This document discusses future global trends and scenarios based on input from over 50 CSIRO scientists. It identifies several key megatrends that will shape the future, including a more digital and interconnected world, increasing urbanization and mobility, divergent demographics like an aging population, and needing to do more with less resources. The document also discusses potential megashocks like pandemics or climate change and presents scenarios for how the identified megatrends could play out globally in the future.
1. Our Future World Trends, Risks and Scenarios Stefan Hajkowicz and James Moody With input from over 50 CSIRO scientists and business analysts
2. A CSIR Council Meeting in 1935 Thinking about the future in the past… How would their world change? Australian War Memorial www.awm.gov.au Darwin, 19 February 1942 National Museum of Australia Suburbia
3. Background – rapid growth in planning Rigby, Bilodeau, 2007. Harvard Business Review Study published in the Harvard Business Review in 2007 Survey of 8,500 global executives and 25 futuristic planning tools. Finds rapid growth in demand for these tools post September 11 as corporations need to handle an increasingly volatile world. Everyone wants to know
4. Different Types of Futures Voros (2003) adapted this diagram from Hancock and Bezold (1994) in the Healthcare Forum Journal Different futures
5. It’s More than Forecasting Actual oil price (other lines show predictions) Lynch, 2002. The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance. More than forecasting…
6. In the 1920s we controlled prickly pear In the 1930s we solved coast disease – deadly to sheep In the 1940s we helped win the war – radar and repellent for malarial mossies Australian War Memorial www.awm.gov.au Darwin, 19 February 1942 In the 1950s we CSIRO developed the first permanent press pleating in fabrics. In the 1960s we helped track the Apollo missions with the Parkes Telescope In the 1970s we developed fire resistant textiles – this helped reduce incidents of children with serious burn wounds
7. In the 1980s we, in conjunction with the Reserve Bank, released the first non-fibrous, polymer (plastic) banknote. In the 1990s, we developed the AXcessaustralia low emission vehicle. In the 2000s we worked out how much water was in the Murray Darling – allowing new markets to operate In the 2010s we’re (currently) working out how to deliver welfare services and break cycles of entrenched poverty
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9. On the move Urbanising and increased mobility Divergent demographics Older, hungry and more demanding i World Digital and natural convergence More from less a world of limited resources A personal touch Personalisation of products and services The Megatrends
11. Source: Mudd GM, 2009. The Sustainability of Mining in Australia: Key Production Trends and Their Environmental Implications for the Future. Department of Civil Engineering, Monash University and Mineral Policy Institute. More from less Declining ore grades Production of ore Grade of ore
12. Expenditure on offshore petroleum exploration has been rising at 20% per year for 30 years And more quickly in recent years jumping from A$857 million in 2005 to $2.89 billion in 2008. Data Source: Australian Bureau of statistics 2009 (Cat No., 8412.0) Image source: Microsoft clipart
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14. Evening shadows, backwater of the Murray, South Australia H J Johnstone, Britain/Australia, 1835-1907, 1880, London Source: The Art Gallery of South Australia
15. Some of the world’s leading coral reef scientists estimate that by 2030 60% of existing coral reefs will be destroyed. Data source: Hughes et al. (2003) Science . Vol 301 Image source: Microsoft Clipart
16. World energy consumption is forecast to increase from 472 quadrillion Btu in 2006 to 678 quadrillion Btu in 2030 - a total increase of 44 percent. Data source: International Energy Outlook 2009, Chapter 1. US Government, Energy Information Administration Image source: Microsoft Clipart
17. Countries which share rivers have a statistically higher probability of military disputes. If the river basin is under drought stress the chances of war a higher again. Source: Gleditsch et al . (2006) Political Geography Vol 25. Image source: Microsoft Clipart
19. A personal touch Personalisation of products and services Australia Share of Services in Whole Economy Source: PMSEIC Report on Services Innovation Source: The Australian, IT News, 7 October 2009
20. It is estimated that 30% of a typical workday is lost processing irrelevant information. And 42% of people admit to using the wrong information at least once a week. Source: Basex survey, published by Xerox Image source: Microsoft Clipart
21. The debt to asset ratio rose from 9% to 19% from 1990 to 2008. Australians now hold A$1.1 trillion worth of debt. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2009; Cat No 4102.0) Image source: Microsoft Clipart
