The UNHCR's yearly Global Trends report concludes that by the end of 2018, a record number of 70.8 million persons were forcibly displaced worldwide – among them 41.3 million displaced within their own country.
"Self-healing smartphones, asteroid mining for essential minerals and telepathic brain-to-brain communication enabled by technology" are some examples of the breakthrough innovations presented in the foresight study "100 Radical Innovation Breakthroughs for the future".
EU is developing 8 supercomputers to be operational at mid-2020. They will be hosted at eight centres across the EU. Three of them, precursor to exascale machines (capable of executing more than 150 million billion calculations per second) will be in the top 5 supercomputers of the world.
Earth Overshoot Day is advancing each year; in 2019, it falls on July 29th. Humanity is now using nature 1.75 times as fast as the planet’s ecosystems can regenerate.
Automation and AI are accelerating the demand for technological skills over the next 10-15 years, while the need for basic cognitive skills, and physical and manual skills will decline. Through 2030, the fastest growing need will be for advanced IT and programming skills, at 90% growth compared to 2016.
CO2 emissions continue to be on the rise. NOAA reported that on May 12, 2019 CO2 concentrations reached a record 415.27 parts per million (ppm), higher than at any point on record.
In 2019, EU's Overshoot Day was on 10 May, meaning that if all humanity would live like EU residents, nature’s annual budget would have been exhausted by that day and we would need 2.8 planets Earth to sustain our living style.
World food production should increase by 50% by 2050 compared to 2012.
Extreme poverty rate has declined from 36% in 1990 to an estimated 8.6% in 2018. Nevertheless, given the recent slower rates of decline, the target of less than 3% of the world living in extreme poverty by 2030 might not be achieved.
In 2018, the share of world GDP (PPP) of the G7 countries decreased to just under 30%, while that of emerging markets and developing economis reached 60%, a trend that is expected to continue. China's share alone reached almost 20%, while that of the USA was 15% and that of the EU 16%.
After a relative slowdown trend since 2012 and three years of remaining flat, global energy-related CO2 emissions grew by 1.4% in 2017, and another 1.7% in 2018, reaching a historic high of 33.1 Gt CO2.
Monopolisation of communication infrastructure (e.g. Chinese-dominated 5G infrastructure) increases the vulnerability of the communication systems, raising concerns about access to private, public, commercial, and military communications.
Chinese state-to-state finance is the highest sovereign lending in the LAC region, surpassing that of the World Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank. China Development Bank and China Eximbank have provided over $140 billion in finance to LAC between 2005 and 2018.
In 2018, globally, the fortunes of the billionaires increased by 12% (US$2.5 billion a day), while the wealth of of the 3.8 billion poorest people declined by 11%, according to Oxfam.
Chinese aims to become world leader in science and innovation by 2050. In 2017, China's R&D spending was about $378.6 billion (PPP), accounting for 21% of total world R&D expenditure.
An estimated 200 species are becoming extinct each day. We might be in the midst of the sixth mass extinction on Earth.
China and the EU account for about 50% of global trade. Europe is China’s largest trading partner and China is Europe's primary source of imports.
Exploring new challenges of policymaking and future-oriented frames and methods to respond to them is the aim of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) FTA2018 conference - Future in the making.
The inequality crisis is worsening. 82 percent of the wealth created last year went to the richest one percent of the global population, while the 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity got nothing.
82% of the new wealth created in 2017 went to the wealthiest top 1%, while the poorest 50% of humanity (over 3.6 billion people) got nothing.
