What will the world look like in 2050?
Predicting what the world will look like in the future has been a favorite of many. Some view the world with a pessimistic outlook; A world with a staggering population growth that will eventually be destroyed by causes such as global warming, natural disasters, space invasions, or nuclear war. On the other hand, some are optimistic about the future of the world.
While acknowledging that the world will face problems with global population growth and resource scarcity, they point to social and economic advances, scientific and technological inventions, and human achievements, and paint a better future for the world.
In this regard, if we put aside predictions based on transcendental and mythical interpretations such as tarot cards and Nostradamus astrology and look at the scientific methods of our time such as futures studies, we may be able to obtain more accurate geography of the future of the world. In this article, I will try to give researchers an idea of the world of 2050 and point out the issues raised in this field.
Economy
The world economy will grow by an average of 3% per year between 2014 and 2050. This means that world economic growth will double by 2037 and almost triple by 2050. In 2050, India will overtake the United States to become the world’s second-largest economy after China.
In 2014, China was in first place with a GDP of $ 2.06 trillion, followed by the United States with $ 4.466 billion and India in third place with $ 1.7 trillion. While China is projected to continue to be the number one country in terms of GDP with $ 60 trillion and $ 6 trillion in 2050, India with significant economic growth of $ 40 trillion and $ 35 billion out of the United States gross domestic product of $ 40 trillion and $ 24 billion. Surpass. The gap between the world’s three largest economies, China, India, and the United States, is also projected to widen in the coming decades.
John Huxworth, chief economist at Piedmontese, believes that Europe must work to survive this great historical shift in world economic power, or it will return to a world ruled by Asian economies before the Industrial Revolution; A world in which Indonesia is projected to be the fourth-largest economy by 2050.
According to forecasts, the EU’s share of world GDP will fall from the current 5% to less than 2% by 2050. Of course, the United States and Britain, thanks to trade, investment, manpower, and people’s ideas, will be in a better position and feel less at risk, although Britain’s GDP will lag behind Mexico and Indonesia by 2030, and by 2050 Nigeria will no longer be one of the world’s top’s economies, but it will still outperform its weekly group rivals Germany, France, and Italy in terms of economic growth, and the British economy is projected to grow at an average annual rate of around تا 35 over the next 35 years. , 4% growth.
In this great economic shift, emerging economies are leaving behind the gross domestic product of the G7 countries. This means that by 2050, the total GDP of China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Indonesia, and Turkey will be much more than one hundred thousand dollars, and this figure for Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Britain. And the United States does not even reach one hundred thousand billion dollars.
Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard University, predicts that the United States, China, Japan, India, Brazil, Russia, and the European Union will be the world’s major economic players by 2050. He believes that countries with high incomes today will almost certainly have high incomes in the next 35 years, and the same is true for poor countries.
Population
According to the Pew Research Center, the world’s population will increase from 6 billion 900 million in 2010 to 9 billion 600 million in 2050, and this staggering population growth, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), has led to global food shortages. will be. Predicting population growth is one of the most reliable predictions of the world.
China and India will each have a population of at least one billion, and the United States will have a population of about 400 million. Human life expectancy is expected to increase. According to the United Nations, the average life expectancy in 2050 will reach 76 years, which will increase by about 3 years compared to 67.2 years in 2010.
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the world produced about 33 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide in 2010, a figure that will rise to 55.8 gigatons by 2050, with catastrophic consequences. The organization predicts that without new policies and with the current trend, with a 50% increase in greenhouse gas emissions and a 70% increase in carbon dioxide emissions, much more devastating climate change awaits the world by 2050.
The atmospheric density of greenhouse gases will reach a level whereby global average temperatures will reach three to six degrees Celsius by the end of the century, which is higher than the two degrees agreed worldwide. In 2008, the G8 countries agreed to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The Environment
The acidification of the oceans is another serious environmental issue facing the world. Excess man-made carbon dioxide released into ocean water is converted to carbonic acid, which over time has caused the oceanic acidity of the ocean to increase by more than 30 percent. This increase in acid in the ocean upsets the balance of carbon dioxide in the water and endangers the offspring of these marine organisms.
According to the Environmental Justice Foundation (IJEAF), global warming over the next 40 years will cause 150 million people to migrate to other countries as “climate refugees“. In 2008 alone, more than 20 million people were displaced by climate-related natural disasters.
“Climate change is affecting homes and infrastructure, food, water, and human health, and this will lead to forced migration on an unprecedented scale,” said Steve Trent, director of the foundation. “Environmental exile”, “environmental migration”, “environmental refugees” or “climate asylum” is the phenomenon by which people migrate or flee to other areas due to sudden or long-term changes in their environment to maintain their health and safety.
