Abstract
With the goal post for the millennium development goals all but over and 2030 as that for the UN defined sustainable development goals (SDGs) looming just ahead, much debate on the future of the world is now looking at trends until 2050 to explain what will drive transformations by mid-century. And, more importantly, what we can do about them now. While 2050 may be an arbitrary choice for a deadline, in terms of transformative global trends, it does allow analysts to set a target date for a necessary action. Most prognosis, based on trends from developments which are already evident and some not quite so, indicate that the future of our world(s) will challenge our ability to commit attention, time and resources to change impending crises into opportunity.
Harinder Kohli’s The World in 2050 is an addition to the literature on future global scenarios. Earlier studies such as Laurence Smith’s The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future gave us an account of the northern part of the globe based on megatrends associated with demographic increases, globalisation and climate change. In 2011, Ulrich Eberl wrote of the impact of advances in computing technology in Life in 2050: How We Invent the Future Today. In a series of papers which were built on the SDG framework, to an extent, but in large measure, also address the pressing need to reform global governance and work towards an economically and socially sustainable future; Kohli’s book tells us what we can expect in 2050. The 17 papers in the book have an analytical as well as a prescriptive agenda for states and policy makers in the Global South. In addition, a focus on the need to reform institutions of global governance and their accommodation of the new economic and political realities of emerging economies is a useful addition to the debate on global futures.
While most papers point to the challenges confronting those living in the Global South, there is an optimistic quality about the book. On the whole, the authors view the last 50 years of global growth and development as a positive outcome of globalisation and the coming period as one of correction, albeit still within the context of a globalised world. Hence, as the section on the future of the global markets emphasises, transforming global governance institutions and the global financial structure to accommodate the increasing economic heft of emerging markets is essential. Without this, institutions like the IMF and WB are unlikely to address issues of sustainable growth or even retain their legitimacy, especially given the rise of new financial institutions like the BRICS’ New Development Bank and the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Rather than arguing for a new set of institutions to replace the Bretton Woods institutions, this section argues that global financial institutions need to take effective decisions, especially on infrastructure lending, to bridge the economic disparity between countries. More importantly, they also need to exercise necessary regulatory and oversight functions to prevent the global financial crises, which emanate from advanced economies. Between 2007 and 2011, 12 of the 17 global financial shocks have come from advanced economies.
The book outlines 10 global megatrends to watch out for by 2050. Of these, five are socio-economic trends (demographics, urbanisation, rise of a middle class, violent non-state actors and technological progress), three relate to trade, global finance and emerging economies and another two to how we relate to our natural world as we compete for natural resources and deal with climate change. The papers in the book address these in the context of questions over the continued growth of emerging economies. Are some of these headed towards a middle income trap or can they make productivity gains through technology breakthroughs? Will convergence between developing and developed economies continue? And what will be the impact of Asia and Africa’s rising middle-class consumption of resources, on institutions, values and governance? Finally, how best can policies support socially sustainable livelihoods?
Clearly, the most significant changes will come from the massive demographic transformations in the developing world. As Gregory Ingram points out in the first chapter, by 2050 two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in cities, with 95 per cent of the increase coming from developing countries. The middle and upper middle class alone will increase by 4 billion placing a higher burden on consumption, even as it pushes up savings and economic growth.
Hyper-urbanisation in emerging economies will require states and local governments to be on top of their game as far as the efficient and sustainable use of resources like land, water, energy and technology are concerned. In an important sense, the solutions to urban development and expansion over the next 40 years are indicative of initiatives which will be needed in other sectors as well. Thus, issues of income disparity and inequality, poverty, sustainable lifestyles, access to resources like water, energy and food and mitigation of global warming and adaptation to climate change will require better governance, better funding, innovative approaches to resource use, a commitment to development and use of technology for adaptation; and these issues are those that impact on trade in emerging markets as well.
A core section of the book, and perhaps the most important section in light of the Paris climate change agreements, agreement is the section on the future of the natural world. Much of the discussion in this section hinges on the added pressures for food, water, energy and addressing climate change issues by 2050.The prognostications on food security are optimistic given advances in crop yield technologies and slower demand. But the urban share of municipal water demand is increasing in emerging economies from 25 per cent in China to 14 per cent in Africa and the Middle East. The evidence on the urban share of total greenhouse gases, air and water pollution has also not so far been encouraging. Hence, environmental issues will likely be at the forefront, especially as the connection between environmental degradation and economic productivity sinks in.
