Posted on 04/09/2021 4:14:46 AM PDT by EBH
U.S. intelligence officials have little comfort to offer a pandemic-weary planet about where the world is heading in the next 20 years. Short answer: It looks pretty bleak.
The most certain trends during the next 20 years will be major demographic shifts as global population growth slows and the world rapidly ages. Some developed and emerging economies, including in Europe and East Asia, will grow older faster and face contracting populations, weighing on economic growth. In contrast, some developing countries in Latin America, South Asia, and the Middle East and North Africa benefit from larger working-age populations, offering opportunities for a demographic dividend if coupled with improvements in infrastructure and skills. Human development, including health, education, and household prosperity, has made historic improvements in every region during the past few decades. Many countries will struggle to build on and even sustain these successes. Past improvements focused on the basics of health, education, and poverty reduction, but the next levels of development are more difficult and face headwinds from the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially slower global economic growth, aging populations, and the effects of conflict and climate. These factors will challenge governments seeking to provide the education and infrastructure needed to improve the productivity of their growing urban middle classes in a 21st century economy. As some countries rise to these challenges and others fall short, shifting global demographic trends almost certainly will aggravate disparities in economic opportunity within and between countries during the next two decades as well as create more pressure for and disputes over migration.
In the environment, the physical effects of climate change are likely to intensify during the next two decades, especially in the 2030s. More extreme storms, droughts, and floods; melting glaciers and ice caps; and rising sea levels will accompany rising temperatures. The impact will disproportionately fall on the developing world and poorer regions and intersect with environmental degradation to create new vulnerabilities and exacerbate existing risks to economic prosperity, food, water, health, and energy security. Governments, societies, and the private sector are likely to expand adaptation and resilience measures to manage existing threats, but these measures are unlikely to be evenly distributed, leaving some populations behind. Debates will grow over how and how quickly to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
During the next two decades, several global economic trends, including rising national debt, a more complex and fragmented trading environment, a shift in trade, and new employment disruptions are likely to shape conditions within and between states. Many governments may find they have reduced flexibility as they navigate greater debt burdens, diverse trading rules, and a broader array of powerful state and corporate actors exerting influence. Large platform corporations—which provide online markets for large numbers of buyers and seller—could drive continued trade globalization and help smaller firms grow and gain access to international markets. These powerful firms are likely to try to exert influence in political and social arenas, efforts that may lead governments to impose new restrictions. Asian economies appear poised to continue decades of growth through at least 2030, although potentially slower. They are unlikely to reach the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) or economic influence of existing advanced economies, including the United States and Europe. Productivity growth remains a key variable; an increase in the rate of growth could alleviate many economic, human development, and other challenges.
Technology will offer the potential to mitigate problems, such as climate change and disease, and to create new challenges, such as job displacement. Technologies are being invented, used, spread, and then discarded at ever increasing speeds around the world, and new centers of innovation are emerging. During the next two decades, the pace and reach of technological developments are likely to increase ever faster, transforming a range of human experiences and capabilities while also creating new tensions and disruptions within and between societies, industries, and states. State and nonstate rivals will vie for leadership and dominance in science and technology with potentially cascading risks and implications for economic, military, and societal security.
PDF version is 156 pages long.
Previous years are available as PDF as well in the Media download sections.
Previous versions of Global Trends
Global Trends 2035: Paradox of Progress
Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds
Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World
Global Trends 2020: Mapping the Global Future
Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue About the Future With Nongovernment Experts
By the year 2040, will there even be a year 2040?
Just waiting for the anti-Westerners to declare our current counting of the years as “racist” or “colonialist” or whatever.
They’ve already renamed “B.C.” and “A.D.”
Page 37 of the Global Trends 2025 discusses a world ‘without the West.’
I think this is really interesting stuff to read and slog through. And for those savvy enough to get through it all, I suspect it will be far more enlightening and less conspiracy oriented in the end.
They’ve known and seen all this coming for decades, predicted, and scripted.
We always wonder how they’ve done it all....well here’s part of the blueprint in massive detail from our own government.
The saddest part is how many millions of Americans have been duped into going along with it.
I suppose that’s nothing new - no totalitarian has gotten to the top all by themselves.
Oddly enough, the fruits of our civilization will live on through much of Asia, and even Russia, where the people don't suffer from suicidal self-hate (tho' the latter sure have a suicidal love of the hooch).
The likelihood of the continued existence of the “United” States will at best be a tossup by 2040.
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