22. Evicted 1887 Blandford Fletcher, England 1858–1936, Queensland Art Gallery
24. Image source: The Chinese UPLA urban planning network, http:// www.upla.cn China needs to build 3 cities larger than Sydney every year until 2030 to accommodate rural to urban migration. Statistic derived from analysis of the United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects, The 2007 Revision Population Database
25. Jet aircraft passengers worldwide travelled 4,621 billion kilometres in 2008 and this is forecast to rise to 12,090 billion by 2028. This represents growth of 5% per year compared to global GDP of 3% per year. Data source: Boeing Current Market Outlook 2009-2028 Image source: Stefan Hajkowicz
27. In 2005 5% of Indian citizens were middle class. It is forecast to be 20% by the year 2015 and 40% by the year 2025. Data source: The Economist, 12 Feb 2009 Image source: Microsoft Clipart
28. The world must produce more food in the next 50 years than in the previous 500 years if it is to feed itself. Data source: Dr Brian Keating, CSIRO Sustainable Agriculture Flagship Image source: Microsoft Clipart
29. The world loses 12 million hectares of productive agricultural land each year. This will displace some 50 million people over the next decade. Data source: IFAD (2008) Desertification. International Fund for Agricultural Development, Rome, Italy. Image source: Microsoft clipart
30. In 2002 13% of Australians were over 65 years old. It will be 27% by 2051. Data source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (Cat. No. 3222.0)
31. Divergent demographics Shift towards chronic illness Worldwide cause of death is shifting towards non-communicable diseases and accidents and away from infectious disease (Source: WHO, 2008; p8)
33. Every device connected to the internet needs a unique IP address. After 40 years we consumed 90% of 4 billion IP addresses. A new system is planned which can accommodate 3.4×10 38 unique addresses. Data source: ICANN (2007) Factsheet Ipv6 – The Internet’s vital expansion
34. The number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit, at the same cost, doubles every 1.5 years. Data source: Moore’s Law, Moore (1965) Electronica, Vol 38 Image source: Microsoft clipart
37. Megashocks Sudden, hard-to-predict, major consequences Source: World Economic Form, 2009 Global Risks Report Likelihood Severity Extreme climate change related weather Biodiversity loss Terrorism Nanotechnology risks What might matter most for Australia ? 2-10 10-50 Severity (US$ billions) 50-250 250-1000 >1000 <1% 1-5% 5-10% 10-20% >20% Likelihood Increased Stable Decreased New risk for 2009 Change since last year Asset price collapse Hard-landing for Chinese economy Pandemic Oil and gas price spikes
39. Thank you Contact Us Phone: 1300 363 400 or +61 3 9545 2176 Email: enquiries@csiro.au Web: www.csiro.au
Editor's Notes
Process since July 2009 Intranet site >50 scientists and business analysts >100 trends 19 megatrends at workshop 5 megatrends after workshop Open to organization for comment/review Risks from world economic forum Scenarios Reviewed by board and executive Now open to the external world
The aim of this session is to engage in a discussion about the future. We would like to seek your views on the draft foresight document. We will also seek your views on the most significant challenges facing the nation and where CSIRO should be investing its resources.
The first main output of our work were the five megatrends. They are shown here as overlapping circles as all are interlinked. Beneath the 5 megatrends lie the 19 megatrends identified at the Sydney workshop in August, over 100 trends on the Futures intranet site and detailed research and literature review work. In summary the 5 megatrends are: 1. More from less. This relates to the world’s depleting natural resources and increasing demand for those resources through economic and population growth. Coming decades will see a focus on resource use efficiency. 2. A personal touch. Growth of the services sector of western economies is being followed by a second wave of innovation aimed at tailoring and targeting services. 3. Divergent demographics. The populations of OECD countries are ageing and experiencing lifestyle and diet related health problems. At the same time there are high fertility rates and problems of not enough food for millions in poor countries. 4. On the move. People are changing jobs and careers more often, moving house more often, commuting further to work and travelling around the world more often. 5. iWorld. Everything in the natural world will have a digital counterpart. Computing power and memory storage are improving rapidly. Many more devices are getting connected to the internet. To stay within time I will now show a few selected graphs/images for each megatrend selected from the hundreds of examples in our database.
