Trends Identified
Scarcity of resources
Population and GDP growth, urbanization, and a growing global middle class lead to an increasing demand for energy. Continued development in non-OECD countries is expected to increase demand by 29% between now and 2030, mostly concentrated in Asia, and particularly China and India. In 2030, like today, most energy will come from fossil fuels. A continued reliance on fossil fuels is tempting, but it also risks accelerating climate change. Despite the dominance of fossil fuels, the sun remains a vast, mostly untapped energy source, delivering more than 1,300 times the Earth's daily energy consumption to land each day. Water and food also stand to become increasingly scarce—we predict global water demand to rise 32% by 2050, driven mostly by the growing manufacturing and electricity sectors. Scarcity of water is already widespread, however, and even today many European countries face low resources per capita. By 2050, over 50% of the world's population will live in water-stressed areas. Demand for food will also increase 43% by 2050, mostly driven by population growth and changing eating habits. A final area of scarcity is critical raw materials. China is the major supplier of these materials, which include rare earth elements and metals. Demand for these raw materials will grow depending on the supply situation. The main challenge associated with these shortages is one of regional imbalance: most critical raw materials are produced outside of Europe, and conflict over these resources could arise between developed and developing countries.
2017
Megatrends: a bigger picture for a better strategy
Roland Berger Strategy Consultants
Scarcity
Scarcity the unsustainable consumption of our natural resources.Middle class angst: Propelled by growth, urbanization, and a concentration of wealth, a global middle class has emerged with varying sets of values and needs. This group still faces significant barriers in the way of economic resources and a result of wealth inequities, and a pervasive frustration has emerged with the social status quo. Innovation: Scarcity is a tale often told which results in negative consequences but in the case of technology, the scarcity of resources is prompting new and innovative ways of managing, saving, and in some cases creating new resources to mitigate growing challenges. Innovation prizes are offered to teams who can come up with unique solutions to societal challenges (e.g., Water XPRIZE). Sustainability: The limitation of natural resources has led to a significant focus on environmental sustainability, resulting in the rise of new markets, an active lobbyist and political base, and renewed efforts in social responsibility. “Going green” has become a business strategy, and new players specifically targeting environmental concerns have risen in prominence. Consumer watchdog groups such as Greenpeace continue to lobby for change. Qualitative growth: In a market-driven economy, growth is often synonymous with progress and high performance. However, unbridled growth over the past several decades has placed a high toll on our resources and capacity, necessitating more efficient and quality-oriented means of production in order to sustain current levels of consumption. Wealth distribution: As families continue to pull themselves out of the global recession, the stark truth remains that the socioeconomic order has tilted further towards inequity as 1% of the population is now as rich as the rest of the world combined. As the rich have grown richer and the poor have grown poorer, a new global middle class has emerged with a new set of values and priorities which now dictate political discourse. Politicians’ platforms globally contain policies and proposals to affect the inequities in wealth.
2017
Beyond the Noise- The Megatrends of Tomorrow’s World
Deloitte
Scarcity
Economic growth means the use of scarce natural resources. If people become richer they will use up more energy, water and food, and create more waste. Technological advances often also lead to increased consumption, as well as to new challenges (rebound effect). The much acclaimed introduction of biodiesel, for instance, led to an undesired decrease in farmland used for food production. There is an end to our natural resources. Many of these resources are found in areas that are politically unstable. The rise of the BRIC1 and MINT2 countries (and probably other nations in the future as well) and the corresponding growing prosperity have increased the demand for natural resources considerably, creating an additional problem for countries consuming the most.
2014
Horizon scan 2050
Netherlands, The Netherlands Study Centre for Technology Trends (STT)
Satellites down
In August 2016, a 1-cm-wide man-made object collided with the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Sentinel 1A satellite, creating a 40-cm crater and a change in orbit. As more and more satellites are launched, the risks of space debris disabling satellites and disrupting navigation and communication systems will rise. Indeed, roughly one in ten functioning satellites in the Earth’s orbit had experienced collisions like that of the Sentinel 1A. The frequency of such collisions is rapidly increasing; it is predicted that over the next two decades, the average time interval between collisions could shrink from 10 years to just five.
