Image: Bernd ThallerFew aspects of this invariably remarkable world that we set out to chronicle four times a year are more frightening than those that may be generically grouped under the category of The Unknown. At times paralyzing, at times enervating, and often of unparalleled excitement, these twists and turns into the future must be dealt with if we are to assure the survival of our civilization, indeed our very species. Historians can examine the past, while journalists, politicians, bureaucrats, and scholars can treat the present, which is all around us. But the future must, by its very nature, remain Unknown and infinitely challenging. It is the warp and woof, the form and substance of these challenges—how we must and should prepare to deal with them no matter what form they present themselves—that we set out to explore in the Spring issue of World Policy Journal.We begin with Big Question, a selection of thinkers from every continent reflecting on their country’s biggest fear for the future. The brilliant science fiction writer Neal Stephenson joins us in our Chat Room to discuss what he sees as the challenges to our planet—only a slight contrast to the global disaster he has imagined in his landmark work, Seveneves. Our Map Room uncovers the Indian Ocean’s still unmapped surfaces and depths. Then the inimitable Jack Devine, who once ran the entire clandestine service of the Central Intelligence Agency, and whose avowed mission is to predict if not influence the Unknown, ponders with his Arkin Group colleague, Amanda Mattingly, just what a daunting task that can be. Our Anatomy feature takes on a terrorist plot and how difficult it can be to define and address. Meanwhile, Richard Blaustein takes a look at climatic tipping points that may not be so very far off and what scientists are doing their best to expose. Andres Knobel, who tracks offshore tax havens, believes the next generation of financial hideaways may be just next door. Finally, one of Britain’s leading public intellectuals and avowed Muslim thinker, Ziauddin Sardar, tells World Policy Journal’s editors in a Conversation from London that Islam may not be the world’s only religion in the future, but if it can resume its peaceful paths, it can play a constructive role in the development of it.In our Portfolio, photographer Bénédicte Desrus and writer Celia Gómez Ramos transport us into a Mexico City commune where sex workers go after life on the streets and find some extraordinary women. And Eliza Griswold, our poet-in-residence, explores a world where we rely on numbers more than on ourselves.Next we turn to Africa for two remarkable pieces. Damien Glez, ordinarily our resident cartoonist, reflects on what it’s like to live through a revolution in his homeland of Burkina Faso, where one of Africa’s longstanding dictators has just been unseated. In the most exhaustive investigation ever published by World Policy, Durban-based researcher Khadija Sharife hopscotches across three continents to unearth a complex Ponzi scheme, whose victims range from retirees in London’s Mayfair to villagers in Sierra Leone’s Moyamba district. Our accompanying Timeline traces such schemes back nearly a century. Meanwhile, in the Middle East and the Maghreb, the Arab Spring has led to the abandonment of victims of HIV who all too often are treated as pariahs, or worse, as Christopher Reeve discovers. Finally, in his Coda, World Policy Journal editor & publisher David A. Andelman pulls up to his gas pump and reflects on what terrible stewards we are for our world’s precious resources.
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Sep 21, 2015
Graeme Halkerston 
Open Access
