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 Hostility,
turbulence and disorder
Drawing on his work with the Global Scenario Group, mathematician
and biologist, Gilberto
Gallopin shared reflections and analysis about possible
alternative futures for humankind. He described the Barbarization
Scenario and its possible social and environmental outcomes.
We are at a Branch Point
Schizophrenia:
- Official triumphalism by Establishment (WB)
- Official recognition of environmental unsustainability (Rio)
+ increasing disparity (UNDP)
Contradiction between
- modernity's imperative towards growth and
- Earth's finite resources
Contradiction will be resolved. But how?
- Enlightened sustainable management?
- Social/environmental/economic catastrophe?
- Other?
Through a Class Darkly
Prediction of long-term future is impossible because:
- Incomplete knowledge - Inherent indeterminism of complex systems
(self-organization, etc.) Changing world, and futures depend also
on human choices not yet made.
- The only certainty: The future will be very different from the
past. Because of increasing connectedness, increased speed of
change, increasing complexity.
We are witnessing (and participating in) an explosion of novelty.
- simple extrapolations and projections can be dangerously misleading.
- Scenario analysis: NOT predict, but explore the possibilities
of the future(s).
Scenarios
The scenario approach. Combines science and imagination.
Scenario: coherent and plausible story about a path into the future,
ending with an image of the future. A possible course of events
leading to a resulting state of the world (image or snapshot of
the future).
Importance of scenarios: they direct attention to the unfolding
of alternatives and to branching points at which human actions can
significantly affect the future.
Help to clarify world views and values, challenge conventional
thinking and encourage debate.
Scenario can provide a common space to map and address critical
concerns of different stakeholders, and help discussion and debate.
Construction and interpretation of scenarios is influenced by
beliefs and theoretical assumptions of the analysts.
Importance of making the world view very explicit or, better,
include different world views in the discussion (e.g. GSG).
A Diversity of Tomorrows
Analysis we made (GSG) showed:
- Alternative, qualitatively different scenarios are possible
for the global system in the next 30-50 years.
- Some scenarios unfold continuously from the present (our 'Conventional
Worlds'), assuming continuation of current predominant consumerist
values
- and socio-economic structures.
- Some scenarios, equally possible, arise trough a rupture of
the historical trajectory ('Barbarization' and 'Great Transition').
- Today, most global discussions focus on small variations about
BAU or other conventional world scenario. These, however, are
in no way guaranteed, and may be the most unlikely.
- The seeds (signs) of all the futures we explored are with us,
now.
Trends of Our Times
This is about what we know is happening; there are not scenario.
Important trends:
- Life expectancy is improving almost everywhere (but not for
everyone).
- Risk of total war drastically reduced.
- Democratization and decentralization of authority (emphasis
on 'rights', Internet, political changes).
- Technological change. The 'New Technological Wave' (information,
biotechnology, nanotechnology).
- Economic growth (global economy is growing fast ( increasing
resource consumption throughput.
- Population growth (almost all in the South).
- Increasing inequity, gat between rich and poor. In South and
North, and between South and North. (In last three decades, ratio
of the shares of the richest and the poorest: worsened from 30:1
to 60:1 UNDP).
- Resource depletion (water, fossil fuel, trees, fisheries) 'Source
environmental problems'.
- Pollution ('Sink environmental problems') (toxic emissions,
global environmental change, access to water, air quality, O3).
Stepping on Thin Ice
We identified a set of mega driving forces (rather, clusters of
them) which we assume to be the main propellers of the global future:
Economic/geopolitical:
- End of Cold War
- Universal expansion of capitalism
- Acceleration of globalization
Social:
- Poverty
- National and international inequity.
Demographic:
- Population growth (concentrated in P)
- Population structure
Youthful in P
Aging in R
Environmental:
- Increasing environmental stress.
- Widespread ecosystems disturbances
- Increasing global ecological interdependence.
Technological:
- Continuation of technological revolution.
- Expansion of global information and communication systems
- Privatization of technological innovation.
