Trends Identified
Precision agriculture
Precision Agriculture (PA) is a farming management concept. It aims to optimise returns on inputs, including machinery, labour, chemicals, water and energy, whilst potentially reducing environmental impacts and enhancing food safety. The concept is based upon observing, measuring and responding to inter and intrafield variability in crops, or to aspects of animal husbandry. The technology offers opportunity to stimulate co-innovation, strengthen competitiveness and to contribute to a more climate and eco-smart farming. PA is seen as an important route to 'sustainable intensification'.
2015
Preparing the Commission for future opportunities - Foresight network fiches 2030
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Precision Agriculture
Example of Organizationsactive in the area:2 Blue River Technology (US), Hortau (Canada).
2018
Table of disruptive technologies
Imperial College London
Precise genetic-engineering techniques
Conventional genetic engineering has long caused controversy. However, new techniques are emerging that allow us to directly “edit” the genetic code of plants to make them, for example, more nutritious or better able to cope with a changing climate. Currently, the genetic engineering of crops relies on the bacterium agrobacterium tumefaciens to transfer desired DNA into the target genome. The technique is proven and reliable, and despite widespread public fears, there is a consensus in the scientific community that genetically modifying organisms using this technique is no more risky than modifying them using conventional breeding. However, while agrobacterium is useful, more precise and varied genome-editing techniques have been developed in recent years.These include ZFNs, TALENS and, more recently, the CRISPR-Cas9 system, which evolved in bacteria as a defence mechanism against viruses. CRISPR-Cas9 system uses an RNA molecule to target DNA, cutting to a known, user-selected sequence in the target genome. This can disable an unwanted gene or modify it in a way that is functionally indistinguishable from a natural mutation. Using “homologous recombination”, CRISPR can also be used to insert new DNA sequences, or even whole genes, into the genome in a precise way. Another aspect of genetic engineering that appears poised for a major advance is the use of RNA interference (RNAi) in crops. RNAi is effective against viruses and fungal pathogens, and can also protect plants against insect pests, reducing the need for chemical pesticides. Viral genes have been used to protect papaya plants against the ringspot virus, for example, with no sign of resistance evolving in over a decade of use in Hawaii. RNAi may also benefit major staple-food crops, protecting wheat against stem rust, rice against blast, potato against blight and banana against fusarium wilt. Many of these innovations will be particularly beneficial to smaller farmers in developing countries. As such, genetic engineering may become less controversial, as people recognize its effectiveness at boosting the incomes and improving the diets of millions of people. In addition, more precise genome editing may allay public fears, especially if the resulting plant or animal is not considered transgenic because no foreign genetic material is introduced. Taken together, these techniques promise to advance agricultural sustainability by reducing input use in multiple areas, from water and land to fertilizer, while also helping crops to adapt to climate change.
2015
Top 10 emerging technologies of 2015
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Precise drug delivery through nanoscale engineering
Pharmaceuticals that can be precisely delivered at the molecular level within or around a diseased cell offer unprecedented opportunities for more effective treatments while reducing unwanted side effects. Targeted nanoparticles that adhere to diseased tissue allow for the micro-scale delivery of potent therapeutic compounds while minimizing their impact on healthy tissue, and are now advancing in medical trials. After almost a decade of research, these new approaches are finally showing signs of clinical utility.
2013
The top 10 emerging technologies for 2013
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Powered exoskeletons
Example of Organizationsactive in the area: ReWalk (US), Rex Bionics (US), SuitX/US Bionics (US), Ekso Bionics (US), Lockheed Martin (US).
2018
Table of disruptive technologies
Imperial College London
Power of innovation
The basic innovations of the next 20 years are not easily predicted and there is no consensus of what to expect in 2030. For example, Vernor Vinge, a pioneer in Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), predicts that A.I. will surpass human intelligence after 2020, whereas THE FUTURIST puts the date in 2032. Predictions about future innovations are always risky – they may fail to materialize or do so at a different time – if and when they come true, they will dramatically change and dominate our lives. Therefore, we need to look at those potential changes
2011
Trend compendium 2030
Roland Berger Strategy Consultants
Power and Values
A period of change in the international system is destabilizing assumptions about global order. Last year’s Global Risks Report argued that the world is becoming not just multipolar, but also “multiconceptual”. This chapter further examines how changing power dynamics and diverging norms and values are affecting global politics and the global economy. The chapter begins by outlining how normative differences increasingly shape domestic and international politics. It then highlights three trends with the potential to trigger disruptive change: (1) the difficulty of sustaining global consensus on ethically charged issues such as human rights; (2) intensifying pressure on multilateralism and dispute-settlement mechanisms; and (3) states’ increasingly frequent use of geo-economic policy interventions.
2019
The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Power
As Harvard University political scientist Joseph Nye has pointed out, power in geopolitics will shift from West to East. And in business and society, power will shift from the centre to the margins, in both the West and East. While shifts in power occurred in the past, we need to watch the particulars of the upcoming shifts: the return of the East as leaders in science and technology, not just as major economies; and the empowerment of marginal actors, such as social minorities and new platform businesses, who may grow into influential actors and even take on lead roles one day.
2017
Foresigth
Singapore, The Centre for Strategic Futures
Poverty
Between 1990 and 2002, global average incomes increased by approximately 21% and the number of people living in absolute poverty declined by an estimated 130 million; global child mortality rates fell from 103 deaths per 1,000 live births a year to 88; life expectancy rose from 63 years to nearly 65 years; an additional 8% of people in the developing world gained access to clean water; and an additional 15% acquired access to improved sanitation services.221 Economic growth is likely to lead to a continued reduction, albeit unevenly distributed, in absolute poverty.
2010
Global strategic trends - out to 2040
UK, Ministry of Defence
Potential slowing
and/or reversal of financial globalization
2016
Geostrategic risks on the rise
McKinsey