Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was not on course to meet key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including SDG 1 (No Poverty) and SDG 2 (Zero Hunger). Some significant degree of additional effort was needed before the pandemic, and the challenge is now greater. Analyzing the prospects for meeting these goals requires attention to the combined effects of the pandemic and such additional impetus. This article assesses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on progress toward the SDGs and explores strategies to recover and accelerate development. Utilizing the International Futures (IFs) forecasting system and recognizing the near impossibility of meeting the goals by 2030, three scenarios are examined through to 2050: A pre-COVID-19 trajectory (No COVID-19), the current path influenced by the pandemic (Current Path), and a transformative SDG-focused approach prioritizing key policy strategies to accelerate outcomes (SDG Push). The pandemic led to a rise in extreme poverty and hunger, with recovery projected to be slow. The SDG Push scenario effectively addresses this, surpassing the Current Path and achieving significant global improvements in poverty, malnutrition, and human development by 2050 even relative to the No COVID-19 path. The findings emphasize the need for integrated, transformative actions to propel sustainable development.

Fossil fuel-based economic development both causes climate change and contributes to poverty alleviation, creating tensions across societal efforts to maintain growth, limit climate damage, and improve human development. While many studies explore key aspects of this dilemma, few direct attention to the pathways from climate change through socioeconomic development to the future of poverty. We build on projections of global temperature change (representative concentration pathways) and country-specific economic development (economic growth and income distribution across the shared socioeconomic pathways) to model how climate change may affect future poverty with the International Futures (IFs) model, projecting poverty across income thresholds for 175 countries through 2070. Central tendency scenarios with climate effects compared with scenarios that do not model climate change show that climate change-attributable extreme poverty will grow to 25 million people by 2030 (range: 18 to 30), 40 million by 2050 (range: 9 to 78), and 32 million by 2070 (range: 4 to 130) though overall levels of global poverty decline. If climatic tipping points are passed, the climate-attributable extreme poverty grows to 57 million people by 2030 (range: 40–72), 78 million by 2050 (range: 18–193), and 56 million by 2070 (range: 7–306). To mitigate baseline effects of climate change on extreme poverty, an improvement of global income inequality of 10% is required (range: 5–15%).

Analysis with integrated assessment models (IAMs) and multisector dynamics models (MSDs) of global and national challenges and opportunities, including pursuit of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), requires projections of economic growth. In turn, the pursuit of multiple interacting goals affects economic productivity and growth, generating complex feedback loops among actions and objectives. Yet, most analysis uses either exogenous projections of productivity and growth or specifications endogenously enriched with a very small set of drivers. Extending endogenous treatment of productivity to represent two-way interactions with a significant set of goal-related variables can considerably enhance analysis. Among such variables incorporated in this project are aspects of human development (e.g., education, health, poverty reduction), socio-political change (e.g., governance capacity and quality), and infrastructure (e.g. water and sanitation and modern energy access), all in conditional interaction with underlying technological advance and economic convergence among countries. Using extensive datasets across countries and time, this project broadly endogenizes total factor productivity (TFP) within a large-scale, multi-issue IAM, the International Futures (IFs) model system. We demonstrate the utility of the resultant open system via comparison of new TFP projections with those produced for Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenarios, via integrated analysis of economic growth potential, and via multi-scenario analysis of progress toward the SDGs. We find that the integrated system can reproduce existing SSP projections, help anticipate differential economic progress across countries, and facilitate extended, integrated analysis of trade-offs and synergies in pursuit of the SDGs.

