2030

In the coming years, prosperity in Germany will have to be generated through technology and knowledge to an increasing degree. Technological progress will become the sole driver of growth in the long run as growth contributed by labour and capital declines in the face of demographic change.
Germany must now chart the course for this transformation.

Radical technological change will slash marginal costs, opening up completely new business models. This will change value added in key sectors including mobility, healthcare and energy, and increase integration with services.

Germany must take more concerted action than it has so far to set the course for industrial policy going forward. Although Germany still boasts a range of outstanding benefits as a business location, it must tackle weak points in the start-up environment, venture capital, public investment and regulatory parameters for key technologies.

The strategic priorities of German industrial policy must continue to be the deepening of the European single market and the international trade and investment regime. Bilateral and multilateral trade policy has moved into rougher waters while the untapped potential right here in the European Union
is wholly underestimated.

In the digital world too, a good balance must be found between productivity and social cohesion. While this vision is still forming on the horizon, the political course taken now will determine whether it will turn into a positive or a plaintive reality.

Dramatic demographic shifts are transforming the world’s consumer landscape. Our new research finds just three groups of consumers are set to generate half of global urban consumption growth from 2015 to 2030.
Until the turn of this century, population growth generated more than half of all global consumption. But between 2015 and 2030, three-quarters of global consumption growth will be driven by individuals spending more. This shift has profound implications for companies. What’s now important are emerging demographics: the latest report from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) finds that nine groups will generate three-quarters of global urban consumption growth to 2030, and just three of these will generate half of consumption growth and have the power to reshape global consumer markets over the next 15 years.

This publication is the third in a series of newsletters dedicated to raising awareness of global trends analysis and how future scenarios may affect Latin America. It summarizes a report by the UN Economic and Social Council on the importance of strengthening strategic predictive capabilities for policy makers, particularly in developing countries.

The report, Strategic foresight for the post-2015 development agenda, delineates the priorities of the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development.

The summary accompanies a presentation by Dialogue senior fellow Sergio Bitar to the commission in May 2015 in Geneva, designed to complement the main ideas and proposals in their report. We are also pleased to include an essay by Amy Zalman, CEO and president of the World Future Society, on governance as it relates to anticipating global trends.

A dedicated goal for water has recently been endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly as part of the sustainable development goal (SDG) framework. This study provides an assessment of the global costs of meeting the WASH-related targets of Goal #6. The targets assessed include achieving universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all (target 6.1), achieving access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all, and ending open defecation (target 6.2). The estimates include 140 countries, or 85% of the world's population, focusing on developing countries. Costs estimated cover those of capital investment, program delivery, operations, and major capital maintenance.

This paper provides estimates of investment costs, both public and private, required to eliminate chronic dietary energy deficits, or to achieve zero hunger by 2030. This target is consistent with achieving both the Sustainable Development Goal 2, to eliminate hunger by 2030, and the Sustainable Development Goal 1, to eradicate poverty. The study adopts a reference 'baseline' scenario, reflecting a “business as usual” situation, to estimate the additional investment requirements. In this scenario, around 650 million people will still suffer from hunger in 2030. We then estimate the investment requirements to eliminate hunger by 2030. Hunger is eliminated through a combination of social protection and targeted “pro-poor” rural investments. The first component aims to bring the poor immediately to the US$1.25/day poverty line income in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms through social protection for a “Transfer to cover the Poverty Gap” (PGT). The second component requires additional investment to accelerate pro-poor rural growth of incomes and employment particularly in rural areas, where most of the poor live, than in the business as usual scenario. Targeted pro-poor rural, including rural and agricultural, investments are required to raise the earned incomes of the poor. This would, in turn, reduce the need for social protection to cover the PGT. The analysis is complemented by looking at alternative ways to achieve such pro-poor rural growth.

What might the future of mobility be in China in 2030? Mobility is defined as the ability to travel from one location to another, regardless of mode or purpose. RAND researchers, working with the Institute for Mobility Research, used a six-step process to develop two scenarios that address this question. The six steps are (1) select influencing areas (domains that affect mobility directly: demographics, economics, energy, and transportation supply and constraints); (2) elicit projections on descriptors (via expert workshops in Washington, D.C., and Beijing); (3) integrate these into scenario frameworks (using two analysis methods and a computer-based tool); (4) produce scenario narratives (based on the clusters produced by the tool); (5) draw qualitative consequences for future mobility; and (6) create a wild-card scenario (by looking at events that might disrupt trends).