Of all the scenarios we identified, all arising from the same
set of megadrivers, BAU is the most unlikely. Detailed and numerical
analysis of BAU pinpoints reveals types of de-stabilizing risks:
- Cumulative loads on Earth ('Sink' environmental problems).
- Resource depletion and exhaustion ('Source' environmental problems)
- Generalized vulnerability to perturbations and increasing likelihood
of
- global crisis. Loss of social and ecological resilience.
The Downward Spiral
Barbarization scenarios envision the possibility that the social,
economic and moral underpinnings of civilization deteriorate as
emerging problems overwhelm the coping capacity of societies.
What will happen if the global and national systems prove themselves
unable, or unwilling, to confront the stresses and challenges associated
to both Conventional World scenarios? If too late is done, or too
little? Most people (including many policy-makers) would be tempted
to assume that policy can always catch up with history; if too little
is done now, there is always the possibility to take stronger actions
in the future, and thus the problem will be solved.
The trouble with this notion is: it assumes an infinitely forgiving
world, ignoring irreversible processes and the possibility of structural
reorganizations of the global system leading to situations that
are, in practical terms, irrevocable.
Failure to address adequately the challenges posed by the Conventional
World Scenarios could result in incremental worsening of the global
situation (with some countries or groups doing better than others),
but also in drastic reaccommodations involving vicious circles leading
to nasty images of the future in which even the 'winners' are losers:
The Barbarization scenarios
Barbarization scenarios are driven by the values and socioeconomic
arrangements of the industrial era; competitive markets and private
investment remain the engines of economic growth and wealth allocation.
Humanity is unable to manage the resulting change and conventional
institutions ultimately unravel. The number of people living in
poverty increases while the gap between rich and poor grows (both
within and among countries). To make matters worse, social concern
is radically downgraded as governments gradually lose relevance
and power relative to large multinational corporations and global
market forces. At the same time, development aid goes down and is
increasingly limited to disaster relief.
A number of other consequences follow from the growing disparity
in income. Inundated by global media and tourism, millions of people
in underdeveloped regions become resentful of the immense differences
in lifestyle between rich and poor. The poor become convinced that
they have been cheated out of development and that their options
have been preempted by the wealthy.
With rapid population growth in the poorer regions, a huge international
youth culture emerges. Numbering in the billions, teenagers around
the world share remarkably similar expectations and attitudes, their
consumerist and nihilist tendencies being reinforced by entertainment
programs and advertising, that reach every corner of the Earth.
But these young people ultimately discover that the tantalizing
visions of "McWorld" are largely unattainable in their
current circumstances. This leads to massive waves of legal and
illegal migration to rich countries (and to areas of prosperity
within poor countries).
Despite some improvements in the richest countries, environmental
conditions continue to worsen. The unfettered expansion of market-based
economies leads to increased industrial activity and rising pollution.
Rapid urbanization displaces natural ecosystems and places local
environments under severe stress. Deepening rural poverty accelerates
soil degradation and deforestation. As freshwater becomes increasingly
scarce, conflicts over water emerge among countries that share rivers.
Already brittle marine fisheries collapse under the additional pressure,
depriving a billion people of their primary source of protein. Climate
change causes hardship for subsistence farmers in many regions.
Famine becomes more frequent and more severe in Africa and elsewhere,
while the response capacity of relief agencies declines. Mortality
rates increase as a result of the growing environmental degradation,
which aids the emergence of new diseases and the resurgence of old
ones (Miller 1989).
Owing to the growing socioeconomic inequality, increased morbidity,
and reduced access to water, grazing land, and other natural resources,
social tensions become more widespread and intense. International
discord mounts due to widening disparities between regions as well
as growing economic competition and the progressive decline in development
assistance. People in rich countries increasingly fear that their
well-being is being threatened by factors they associate with poor
countries, including migration, terrorism, disease, and global environmental
degradation. At the same time, a new type of have-not emerges as
a significant factor in rich countries, namely, the educated but
long-term unemployed.