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the potential of Bioeconomy as a pathway for sustainable transformation of economies of East Africa. Although East Africa region has shown good growth, this has been accompanied by rising concerns about sustainability, as population growth is putting significant strain on biodiversity undermining capacity for future growth. The search for a new growth pathways points to leveraging bioeconomy. To get insights on the viability of this pathway, this study simulated several scenarios to help inform a regional bioeconomy strategy.Design/methodology/approachTo get insights into the viability of this pathway, a conceptual model to capture demand and supply drivers was constructed and simulations were conducted by using the International Futures (IFs) modelling platform.FindingsThe analysis points to the potential of a bioeconomy-driven economic strategy to drive transformation. However, the simulation points to the fact that if not well thought out, it can also be costly in terms of environment, and indeed such a strategy can lead to a disaster in the long run. It is also clear that having a strong Bioeconomy does not necessarily mean being self-sufficient in agricultural production. If saving the forests or increasing forest cover means agricultural imports rise this should be fine. Also, a strong Bioeconomy does not necessarily mean development objectives are fully met.Research limitations implicationsThe IFs platform is a general platform and thus cannot capture the specific enablers for a Bioeconomy. So strategy development should use the result as starting point.Practical implicationsAlso, a strong bioeconomy does not necessarily mean that development objectives are fully met. A bioeconomy strategy should be part of package of strategy to ensure sustainable and inclusive growth.Originality/valueWhile Bioeconomy is increasingly gaining attention, many countries have proposed strategies the analysis tends to be qualitative. No quantitative simulation of this new economic pathways has yet been conducted in East Africa. The IFs platform is a general simulation platform; therefore, the parameters available in the model cannot fully capture what Bioeconomy is. This analysis needs to be supplemented by a qualitative scenarios analysis.

The spread of COVID-19 has been devastating for the millions of people who have been infected by the virus and lost their lives and the tens of millions of people who have lost their work and livelihoods. Governments and civil society have responded swiftly to the virus with policies that reduce human interaction and slow its spread. These policies have had the adverse effect of further reducing labour participation, productivity and capital utilization, reducing household consumption and increasing poverty across various thresholds, both in absolute and relative terms (Dabalen and Paci, 2020; International Monetary Fund [IMF], 2020b; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2020a; Roberton et al., 2020; Verity et al., 2020; World Trade Organization [WTO], 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly reduced economic growth and altered patterns of international economic interaction. While we are still in the midst of the crisis, there is real concern that the majority of macroeconomic effects will not be temporary, but will disproportionately shift long-term development pathways in low- and middle-income countries, offsetting some of the gains made towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in recent decades. In this report, we study the long-term dynamics of COVID-19 at the country level in Africa through a macroeconomic lens. Specifically, we analyse how today’s effects on country-level mortality, gross domestic product (GDP) growth and international monetary flows of trade, aid, foreign direct investment (FDI) and remittances will shape long-term patterns of mortality, economic growth and international trade by 2030 and 2050. In addition, we unravel how these macroeconomic changes will affect socio-economic indicators and human development by quantifying the outcomes for child mortality and poverty over the coming decades. This report presents a conceptual framework (see Figure 1) that conceptualizes the effects of COVID-19 on human development as cascading across three systems. First, COVID-19 directly effects human health systems, changing patterns of mortality and morbidity with differential distribution across countries. Second, these direct health effects are mitigated through government policy and civil society actions that reduce human interaction, slowing the spread of the virus and saving lives while also reducing economic activity and changing patterns of production and consumption. Finally, these changing economic effects ripple through the international economic system, changing patterns of trade, FDI, foreign aid and remittances. Some countries may have fewer direct health effects from COVID-19 – a finding particularly relevant for many countries in Africa – but may experience more direct effects from changing patterns of international economic interdependence.We model these dynamics across 10 countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Angola, Cabo Verde, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Mauritius, Nigeria and South Africa (referred to as the Africa-10). The countries were selected based on regional spread, differences in their domestic economic structure, and their dependency and interconnectedness with the global economic system. We use the International Futures (IFs) model to assess the immediate and long-term consequences of COVID-19 across these first-, second- and third-order effects. We built scenarios with diverging assumptions around the COVID-19 effect on mortality in 2020 and GDP growth and international trade in 2020 and 2021. We compare these scenarios with a No-COVID scenario, representing a world in which COVID-19 did not occur.