Three key drivers differentiate the resulting scenarios: economic growth, the presence of constraints on vehicle ownership and driving, and environmental conditions. In scenario 1, the Great Reset, continued (albeit slightly slower than previous) economic growth fuels demand for automobiles, including hybrids, but cities also invest heavily in transit and nonmotorized infrastructure. Scenario 2, Slowing but Growing, assumes that the economy goes through a downturn marked by instability and that future growth in travel demand is lower than in the first scenario. By making potential long-term mobility futures more vivid, the aim is to help decisionmakers at different levels of government and in the private sector better anticipate and prepare for change.

This report summarizes recent research concerning the major forces and underlying trends that are likely to shape the environment of North America in 2030. The intention of this report is not to present a prediction of the future. Rather, it is to consider the possibilities that the future might hold in light of the environmental and social stresses facing North America and the world at this time.

The report has been produced in response to a request by the Council of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). It complements the CEC’s 2008 report, The North American Mosaic (CEC 2008), which focused on recent environmental trends and divided issues by subject or medium—air and atmosphere, biodiversity and ecosystems, pollutants, and water. This allows for the telling of a coherent story for each issue, but can hide the interconnections among issues. This report takes a more systems approach, following a Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response model. Thus, it follows more directly from the discussion paper prepared for the June 2008 conference, North America 2030: An Environmental Outlook, hosted by the CEC’s Joint Public Advisory Committee (Stratos Inc. and IISD 2008), upon which it expands. Together, these and other initiatives are intended to assist the CEC in the consideration and development of its work program by highlighting possible areas for cooperative action to support environmental mitigation, adaptation and innovation strategies across all three countries.

Several factors restrict the scope of this report. First, as a review, it is necessarily limited to available work to-date. Second, because it takes a North American perspective, the choice was to focus primarily, although not exclusively, on cases where consistent and comparable information is available for Canada, Mexico, and the United States. This precluded using some country-specific data, which provide greater within-country detail and may differ from similar data presented in international data sets. Third, there are numerous aspects of the environment for which historic data are available, but for which there has been no effort to make forward-looking projections. Fourth, each of these restrictions is exacerbated by the desire to include quantitative information as much as possible. Finally, most studies, including those explored here, have tended not to consider in detail the possibility of dramatic, albeit imaginable, surprises that would alter their projections significantly.

This report constitutes an attempt to audit Kenya’s Vision 2030 from both an income inequalities and a gender inequalities perspective, and to assess the ability of the Vision to respond to both of these persistent development challenges. Historically, Kenya has been one of the most unequal societies in the world. The launch of Vision 2030 thus provided a key opportunity to suggest ways of better conceptualizing and addressing these inequalities for the good of development in the country. The rationale for this audit was grounded in what is now a well-acknowledged fact, that both income and gender inequalities hinder development. They have been found to negatively affect development efforts and present a challenge to the sustainability of development gains at individual, household and country level. The objectives of the audit are to contribute to enhancing development planning and resource allocation towards greater equity and equality. The audit is intended to help build understandings of government actors engaged in development planning and resource allocation, as well as their partners in civil society and the private sector, on the impacts of inequalities on development performance generally and specifically.

This Agenda is a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity. It also seeks to strengthen universal peace in larger freedom. We recognize that eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, is the greatest global challenge and an indispensable requirement for sustainable development.
All countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership, will implement this plan. We are resolved to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet. We are determined to take the bold and transformative steps which are urgently needed to shift the world on to a sustainable and resilient path. As we embark on this collective journey, we pledge that no one will be left behind.
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets which we are announcing today demonstrate the scale and ambition of this new universal Agenda. They seek to build on the Millennium Development Goals and complete what they did not achieve. They seek to realize the human rights of all and to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. They are integrated and indivisible and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental.
The Goals and targets will stimulate action over the next 15 years in areas of critical importance for humanity and the planet.

In 2030, will the Internet and related information and communications technologies (ICT) continue to drive global innovation and prosperity? Or, will that bright promise be swamped by an unstable and insecure Internet, so overwhelmed by non-stop attacks that it has become an increasing drag on economic growth? The answers, as far as we can predict, are not promising and mean the difference in tens of trillions of dollars in global economic growth over the next fifteen years.
So far, cyberspace has been safe enough, secure enough, and resilient enough for the past decades to re-invent nearly every industry, create a ’hyperconnected world,’ and transform the global economy.