As such tensions increase, the incidence of violent confrontation
rises, sparked by long-standing ethnic and religious differences,
politically motivated terrorism, struggles over scarce natural resources,
competing nationalisms, and commercial conflicts. By and large,
however, military actions take the form of multiple small-scale
engagements rather than major wars. At the same time, civil order
progressively breaks down as a kind of criminal anarchy prevails
in many areas (Kaplan 1994). These developments take an increasing
toll on economic growth, causing more and more resources to be diverted
to security and international investment in troubled regions to
plummet. In areas of prolonged conflict, both environmental protection
and the maintenance of infrastructure are neglected, reversing decades
of progress.
Politically, a jagged pattern of city-states and nebulous regional
formations emerges. Some formerly prosperous industrial countries
join the ranks of the impoverished. Economic development ceases,
technological progress stagnates except for efforts to provide better
security for the privileged, and no individual country is able to
assume a leadership role.
Barbarization can lead to two basic outcomes, differing in the
degree to which the prevailing power structure -governments, transnational
corporations, international organizations, and the armed forces-
manage to maintain some sense of order. In the Breakdown variant,
it is simply impossible to control the tide of violence flowing
from disaffected individuals, terrorist organizations, ethno-religious
groups, economic factions, and organized criminals. Civil order
largely breaks down, ultimately leading to a general collapse of
social, cultural, and political institutions along with the market
economy. Many regions experience a return to semitribal or feudal
social structures. Although population continues to grow for some
time in the poorer regions (in a vicious cycle of poverty and high
birth rates), it eventually decreases everywhere as mortality rates
surge in response to the economic decline, infrastructural collapse,
and the degradation of the resource base. In a bitter irony, equity
increases because everyone is poorer. If such a breakdown were to
occur, it could persist for many decades before evolution to a higher
level was again possible.
In the Fortress World variant of the Barbarization scenario, powerful
regional and international entities manage to impose some form of
authoritarian order on the populace at large. In this variant, a
well-off elite flourishes in protected enclaves (mostly in the historically
rich countries) while the majority remains mired in poverty and
denied basic human rights.
To preserve their access to the goods and services provided by
the environment, the elite place large areas under protected status
and exclude the poor from them. Along the same lines, they put strategic
reserves of fossil fuels, minerals, fresh water and germplasm diversity
under military control. Pollution is kept low within the fortress
by means of increased efficiency, recycling, and external dumping;
outside the fortress, environmental conditions deteriorate dramatically.
Although the system embodied in the Fortress World variant would
probably contain the seeds of its own destruction, it could last
for decades if it were able to control popular unrest. Only an uprising
by the outside majority could threaten it, and even then their success
would probably hinge on fissures in the alliance of dominant groups.
Now What?
This is not a prediction, and this is not the only possible scenario.
But it is a plausible scenario and, for many living and the poor
parts of the world (and even in the not so poor), it s already happening.
The possibility that this scenario is lurking in our future has
important implications for our thinking.
For instance, it becomes essential to reexamine our actions and
policies (often oriented towards the apparently natural goal of
moving through an 'optimal' trajectory) in order to insure that
we are not, at the same time, approaching inadvertently a 'pessimal'
trajectory. In other words, rather than look only towards reaching
the 'summit', the best of all possibilities, we should move away
from the abyss.
What are we doing to help to move away from the path to barbarization
and towards a sustainable (and desirable) society?
What Can We Do?
At times of rapid change and turbulence associated with self-organization
and structural changes, small actions can have profound effects.
Small groups can make a difference, and new ideas can germinate
and flower.
I hope I showed that the future may hold vastly different tomorrows.
And that complacency with present trends may be very dangerous.
But it is also true that the future is not written, and that we
can choose to change course.
One thing seems very clear: there are no separate solutions, one
for the poor and one for the rich countries and peoples; we are
all living in an increasingly interdependent world, and either we
are able to find a global solution, or there will be no solution
at all
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