Political security has been widely argued to be one of the fundamental pillars of development, stability and prosperity, as it in turn lays the ground and conducive environment for the attainment of other forms of human security, namely economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security and community security. Political security, as stated by the United Nations Human Development Report (994), entails defense against the different forms of political oppression, respect to human rights, and protection from threats of militarization. Therefore, the purpose of this paper was to establish the extent towhich the concept of Political Security is applicable in Southern Africa within the context of a fast-globalizing landscape through analyzing historical and contemporary trends as well as forecasting future trends and patterns of political security in Southern Africa. Methodologically, the paper used secondary data sources to examine historical and contemporary trends in political security within Southern African countries whilst the International Futures (IFs) model, a comprehensive integrated modeling system, was used as a forecasting tool to establish the likelihood of political security within the different Southern African countries and future political security dynamics and complexities within Southern African countries whilst at the same timeproviding an outlook of the situation within the next 12 years. The study results show varying levels of political security in the region, with the majority of the Southern African states showing worsening political security situation by 2030, except Mauritius, Botswana, Namibia, Seychelles, and South Africa. Recommendations are suggested in the form of national and regional policy and strategic interventions that are key in strengthening political security within Southern Africa.

Abstract The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN 2030 Agenda are today's global roadmap to sustainable development. Adopted in 2015, the SDGs are the culmination of 50 years of debate and consensus building on the imperatives of sustainable development. The 2030 Agenda explicitly calls for integrated methods for SDG achievement. Two multisector modeling frameworks have emerged to address integration in SDG policy: the system dynamics based Integrated Sustainable Development Goal (iSDG) model and the multimethod International Futures (IFs) model. Both are feedback rich and thoroughly integrated, and we term them as Integrated Systems Models (ISMs). ISMs enable quantification of policy impacts across SDG sectors, helping identify policies that benefit numerous SDGs as well as potential trade‐offs. These benefits have been witnessed in countries where these ISMs have been put to task on SDG policy. As the sustainable development paradigm becomes increasingly integrated, a central role is being created for further development of ISMs. © 2020 System Dynamics Society

Analysis of progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires clear understanding of current conditions of SDG target variables and indicators for countries around the world. There is no depository for country-specific, up-to-date information on the 169 targets and 230 indicators across the 17 goals. In fact, data are scattered across hundreds of sources and are very frequently incomplete and incompatible. The International Futures (IFs) forecasting system includes integrated models that span the issue areas covered by the SDGs to facilitate analysis of alternative scenarios through the 2030 goal horizon and beyond. To initialize variables the IFs project created an algorithmic toolkit called the “preprocessor” that draws upon extensive datasets from many statistical sources, filling holes (using estimated relationships) and reconciling inconsistent data (via methods including use of accounting systems within and across the issue areas). The IFs preprocessor “nowcasts” values for 186 countries across more than 100 SDG-related indicators for a user-specified base-year. This manuscript documents the methodology of that nowcasting and provides examples of recent and current-year estimated values for variables across the SDGs.

Climate change will create numerous risks for human health, including impacts associated with temperature extremes, diarrheal diseases, and undernutrition. Such risks, along with other socioeconomic and development trends, will affect cause-of-death patterns experienced in the coming decades. This study explores future mortality trends using the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP) framework, a widely utilized tool for understanding socioeconomic development trends in a world with climate change. Existing projections for GDP, urbanization, and demographic trends based on SSP narratives are incorporated into an integrated assessment model, International Futures (IFs), in order to project mortality levels by cause of death for all countries from 2020 to 2100. Under more optimistic SSPs, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) rise as a proportion of all deaths, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, while more pessimistic SSPs suggest a continued high burden of largely preventable communicable diseases. In high-income countries, significant continued burdens of NCDs are projected for the remainder of the century under all SSPs. Comparisons are also made to recent cause-of-death projections from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) to assess how the IFs and IHME models vary.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s10584-020-02824-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Prospects and Challenges: Mozambique's Growth and Human Development Outlook to 2040