These changes usually include increased drought and water scarcity, desertification, rising sea levels and floods, and seasonal weather patterns, hurricanes, and hurricanes. In the book “Environmental Refugees”, Norman Myers states that these refugees will soon become the main group of forced refugees. He adds that the number of refugees will reach more than 200 million by 2050. The migration of the people of Ilam province due to the spread of fine dust and the diseases caused by it is also among these environmental deportations.
Water scarcity is one of the most important environmental issues facing the world. Water is one of the most important resources on earth, and countries around the world are preparing for a water shortage crisis. India, as one of the most populous countries in the world, feels this risk even more, because according to forecasts, the country’s water demand will double by 2050.
The International Water and Sewerage Center said in a report that almost all Arab countries will face water shortages in the coming decades. “By 2025, more than half of the world’s countries will be facing water shortages, and 25 years from now, by 2050, 75% of the world’s population will be facing water shortages.”
Religion
According to research by the Pew Research Center, the rapid change in the world’s religious image is largely due to differences in fertility rates and the number of young people among the major religions, rather than due to changes in religion. Over the next four decades, Christianity will remain the world’s largest religious group, but Islam will grow much faster than any other religion. The world’s Muslim population will double by the rest of the world by 2050 due to its youth and high fertility rate.
Similarly, according to the Pew Research Center, the world’s Muslim population will equal the world Christian population in 2070 and gradually surpass it, so that in 2100 the world’s Muslim population will be about one percent more than the world’s Christian population.
Considering Europe; Where Christianity has historically dominated, today we see that Europe is the only region where the number of Christians will be declining in the coming years. In 2010, up to 75% of Europeans were Christians, which Pew predicts will decrease to about 65% by 2050. On the other hand, the Muslim population in Europe is expected to increase by about 28 million in the next four decades.
Muslims will still be a minority in Europe by 2050, accounting for almost 10% of Europe’s population.
The main reasons for this change in the religious face of the world are mostly age, fertility rate, and migration, and the change in religion is a minor reason. During the years 2010 to 2050, the conversion to Islam of other religions will be second only to Christianity, but the departure from Christianity will be about 6 times the departure from Islam, and this issue will push Islam in the population increase.
The majority of the world’s Muslim population, like today, will live in Asia and the Pacific. The life expectancy of Muslims will increase in the coming decades. Jews will live longer than other religions in 2050, and their life expectancy is 85 years, which is 6 years longer than 75 years for Muslims. Of course, Conrad Hecht, a demographer in the field of religion at the Pew Research Center, believes that the reason for this is the concentration of the Jewish population. This means that approximately 80% of Jews live in Israel or the United States, both of which are highly developed.
The data from Pew’s research refute the theory that the world is inevitably moving towards secularization. In the next 40 years, the world’s non-religious population will be only 13%, which is slightly less than in 2010.
“According to theories of secularization, the future of the world will be culturally dominated by the West, and the United States and Europe will indeed be almost less religious in the coming years, but according to the numbers, the West is shrinking and the rest,” he said. “The world has taken a very different path that is moving towards God.”
He believes that the train of the world is on the rail, which leads him to a more religious destination. This religiosity also moves towards homogeneity. This means that different religious tendencies will decrease and it is predicted that Islam and Christianity will make up two-thirds of the world’s population in 2100.
Technology
Martin Reese, in an article published in the Guardian, believes that one of the most difficult predictions is a prediction of technological progress; Just as the best scientists in the past could not have predicted the effect of nuclear physics, imagining a world with today’s smartphones in a day like the middle of the twentieth century was like a miracle. Every mobile phone today has much more powerful computer processing power than the entire NASA computer processing system of the 1960s.
Some believe that computers by 2050 can meet human capabilities. Of course, in some cases, today’s computers have reached this point. In the next 5 years, we will be able to buy calculators that are much more powerful than humans in logic.
With high self-confidence, we can think about predicting human advances in computer power, information technology, and genetic analysis techniques. But by 2050, there will be new changes in terms of quality. For example, what has remained unchanged for thousands of years is human nature and human personality. But in the present century, mind-enhancing drugs, genetics, and the creation of humans with supernatural abilities by implanting mechanical parts in their bodies may change human personality and nature. Today, some people demand that their bodies be frozen in refrigerators in California in the hope of a resurrection in the future.
The Last Word
“Despite all the human progress in the future, they still have a long way to go and political and social institutions still have a long way to go,” said Stephen Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard University. The world is trying, and they are probably looking at the unfavorable state of our world today with a nostalgic look, and even though we do not have flying machines, they are jealous of their predecessors.
In another part of his article, he draws readers to the point that we should not be unaware of the unpredictable and sudden events that will shatter all our predictions. “An epidemic, a nuclear terrorist incident, a major economic shock, or a catastrophic drought may have profound effects that change the global discourse on a large scale and make many of our predictions foolish.”
Feature image is for representational purposes only