The first main output of our work were the five megatrends. They are shown here as overlapping circles as all are interlinked. Beneath the 5 megatrends lie the 19 megatrends identified at the Sydney workshop in August, over 100 trends on the Futures intranet site and detailed research and literature review work. In summary the 5 megatrends are: 1. More from less. This relates to the world’s depleting natural resources and increasing demand for those resources through economic and population growth. Coming decades will see a focus on resource use efficiency. 2. A personal touch. Growth of the services sector of western economies is being followed by a second wave of innovation aimed at tailoring and targeting services. 3. Divergent demographics. The populations of OECD countries are ageing and experiencing lifestyle and diet related health problems. At the same time there are high fertility rates and problems of not enough food for millions in poor countries. 4. On the move. People are changing jobs and careers more often, moving house more often, commuting further to work and travelling around the world more often. 5. iWorld. Everything in the natural world will have a digital counterpart. Computing power and memory storage are improving rapidly. Many more devices are getting connected to the internet. To stay within time I will now show a few selected graphs/images for each megatrend selected from the hundreds of examples in our database.
At the year of federation, 1901, Australia’s economy was riding on the sheep’s back. Agriculture was contributing 20% of gross domestic product with many additional indirect industries (Australian Bureau of Statistics). However, over the next 100 years agriculture’s share of GDP dropped to below 3% as new industries grew. During the 20 th Century we looked below the soil surface and found new mineral wealth. Today the mining industry is a mainstay of the economy. It represents $133 billion of exports, or 48% of the total, and contributes some 200,000 jobs (Mineral Council of Australia, website). However, we know that whilst demand is on the rise, especially from India and China, mineral ore grades are declining. This graph shows the gradual and permanent decline in ore grades for copper, gold, lead, zinc, uranium, nickel, diamonds and silver. As a consequence mining companies are having to expend more effort to locate and extract mineral resources. For example, expenditure on offshore petroleum exploration in Australia has risen, on average, at 20% per year over the last three decades and more quickly in recent years jumping from A$857 million in 2005 to $2.89 billion in 2008 (Australian Bureau of Statistics). Science and technology can provides improved techniques of exploration, extraction and processing. In some cases research will help regions adjust to new industries as mines close. Mineral resources are one example of how we need to find “more from less”. There is rising demand and dwindling supply. Our detailed reports explore how this is happening for other natural resources such as water, energy, biodiversity, agricultural land and clean air.
The first main output of our work were the five megatrends. They are shown here as overlapping circles as all are interlinked. Beneath the 5 megatrends lie the 19 megatrends identified at the Sydney workshop in August, over 100 trends on the Futures intranet site and detailed research and literature review work. In summary the 5 megatrends are: 1. More from less. This relates to the world’s depleting natural resources and increasing demand for those resources through economic and population growth. Coming decades will see a focus on resource use efficiency. 2. A personal touch. Growth of the services sector of western economies is being followed by a second wave of innovation aimed at tailoring and targeting services. 3. Divergent demographics. The populations of OECD countries are ageing and experiencing lifestyle and diet related health problems. At the same time there are high fertility rates and problems of not enough food for millions in poor countries. 4. On the move. People are changing jobs and careers more often, moving house more often, commuting further to work and travelling around the world more often. 5. iWorld. Everything in the natural world will have a digital counterpart. Computing power and memory storage are improving rapidly. Many more devices are getting connected to the internet. To stay within time I will now show a few selected graphs/images for each megatrend selected from the hundreds of examples in our database.
Agriculture’s share of GDP gradually shrunk from 20% to 3% during the 20th Century. A key reason is growth in the services sector. The services sector includes banking, finance, taxis, restaurants, movies, and the list goes on. In 1970 55% of our economy was in services. Today it’s over 75%. And that’s pretty much the same story for the OECD (PMSEIC). This transition for western economies is well known. But what we’re now seeing are the ripple effects as governments, companies and people change the way they operate. We reckon that there will be a huge demand, from providers and customers, for services that are customized, simple, confidential and quick. Industry is responding. For example, today’s i Phones have over 90,000 personalised applications. And there are more every day.
The first main output of our work were the five megatrends. They are shown here as overlapping circles as all are interlinked. Beneath the 5 megatrends lie the 19 megatrends identified at the Sydney workshop in August, over 100 trends on the Futures intranet site and detailed research and literature review work. In summary the 5 megatrends are: 1. More from less. This relates to the world’s depleting natural resources and increasing demand for those resources through economic and population growth. Coming decades will see a focus on resource use efficiency. 2. A personal touch. Growth of the services sector of western economies is being followed by a second wave of innovation aimed at tailoring and targeting services. 3. Divergent demographics. The populations of OECD countries are ageing and experiencing lifestyle and diet related health problems. At the same time there are high fertility rates and problems of not enough food for millions in poor countries. 4. On the move. People are changing jobs and careers more often, moving house more often, commuting further to work and travelling around the world more often. 5. iWorld. Everything in the natural world will have a digital counterpart. Computing power and memory storage are improving rapidly. Many more devices are getting connected to the internet. To stay within time I will now show a few selected graphs/images for each megatrend selected from the hundreds of examples in our database.
