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Author: Future Agenda | https://www.futureagenda.org
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https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/page/8/
New perspectives on the future are gained from multiple expert discussions around the world. Our ten year foresights offer rich, insightful views on some of the most important changes shifts – and challenges - that lie ahead.
Escalating waste production and new attitudes, approaches, regulation and business models lead many to aim for an almost zero-waste society. Some commentators predict that the amount of waste being generated will double over the next twenty years. This is due to increasing population, increasing urbanisation and increasing consumption. The problem is shared with energy, food and water supplies because the richer people get, the more they use. Waste is already the source of almost 4% of the world’s greenhouse gases, mostly in the form of methane from rotting food. However, although great improvements have been made in dealing with it,…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/almost-zero-waste/
Advanced water purification, irrigation and desalination technologies are used to help communities to manage the growing supply/demand imbalance. As highlighted in the key resource constraints chapter, water is the resource over which many governments, corporations and communities have greatest concern for the future. As populations increase and move to urban areas, and as consumption rises in line with economic growth, water stress will be the main challenge for many parts of the world. At a basic level, many parts of Africa and Asia will suffer increased physical water stress as the available water per person falls below the UN minimum…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/water-management/
Trusting our digital credentials allows us to participate confidently in open global transactions to gain access to what we want when we want. Proving what is real in an increasingly complex world is seen as a significant emerging challenge by many organisations. Although individual companies and even sectors have their own solutions to the problem of verifying what is authentic, there isn’t a simple answer to this; nor is there likely to be. While this is a major challenge in the physical world, with the counterfeiting of everything from aircraft parts and pharmaceuticals to clothes and DVDs all on the…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/virtual-authenticity/
Increasing governmental focus on energy security and climate change drives the uptake of large-scale solar as the leading renewable supply. The combined pressures of rising global energy demand, increasing concern about climate change, greater focus on the advance of ‘peak oil’ and heightened awareness of the challenges around energy security are driving many countries to look for alternative energy sources. While long-term prospects rest on technological breakthroughs and the wider adoption of nuclear energy to decrease the use of fossil fuels, as highlighted in the first section, the next decade is still very much one in which oil, gas and…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/solar-sunrise/
Intelligent UAVs choose their victims themselves as the race for more focused military influence leads to the proliferation of assassination tools. Over the past couple of years, Afghanistan and Pakistan have seen a significant increase in the use of drone aircraft by the US military and other security services. They have become the proving ground for a fundamental shift in how military power is exercised, how information is collated and used and, ultimately, how wars will be fought. With a military budget that accounts for nearly half of the world’s military spend, the US has become increasingly attracted to drones…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/drone-wars/
Greater information overload moves our focus from simply accessing data to including the source of the insight to distinguish what we trust. As connectivity increases and the information being generated around the world rises, many of us will be faced with ever more data, insight and comment that we will have to try to make sense of. As was highlighted repeatedly in the Future Agenda programme, ‘the biggest challenge is simply to manage the huge amount of data out there’. Many see that we already have too much data, are too dependent on information and this prevents us making decisions:…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/credible-sources/
With more free agents and outsourcing, non-core functions within organisations are interchangeable and easily rebuilt around value-creating units. Organisations have already started to be more permeable and flexible. Increasing use of consultants, freelances and other temporary staff has blurred the boundary between employee and contractor in many large companies. In addition, the outsourcing of such functions as IT, HR, finance and other so called ‘back-office’ jobs, often to different countries, has saved money but also increased the complexity of the organisational framework. While many companies today still see themselves as entities with employees in control of a wide range of…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/corporate-lego/
The shift in global diet from rice to meat brings new sources of protein including lab-grown manufactured meats and high protein vegetable combinations. One of the common challenges with rising economic growth is that of increased resource consumption. As highlighted in the first section of this book, as GDP per capita increases so does food consumption: once people have more money available, one of the first things they do is to seek to improve their diet. Whether this involves an incremental shift to higher quality or more tasty foods or a more fundamental shift from, say, a rice-based diet to…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/alternative-proteins/
Informed choices, growth, congestion and regulation impact the world’s cities to drive a shift to more sustainable and efficient transport options. Although all cities are in many ways different in terms of layout and structure, and consequently have different transport options, many share similar issues and challenges around sustaining growth without gridlock setting in. With increasing recognition not just of the efficiency and emotional problems resulting from congestion but also of the environmental implications, many leading mayors and supporting administrations have been taking steps to encourage citizens to make alternative choices. In many developed-world cities, primary challenges include encouraging people…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/urban-immobility/
The acceptance of being tracked by your mobile is accelerated by ticket-less transport systems, increased surveillance and successful location-based services. Anyone who has used an iPhone will be aware that location services are now embedded in most smart-phones. By the start of 2010, there were over 6,000 location-based iPhone apps, with 600 new ones being released every month. Equally, those who make use of Google Latitude will know how easy it is to see where their friends are, in real time, on the basis of where their phones are. Facebook Places similarly allows you to openly share your whereabouts. For…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/people-tracking/
With increasing economic migration the total Muslim population of Europe is similar in size to that of Germany and a rising cultural/political influence. Migration has been a contentious subject for a number of years and, as politicians continue to avoid the heart of the issue and media misrepresent many of the arguments, the real implications are misunderstood. Yet, in terms of impacts on other issues, migration is perhaps the archetypal cross-cutting issue. In his initial perspective on the future of migration, Professor Richard Black stated that ‘immigrant integration and increasing diversity in Europe and the North are significant questions for…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/muslim-europe/
Mesh networks and ubiquitous mobile connections deliver the automated highways to improve safety, increase capacity and reduce congestion. The intelligent highway is a term used by many in the automotive industry and government bodies to describe a world where cars don’t crash, congestion does not occur and there are no accidents; a world where cars automatically detect a problem ahead and avoid it through either slowing down or taking alternative routes. Intelligent highways, when they arrive, will significantly reduce the number of deaths on the road and make travel smoother and faster, which will also mean that we use less…
Permalink: https://www.futureagenda.org/foresights/intelligent-highways/
