A peep into the future

The report on global trends published by the American intelligence presents a bleak picture. A summary by SUDHANSHU RANADE.

A MAJOR report titled "Global Trends 2015" has just been released by the United States intelligence community after extended and widespread consultations with experts. What follows is a summary of some of the major findings.

The world's population would have increased from 6.1 to 7.2 billion. More than 95 per cent of this increase will take place in developing countries, nearly all of it in rapidly expanding urban areas. Some developing countries will see an increase in the working-age population as hundreds of millions of children move on to adulthood. The population of high-income developed countries, however, will age and grow smaller as fertility rates fall and life expectancies increase. Europe and Japan will somehow need to conjure up 110 million more working age people by delaying retirement, drawing more women into the work force and by increasing the inflow of migrants. Migration, however, will cause problems of assimilation, and cultural identities will come under strain.

More than half the world's populations will be urban by 2015. Problems of housing, transport and air and water quality will become ever more serious.

AIDS will be a major problem not only in Africa but also in India, South East Asia and possibly China. In some parts of Africa, life expectancy will drop by as much as 30 to 40 years, generating more than 40 million orphans, which in turn will increase poverty, crime and instability.

As land is ever more intensively used, arable lands will get ever more degraded. Tropical forests will dwindle, coral reefs will be disturbed, and more and more species will become more and more scarce, while many vanish altogether. The seasonal ozone hole over the Antarctic will continue to expand for at least the next two decades, thereby increasing the risk of skin cancer in Australia, Argentina, and Chile.

More than three billion people, about half the world's population in 2015, will live in countries that are "water-stressed". Water tables under some of the major grain-producing areas in northern China and India have already been falling at a rate of 3-10 feet per year. More than 30 countries receive more than one-third of their water from outside their borders. So, as in the case of rivers that flow across state boundaries in India, international disputes too will be ever more acrimonious.

Developed countries will continue to develop, the gap between the most and the least developed countries, and, within countries, between the most and the least developed regions, will grow. "The rising tide of the global economy will create many winners, but it will not lift all boats". Moscow will face the uphill task of adjusting to its dramatically reduced circumstances. Whether, in the process, regional stability is preserved or upset, only the future will tell. Russia will maintain the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world and its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council as the last vestiges of its former glory. The rapid rise in the salience and ambitions of India and China too can cause adjustment problems.

Criminal organisations and networks based in North America, Western Europe, China, Colombia, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria and Russia will expand the scale and scope of their activities. For specific operations, they will form loose alliances with one another, with petty criminals, and with insurgents in various parts of the world. They will corrupt leaders of unstable, economically fragile or failing states, and will try to insinuate themselves into legitimate operations of various sorts.

Internal conflicts, particularly those arising from communal disputes, will be bitter, vicious, long-lasting and difficult to terminate. If left to fester, such conflicts will spill over into inter-State conflicts as neighbouring countries try to exploit opportunities for gain, or limit damage to themselves.

In India, the economically and politically backward, and slowly- growing, northern states, which today account for about 40 per cent of the country's population, will have gained another 10 percentage points by the middle of the century; even as the share of the four southern States falls from 23 to 16 per cent. Deforestation in India and Nepal will exacerbate pollution, flooding and land degradation in Bangladesh.

Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of mismanagement, divisive politics, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction. The threat of a major conflict between India and Pakistan will overshadow all other regional issues. Continued turmoil in Afghanistan and Pakistan will spill over into Kashmir and other areas of the subcontinent. In the event of war, to the extent that cities are targeted, civilian casualties will be highly relative to those among combatants.

The widening India-Pakistan gap, destabilising in its own right, will be accompanied by deep political, economic and social disparities within the two countries.

The population of the Middle East will be significantly larger, poorer, more urban and more disillusioned. Weak educational systems will produce one or more generations of people who do not have sufficient technical and problem-solving skills to take charge of their lives.

Israel will probably have attained a cold peace with its neighbours, but will have few social, economic or cultural ties with them. A Palestinian state would probably have come into being, but Israeli-Palestinian tensions will persist and occasionally erupt into crises.

Most African states will miss out on economic growth. On most criteria of development, they will fall further and further behind. Only a few countries on this continent will do better. At the other extreme, in a handful of

African countries, the State will, for all practical purposes, have withered away, leaving citizens to fend for themselves.

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