The first main output of our work were the five megatrends. They are shown here as overlapping circles as all are interlinked. Beneath the 5 megatrends lie the 19 megatrends identified at the Sydney workshop in August, over 100 trends on the Futures intranet site and detailed research and literature review work. In summary the 5 megatrends are: 1. More from less. This relates to the world’s depleting natural resources and increasing demand for those resources through economic and population growth. Coming decades will see a focus on resource use efficiency. 2. A personal touch. Growth of the services sector of western economies is being followed by a second wave of innovation aimed at tailoring and targeting services. 3. Divergent demographics. The populations of OECD countries are ageing and experiencing lifestyle and diet related health problems. At the same time there are high fertility rates and problems of not enough food for millions in poor countries. 4. On the move. People are changing jobs and careers more often, moving house more often, commuting further to work and travelling around the world more often. 5. iWorld. Everything in the natural world will have a digital counterpart. Computing power and memory storage are improving rapidly. Many more devices are getting connected to the internet. To stay within time I will now show a few selected graphs/images for each megatrend selected from the hundreds of examples in our database.
Just briefly I do want to mention a few other dimensions to the discordant demographics megatrend. The first is the changing cause of illness facing the world – both developed and developing. There’s going to be a huge shift towards non-communicable diseases relative to infectious diseases. This chart shows projections from the world health organization out to 2030. You can see that chronic illness makes up over 80% of deaths in thirty years time. The data is for the whole world but, although you might not think it, the trend applies both in wealthy and poor countries. It’s not that science can afford to ignore infectious disease. To the contrary more effort is needed. In the risk section I’ll talk about pandemics. But our research effort needs to be directed towards new lifestyle related illnesses. Other aspects of discordant demographics include rising rates of overweight and obese people in OECD countries, food security threats worldwide and an emerging middle class in India and China. Just on that last one India was 5% middle class in 2005 and by 2015 will be 40% middle class. That’s an enormous change with new demand for fridges, cars, televisions and holidays to Australia. So discordant demographics covers a large base. We think science and technology will play a major role in finding answers.
The first main output of our work were the five megatrends. They are shown here as overlapping circles as all are interlinked. Beneath the 5 megatrends lie the 19 megatrends identified at the Sydney workshop in August, over 100 trends on the Futures intranet site and detailed research and literature review work. In summary the 5 megatrends are: 1. More from less. This relates to the world’s depleting natural resources and increasing demand for those resources through economic and population growth. Coming decades will see a focus on resource use efficiency. 2. A personal touch. Growth of the services sector of western economies is being followed by a second wave of innovation aimed at tailoring and targeting services. 3. Divergent demographics. The populations of OECD countries are ageing and experiencing lifestyle and diet related health problems. At the same time there are high fertility rates and problems of not enough food for millions in poor countries. 4. On the move. People are changing jobs and careers more often, moving house more often, commuting further to work and travelling around the world more often. 5. iWorld. Everything in the natural world will have a digital counterpart. Computing power and memory storage are improving rapidly. Many more devices are getting connected to the internet. To stay within time I will now show a few selected graphs/images for each megatrend selected from the hundreds of examples in our database.
Lastly is the geeky megatrend which has been called i World – it might or might not have something to do with i Phones, i Pods… etc. In 1965 the co-founder of the Intel software company, Gordon Moore, published a paper titled “ Cramming more components onto integrated circuits ”. Now known as Moore’s law this tells us the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit, at the same cost, doubles every 1.5 years. It still seems to be holding pretty well. This improvement in processing power means that tomorrow’s devices can be smaller, they can process information faster, they can hold more information and they have much more powerful sensors capable of picking up and processing much more visual imagery. This slide shows a picture of a new generation of handheld gadgets called reality browsers. This gadget can be pointed at an item of interest in the real world. A restaurant. A statue. A train station. It can then instantly download relevant information. It can tell you what’s on the menu. How much it costs. The historical significance of the statue and the time for the next train departure. This is partly possible through what is known as “cloud computing”. The device itself may not have all the required computing powers. But it can seamlessly access computers and databases over the web to assemble all the information elsewhere which it then accesses.