Information and communications technology (ICT)/cyber technologies become ever-more embedded in our economies and societies, bringing both benefits and risk-related costs. The balance between those benefits and costs, over time and across countries, remains poorly understood. This gives rise to conflicting narratives about the future of ICT: either (1) continued rapid benefit growth with new waves of ICT technology; or (2) increasing cyber-attack costs will come to swamp benefits.We explore how the balance between benefits and costs might change at the global, country-grouping, and country-level out to 2030. Because the existing literature provides little foundation for integrated analysis, we did extensive conceptual research and data gathering from diverse sources. The benefits include the growth of the ICT sector itself, its contribution to broader productivity as a general purpose technology, and its benefits for consumers as value for price rises very significantly. The costs include security spending, the impact of adverse cyber events, and opportunity foregone if the technology is underutilized.We extended International Futures (IFs), an existing multi-issue, multi-country, long-term forecasting system with formulations driving ICT/cyber advance and impact. In Base Case analysis we found that, while annual costs related to cyber-attacks and cyber-security spending do come to outweigh the annual incremental economic benefits from ICT use in high-income countries, over time the compounding nature of the benefits versus the more additive nature of the costs means that the cumulative benefits will outstrip the cumulative costs by tens of trillions of dollars over even medium-term forecast horizons. For lower-income and middle-income countries both annual and cumulative analyses suggest that benefits will continue to outweigh costs. On a global basis the cumulative net benefits could exceed $100 trillion through 2030. Four scenarios with significantly different assumptions about technological development and the unfolding of adverse events changed the total values of benefits and risk-related costs, but not the overall conclusion.

BackgroundThe Global Burden of Disease (GBD) studies have transformed global understanding of health risks by producing comprehensive estimates of attributable disease burden, or the current disease that would be eliminated if a risk factor did not exist. Yet many have noted the greater policy significance of avoidable burden, or the future disease that could actually be eliminated if a risk factor were eliminated today. Avoidable risk may be considerably lower than attributable risk if baseline levels of exposure or disease are declining, or if a risk factor carries lagged effects on disease. As global efforts to deliver clean cookstoves accelerate, a temporal estimation of avoidable risk due to household air pollution (HAP) becomes increasingly important, particularly in light of the rapid uptake of modern stoves and ongoing epidemiologic transitions in regions like South and Southeast Asia.Methods and FindingsWe estimate the avoidable burden associated with HAP using International Futures (IFs), an integrated forecasting system that has been used to model future global disease burdens and risk factors. Building on GBD and other estimates, we integrated a detailed HAP exposure estimation and exposure-response model into IFs. We then conducted a counterfactual experiment in which HAP exposure is reduced to theoretical minimum levels in 2015. We evaluated avoidable mortality and DALY reductions for the years 2015 to 2024 relative to a Base Case scenario in which only endogenous changes occurred. We present results by cause and region, looking at impacts on acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) and four noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). We found that just 2.6% of global DALYs would be averted between 2015 and 2024, compared to 4.5% of global DALYs attributed to HAP in the 2010 GBD study, due in large part to the endogenous tendency towards declining traditional stove usage in the IFs base case forecast. The extent of diminished impact was comparable for ALRI and affected NCDs, though for different reasons. ALRI impacts diminish due to the declining burden of ALRI in the base case forecast, particularly apparent in South Asia and Southeast Asia. Although NCD burdens are rising in regions affected by HAP, the avoidable risk of NCD nonetheless diminishes due to lagged effects. Because the stove transition and the decline of ALRI are proceeding more slowly in Sub-Saharan Africa, avoidable impacts would also be more persistent (3.9% of total DALY due to HAP) compared to South Asia (3.6%) or Southeast Asia (2.5%).ConclusionsOur results illustrate how a temporal dynamic calculation of avoidable risk may yield different estimates, compared to a static attributable risk estimate, of the global and regional burden of disease. Our results suggest a window of rising and falling opportunity for HAP interventions that may have already closed in Southeast Asia and may be closing quickly in South Asia, but may remain open longer in Sub-Saharan Africa. A proper accounting of global health priorities should apply an avoidable risk framework that considers the role of ongoing social, economic and health transitions in constantly altering the disease and risk factor landscape.

