3.0.7 The Current World and Future Trends - Overview

Version 1.4 November 2016                                                       (Previous Version)

How we analyze our current situation and predict the future is always controversial.

The detailed pages in Chapter 3.7 are restricted to a factual analysis, based on history and science, taking a global and long term perspective, to identify different scenarios for the future.  We can be optimistic that we can find solutions to our global concerns, despite this range of critical issues.

·       The world has become dominated by large corporations and national governments;

·       China, India, Brazil and many other developing economies are recovering from the colonial period, increasing agricultural productivity, developing manufacturing and service industries, improving civil society, social welfare and human rights, and reducing absolute poverty.

·       However, many countries remain undeveloped with extremely poor human rights.

·       Functioning national democracies have been generally more successful in providing benefits to a wider percentage of the population, don't go to war with each other, and don't have famines. 

·       But democracies have limits: elected leaders are slow to adopt the necessary long term strategies if it risks them being unelected, and local politics overrides global necessities.  Democratic national governments can be cruel in suppressing dissent and persecuting minorities in the name of the state: totalitarian regimes can be even worse.

·       American military dominance of the world continues: the USA can destroy any country it wishes.   American hypocrisy is more evident as rights afforded to Americans are denied to foreigners, such as ‘unlawful enemy combatants’, rendition, torture, assassinations and drone attacks.  But American economic dominance is diminishing as China, India and Europe grow.

·       Inequality has generally increased within the developed nations since the mid-1980s triumph of free market liberalism, reduced financial regulation, and restrictions on workers’ rights.

·       As the global population increases and economic development proceeds globally there inevitably will be more pollution, more climate change, and more environmental degradation.

·       The world is running out of arable land, clean water and cheap fuel.  Food prices are likely to rise, and there will be increasing social instability.  Nation states are likely to increase border controls and trade protectionism, and globally there is a risk of greater inequality.

·       On the other hand, we expect the global population will stabilize and there is some progress, however minimal at present, towards reducing and mitigating the effects of climate change.

·       We can devise political structures and strategies that enable decisions to be made in the long term interests of the world and all its peoples, to separate these from the parochial, short-term whims of the electorate while still remaining under democratic control.

·       Global non-government organizations can help with research into causes and solutions, advocacy on behalf of the oppressed, education and service delivery, while maintaining openness and transparency.  We need global institutions to address global problems.

We work through the next level of detail on each of the above issues (more).  After considering this evidence, we’ve looked for a way to state our conclusions briefly, and we come to the following summary.

Is this the best way to state our conclusions in this area?  Click on feedback, or add a comment below, if you can improve the substance or the phrasing.

more                                                                                Statement 20

We value scientific input into public debate on the critical issues we face.  We look to transnational non-government organizations for balanced perspectives on social issues, economics and politics.