhanced memory storage and faster computer processors; and (e) Medical applications such as the use of gold nanoparticles in the detection of targeted sequences of nucleic acids, and of nanoparticles as a delivery mechanism for medications.
2018
Technology and Innovation Report 2018
UNCTAD