The first main output of our work were the five megatrends. They are shown here as overlapping circles as all are interlinked. Beneath the 5 megatrends lie the 19 megatrends identified at the Sydney workshop in August, over 100 trends on the Futures intranet site and detailed research and literature review work. In summary the 5 megatrends are: 1. More from less. This relates to the world’s depleting natural resources and increasing demand for those resources through economic and population growth. Coming decades will see a focus on resource use efficiency. 2. A personal touch. Growth of the services sector of western economies is being followed by a second wave of innovation aimed at tailoring and targeting services. 3. Divergent demographics. The populations of OECD countries are ageing and experiencing lifestyle and diet related health problems. At the same time there are high fertility rates and problems of not enough food for millions in poor countries. 4. On the move. People are changing jobs and careers more often, moving house more often, commuting further to work and travelling around the world more often. 5. iWorld. Everything in the natural world will have a digital counterpart. Computing power and memory storage are improving rapidly. Many more devices are getting connected to the internet. To stay within time I will now show a few selected graphs/images for each megatrend selected from the hundreds of examples in our database.
In 2009 the World Economic Forum identified 36 major risks to the global system. The vertical access shows the severity of consequences in billions of US dollars. The horizontal access shows the probability of event occurrence. Here we have identified some risks that, we think, matter most to the Australian Research, Science and Technology Sector. For the sake of brevity I will focus on a three ( press page down – others will fade ). Firstly, is the risk of asset price collapse. This has a global cost of over US$1 trillion and above 20% probability. Australia is vulnerable, partly, due to our high debt levels and superannuation holdings. The debt to asset ratio in Australia rose from 9% to 19% from 1990 to 2008 (Australian Bureau if Statistics, 2009) . Australians now hold $1.1 trillion worth of debt. On 30 June 2008 Australian superannuation assets were worth $1.17 trillion (Allen Consulting Group, 2009) . Secondly, is a risk of an economic downturn in China. With an impact of US$ 20 billion to 1 trillion and a probability of 20% this is worrisome for Australia because China is our largest trading partner. During fiscal 2008/09 the total value of merchandise traded between Australia and China was $76 billion. This comprised $37 billion in imports and $39 billion in exports. Our trade with China has grown at 22% per year over the past decade ( Australian Bureau if Statistics, 2009 ). If the Chinese economy sneezes the Australian economy might get more than a cold. And thirdly, is the risk of a pandemic. It is estimated (by the Lowy Institute for International Policy, Sydney, 2006) that a mild influenza outbreak would cost the world 1.4 million lives and US$330 billion of global GDP. A severe outbreak would cost 142.2 million lives and US$4.4 trillion of global GDP. This risk is relevant to many areas of science, research and technology in which Australia has strong capabilities. We refer to these, and other risks, as megashocks. They can rapidly and profoundly change the way we live. They are hard to predict and, therefore, hard to mitigate. CSIRO, our partner agencies and universities will be challenged with helping safegaurd Australia from these risks.
The trends, megatrends and megashocks are all uncertain. They may, or may not, happen. For example, it’s possible, albeit unlikely, that the urbanization trend reverses itself. To handle this we’ve crafted some scenarios. These are closer to the science-fiction end, as opposed to science-fact, by necessity. The two scenarios are called fields and fences. Under fields The world has gone down the path of opening up. Humanity breaks down geopolitical, economic and environmental barriers to the global movement of people, goods & services, resources, information and ideas. We see global carbon markets, inter-jurisdictional water markets and biodiversity markets. Financial regulation transcends companies and countries. Whilst this open world creates enormous opportunities it also creates challenges. Many do not know how to position themselves and fall by the wayside in a rapidly changing and dynamic world. But others grasp opportunities and reap rewards. Under fences multi-lateral agreements and multi-lateral trade has fallen apart. Countries, companies and communities fail to resolve issues. Consequently the focus is on local solutions that lie within national borders, within administrative jurisdictions, within small markets and within single companies. The flow of intellectual property, people and ideas is substantially restricted. There are pockets of prosperity. But the world is an uneasy place. Geopolitical instability is building. And everyone is wondering how long the fences will hold. In our documents we give a detailed explanation of how each megatrend plays out under each scenario.