This paper analyses future trends for intrastate conflict in Africa up to 2050 using the International Futures (IFs) model. After reviewing the main post-Cold War patterns of conflict and instability on the continent, the paper discusses seven key correlations associated with intrastate conflict in Africa. It then points to a number of reasons for the changing outlook, including the continued salience of various ‘structural’ conditions that drive intrastate violence even during rapid economic growth, recent improvements in human development alongside a strengthened regional and international conflict prevention, conflict resolution and peacebuilding regime. Finally, the paper explores how multipolarity may impact on stability and forecasts trends for intrastate conflict in West, Southern, Horn/East and Central Africa. The authors expect large-scale violence to continue its steady decline, although the risk of instability and violence is likely to persist, and even increase in some instances.

International Futures (IFs) and integrated, long-term forecasting of global transformations

The development of anti-aging technologies could have dramatic implications for a world already challenged by population aging. We explore how the world might evolve given the development and deployment of technologies capable of nearly eliminating mortality and morbidity from most causes. We consider both the great benefits and some of the complex sociopolitical rebalancing resulting from such advances. We use the International Futures (IFs) long-term, multi-issue, global forecasting system in our analysis of the interactions among demographic changes, the related changes in health costs and government finances, shifts in labor force participation, resultant economic transformations, and the environmental sustainability of the dramatically-altered human demands that emerge. We find that the widespread deployment of anti-senescence technologies would cause populations to surge—making fertility rates an issue of tremendous social import—while a much larger, healthier, labor force would spur economic growth. But this is not a given; the cost of treating entire adult populations could prove unbearable to non-high-income economies without significant transfers within and across societies. In the absence of new transformative production technologies, life-pattern financing would require the virtual elimination of retirement and a major restructuring of government finances. Pressures on the environment would also greatly intensify.

The Face of AACC International's Future: Preparing for the Next 100 Years

Sustainability of the energy sector in the Mediterranean region

Environmental constraints have always had, and will always have, important consequences for human development. They have sometimes contributed to, or even caused, the reversal of such development. The possibility that such constraints, including climate change, will grow significantly this century raises the concern that the very significant advances in human development across most of the world in recent decades will slow or even reverse. We use the International Futures (IFs) integrated forecasting system to explore three scenarios: a Base Case scenario, an Environmental Challenge scenario, and an Environmental Disaster scenario. Our purpose is to consider the impact of different aspects and levels of environmental constraint on the course of future human development. Using the Human Development Index (HDI) and its separate components as our key measures of development, we find that environmental constraints could indeed greatly slow progress and even, in disastrous conditions, begin to reverse it. Least developed countries are most vulnerable in relative terms, while middle-income countries can suffer the greatest absolute impact of constraints, and more developed countries are most resilient. Education’s advance is the aspect of development tapped by the HDI that is most likely to continue even in the face of tightening environmental constraints, and that is one reason why human development shows great momentum even in the face of environmental challenges.

ICTs: Do they contribute to increased carbon emissions?

To develop an integrated health forecasting model as part of the International Futures (IFs) modelling system. The IFs model begins with the historical relationships between economic and social development and cause-specific mortality used by the Global Burden of Disease project but builds forecasts from endogenous projections of these drivers by incorporating forward linkages from health outcomes back to inputs like population and economic growth. The hybrid IFs system adds alternative structural formulations for causes not well served by regression models and accounts for changes in proximate health risk factors. Forecasts are made to 2100 but findings are reported to 2060. The base model projects that deaths from communicable diseases (CDs) will decline by 50%, whereas deaths from both non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and injuries will more than double. Considerable cross-national convergence in life expectancy will occur. Climate-induced fluctuations in agricultural yield will cause little excess childhood mortality from CDs, although other climate-health pathways were not explored. An optimistic scenario will produce 39 million fewer deaths in 2060 than a pessimistic one. Our forward linkage model suggests that an optimistic scenario would result in a 20% per cent increase in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, despite one billion additional people. Southern Asia would experience the greatest relative mortality reduction and the largest resulting benefit in per capita GDP. Long-term, integrated health forecasting helps us understand the links between health and other markers of human progress and offers powerful insight into key points of leverage for future improvements.