The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Science Council (ISC) recently released Navigating New Horizons: A global foresight report on planetary health and human wellbeing, a report that delves into the global ‘polycrisis’ to forecast future trends and potential disruptions, guiding us toward desirable futures for all.
Human Level’s Take: No one can see into the future, but the world’s best scientists and experts can use foresight to prepare us for what lies ahead. UNEP and the ISC have skilfully unravelled the global polycrisis in this report, highlighting where humanity is headed and potential disruptions, helping us steer towards desirable futures for all. This macro-level report captures current trends and models how they will evolve and impact human and planetary wellbeing, both positively and negatively. This report is an invaluable tool for assessing long-term risks and impacts for companies. It helps ask critical questions like: How will my company’s impacts change in the future considering these signals of change and risk? Is my company contributing to or mitigating these potential disruptions? This foresight enables companies to prioritise actions that address compounded risks threatening longer-term planetary and human wellbeing. Additionally, the report emphasises the importance of governance at both company and local levels to address future disruptions, mitigate impacts, and ensure decisions are based on scientific evidence, not misinformation. The risk mapping and recommendations provided also support an effective and just transition to sustainable practices and net zero by identifying critical shifts and potential disruptions, helping companies navigate the potential impacts on people today and in the future.
Key points from the report:
- Today's world and tomorrow's challenges. The current state of the world reveals there has been limited progress along the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite being over halfway to the 2030 deadline, the latest SDG Progress Report indicates that 85% of the 169 targets are off track, with 37% showing no progress or even regression since 2015. This lag shows in areas like eradicating poverty, hunger, inequality, and environment-related targets - which are particularly far off course. The impacts on food and energy markets we have seen during the past years also highlight the growing fragility of our economic and financial systems due to the pandemic, environmental crises, geopolitical tensions and the rapid pace of technological change. In sum, we are experiencing a ‘polycrisis,’ where interconnected crises in pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change create a vicious cycle of worsening conditions for people and the planet.
- Critical shifts and signals of change. This foresight exercise, led by leading environmental, climate and social experts from around the world, provides two main insights. First, there are eight critical shifts or emerging phenomena that will define our common future. Second, in connection to those eight shifts, there are 18 signals of change and disruption that could lead to potential disruptions of people and planet’s wellbeing. These interconnected shifts and signals point to a number of emerging and potentially severe risks, with cascading impacts. Each of the 18 signals of change has been assessed for likelihood and severity by the experts consulted and mapped against the others in a sort of global “salience assessment.” But what are those eight critical shifts from which the signals or indicators of change emerge? They include: (1) humans' changing relationship with the environment, (2) critical resource scarcity, (3) AI and digital transformation, (4) new heightened levels of conflict, (5) mass forced displacement, (6) persistent inequalities, (7) misinformation and declining trust, and (8) poly-centric governance. In connection to these shifts, some of the most critical signals or issues to look out for in coming years include the rise in the number of uninhabitable places due to climate change, the unseen risks of using harmful chemicals, the potential release of ancient lethal viruses from thawing permafrost, the emergence of new zoonotic diseases, the rise in mental health challenges and eco-anxiety, and the rise of political and social decision-making that is detached from scientific evidence. The report emphasises the importance of monitoring these and other signals of disruption by using the latest available science.
- Actions for a resilient future. Addressing the impacts of compounding and multiple crises requires innovative and holistic solutions. The report proposes, as a first solution to the polycrisis, the emergence of a ‘new social contract’: a new common understanding of our societies that focuses on intergenerational equity and transforming our technological, economic, environmental and and social paradigms. In addition, the report adds, there is a need for ‘agile and adaptive governance.’ That is, the world needs an international and multilateral system that is proactive and interconnected, and that better incorporates the voices of historically marginalised groups like women, young people and Indigenous Populations. Finally, governance and decision-making at every level need to be better guided by available data and knowledge, emphasising data and metrics on wellbeing over those measuring pure economic growth. By strengthening the systems we use to monitor and understand economic, social and environmental change, we can support better decision-making and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