2017
Foresigth
Singapore, The Centre for Strategic Futures
Satellites and drones
Communication satellites have been used for Internet access in rural areas and developing countries since the early days of the Internet, and the industry has remained viable as a result of technical progress in launch technology (public and private), antennas, solar power, radios and other electronics, as well as tuning of TCP/IP protocols to account for the quartersecond latency due to the orbital altitude. It has been suggested that these technologies have progressed to the point where high-altitude platform stations (HAPSs) and lower orbit satellites are now viable as well. HAPSs are non-rigid airships, drones or balloons that hover or circulate around 15–30 km in the stratosphere (UNCTAD, 2014a). HAPSs have lower transmission delay (latency), but their signal cover (footprint) tends to be lower compared to other technologies (ibid.:38). An example of a project that offers broadband Internet using satellite communications is the Google Project Loon (ibid.), which uses HAPSs to create an aerial wireless network with up to 3G-like speeds.
2018
Technology and Innovation Report 2018
UNCTAD
Sanitation without sewers
Energy-efficient toilets can operate without a sewer system and treat waste on the spot. About 2.3 billion people don’t have good sanitation. The lack of proper toilets encourages people to dump fecal matter into nearby ponds and streams, spreading bacteria, viruses, and parasites that can cause diarrhea and cholera. Diarrhea causes one in nine child deaths worldwide. Now researchers are working to build a new kind of toilet that’s cheap enough for the developing world and can not only dispose of waste but treat it as well. In 2011 Bill Gates created what was essentially the X Prize in this area—the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge. Since the contest’s launch, several teams have put prototypes in the field. All process the waste locally, so there’s no need for large amounts of water to carry it to a distant treatment plant. Most of the prototypes are self-contained and don’t need sewers, but they look like traditional toilets housed in small buildings or storage containers. The NEWgenerator toilet, designed at the University of South Florida, filters out pollutants with an anaerobic membrane, which has pores smaller than bacteria and viruses. Another project, from Connecticut-based Biomass Controls, is a refinery the size of a shipping container; it heats the waste to produce a carbon-rich material that can, among other things, fertilize soil. One drawback is that the toilets don’t work at every scale. The Biomass Controls product, for example, is designed primarily for tens of thousands of users per day, which makes it less well suited for smaller villages. Another system, developed at Duke University, is meant to be used only by a few nearby homes. So the challenge now is to make these toilets cheaper and more adaptable to communities of different sizes. “It’s great to build one or two units,” says Daniel Yeh, an associate professor at the University of South Florida, who led the NEWgenerator team. “But to really have the technology impact the world, the only way to do that is mass-produce the units.” —Erin Winick
2019
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2019 - How we’ll invent the future, by Bill Gates
MIT Technology Review
Safe car travel?
Despite all the rapid urbanisation and talk of bullet trains and fantastical technology like the Hyperloop coming to the fore, the car isn’t going anywhere – and in fact, in the next couple decades, there will be even more of them on the road.
Driverless car technology is swiftly rolling out, with major tech companies and automakers aggressively seeking to debut human-free vehicles in coming years. But in addition, the sheer number of cars – self-driving or not – is going to skyrocket, studies show. In countries like China that are seeing a growing middle class, the environmental and infrastructural needs that an increasingly road-faring population demands is going to be a grand challenge. How do we ensure safety, fight pollution, and make sure driverless cars aren’t a menace on the road?
2017
10 grand challenges we’ll face by 2050
The BBC
Russia’s standing among Europeans has slipped
Views of Russia were at their most positive in several European countries in 2011, but they have fallen since then and have remained consistently low over the past few years. Between 2011 and this year, the share of people with a favorable opinion of Russia has declined by double digits in France, Germany, Poland, Spain and the UK. The biggest drop occurred in the UK, where just 26% of the public now sees Russia favorably, down from 50% in 2011. Today, no more than 36% of the public in any of these five countries holds a favorable view of Russia.
2017
6 trends in international public opinion from our Global Indicators Database
Pew Research Center
Russia and China in 2030: authoritarian alliance or geopolitical rivals?
The relationship between China and Russia is likely to become stronger and Moscow’s dependency on Beijing will grow: Russia will be the junior partner. If Russia can cope with the limitations of this position, it could benefit from such a role.
2016
Global Trendometer - essays on medium- and long-term global trends
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)