One of the most significant potential risks for emerging economies is the cost of adaptation to climate change. Alexander Pfeiffer and Cameron Hepburn point out that while the science on climate change is irrefutable, ‘the true costs of carbon-based energy use and emissions currently remain external to most mainstream growth models’. It is also true that unmitigated climate change slows down average growth rates in emerging economies from 3.2 per cent to 2.6 per cent. Yet only a few economies ‘internalise’ the costs of emissions enough to decide ‘when emission levels should trigger a change in carbon prices’. However, a recognition of the connection between climate change, including water scarcity and air pollution, and growth is dawning on emerging developed and developing economies. In the China–US climate deal signed in 2014, for example, China has committed to peak its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and increase the share of zero emissions power generation in total energy production by 20 per cent. This has followed years of debate within China, reflected in its 11th and 12th Five Year Plans, on the need to address the human and economic cost of environmental degradation.
The authors argue that the Paris Agreement did not go far enough by agreeing to keep global warming to a limit of just 1.2 above pre-industrial levels. This lower level does not take on board the imminent risks of climate change for ocean states and poorer and vulnerable states. Given this, assistance and solutions have to go beyond adaptation and mitigation if at risk communities here are to survive. Studies elsewhere support Pfeiffer and Hepburn’s argument by pointing out that there has been little interest on moving forward on loss and damage issues linked to climate change. Hence, while the Paris Agreement made a commitment to a USD 100 billion annual climate fund only USD 10 billion has actually been deposited into the fund and more, the precise issue of loss and damage has been left to later meetings.
Analysts have been at pains to suggest that either ‘curative measures’ or a ‘transformative risk management’ approach could be a viable basis for payments and assistance. The first could be used where the impact of rising temperatures cannot be avoided such as in displacement of communities and loss of livelihood; the second, where assistance is needed to re-skill people into new livelihood choices (Mechler & Schinko, 2016). However, rumblings at the recently held meeting at Marrakech indicate that the host country’s Marrakech Call has tended to ignore the ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ position of the UNFCCC and to push for greater action on mitigation than was intended in the Paris Agreement on the basis of the ‘intended nationally determined contributions’ (INDC), the more ‘soft governance’ approach favoured by developing states. There has, in fact, been little movement on issues of loss and damage and defining criteria for ‘fair’ burden sharing. In fact, in his discussion of reforms in global governance, Montek Ahluwalia argues for the G20 taking the initiative to commission a study on burden sharing to be discussed before the first five year review of the INDCs is due.
Daniel Byman’s paper on the future of non-state actors is the weakest in the book. It provides a typology of terrorist and non-state actors in violent conflict, but has little to say about the reasons for the rise of political Islam and its morphing into the Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, except to link them to civil wars and weak governments. A more historical view opens up a difficult debate about western complicity in arming Mujahideen groups who emerged as strong Islamicist groups in South Asia and West Asia and the Anglo-American objective of controlling energy resources in the region. In fact, much of the financial and logistic support for Islamic radicalism comes from states who are close allies of the United States. Byman’s argument for state-building as a solution for managing terrorist groups in the context of Iraq sounds hollow when one takes into account that the US has little credibility on the issue, given that it has taken apart the Iraqi State on false pretences.
In a section on alternative long-term scenarios for the emerging global economy by 2050, the authors are cautiously optimistic. Over the last 60 years of economic experience, they argue, most emerging economies have developed better macro-economic management, have better financial systems (although smaller and less sophisticated than in developed states) than in the last decades of the last century, have made efforts to improve human skills, created better infrastructure and have more competitive markets and better institutional functioning. There is a greater scope for decreasing the technology gap and for convergence with developed countries, given the positive effects of all the megatrends outlined in the study are sustained through policy initiatives. Of the four scenarios the authors construct for 2050, they argue that despite the challenges presented by a distinct change in the global economic environment, it is more than likely that emerging and developing economies in Asia will account for 62 per cent of global growth by 2050 and just over a half of global output. But much of this trajectory will depend on the ability of leaders to make the right decisions.
The last section of the book looks at the larger question of equity and sustainability. As emerging and developing economies have become more prosperous, poverty has declined in real terms. But there is still a long way to go in terms of reducing inequality, of creating a society that has a sense of well-being and where lifestyles will ultimately sustain prosperity for all. These are relevant questions which could have been dealt with at greater length, but this would have required a debate on these issues outside of the neoliberal framework of markets and growth. Ironically, as well, the search for a new leitmotif for a multipolar and multicultural world in global agreements such as the Paris Agreement/2016 and the SDGs (Agenda 2030) confronts the rise of a new politics of difference, one which puts on display all the social and economic fault lines of a post-globalised world.