Global Scenarios for the Century Ahead

Great Transition envisions a values-led shift in which the citizens of the world drive fundamental change toward a just, sustainable, and livable future. The ascendant development paradigm is rooted in popular values stressing human solidarity, environmental stewardship, and quality of life. The emergence of far more equitable social arrangements and effectual institutions for global governance supports technological improvements and policy reforms, while more moderate lifestyles reduce the growth thrust of the Conventional Worlds scenarios.

The immense uncertainty of this scenario, of course, is whether the historical agents necessary for such grand political and cultural changes will appear. If they do, a sustainable future such as the Great Transition would become feasible and, for many people, a desirable legacy for future generations. The scenario assumptions lead to the eradication of poverty and hunger, reduction of material consumption and production, universal access to social services, reduced work weeks, diminished armed conflict, enhanced democracy, and a stabilized world population. World population stabilizes more rapidly than in other scenarios reaching only about 8 billion by 2050, then dropping about ten percent by 2100, as more equal gender roles and universal access to education and health care services lower birth rates. Diminished population pressure plays important role in meeting environmental and social goals.

Lifestyles in the Great Transition are materially sufficient and culturally rich, with the notion of the “good life” shifting from an emphasis on possessions to qualitative dimensions of well-being: creativity, leisure, rewarding relationships, and community engagement. Average global income stabilizes after 2050, as the world approaches a steady-state economy, reaching about $30,000 per person by 2100.

Although lower than the approximately $51,000 in Policy Reform, this is more than three times the 2005 global average, and, with a more egalitarian income distribution, most people are far better off. Indeed, “international equity” (the ratio of income in developing to developed regions) reaches 90 percent by 2100 – twice that of Policy Reform. At the same time, equity within each region rises with the ratio of the incomes of the richest to poorest 10 percent of the population no higher than 4 to 1 by 2100, more equitable than Sweden today. Greater social equity contributes to social cohesion and reduced conflict as the world confronts crises with enhanced resilience and cooperation. This kind of world, were it to come to pass, would be deeply sustainable…

Tellus.org [PDF]