Author: Пирву Андреа Николетта
ABBREVIATIONS
AI Artificial Intelligence
APEC Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
CBDC Central Bank Digital Currency
CCP Chinese Communist Party
CSIRO Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
DCEP Digital Currency Electronic Payment
GOI Government of Indonesia
iSIKHNAS National Integrated Animal Health Surveillance System
ISS International Space Station
MAHB Millennium Alliance for Humanity and Biosphere
PBOC People’s Bank of China
R&D Research and Development
ROI Return on Investment
SRC VB Vector State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology Vector
TOP The Overpopulation Project
UN United Nations
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
WHO World Health Organization
WPB World Population Balance
WTO World Trade Organization
INTRODUCTION
We are aware that pandemics have played a major role in the history of human evolution. It is also acknowledged that they can cause major disruptions, varying in severity, the degree of contagiousness and the scale at which they spread, among other markers. But the extent to which they can compound also depends on the acumen of those in charge of tackling such challenges. The earliest recorded outbreak to date occurred during the Peloponnesian War, when a suspicious disease waged chaos through Egypt, Libya, Ethiopia and lastly reached Athens. Consequently, this led to a swift victory for the Spartans and a sour defeat for the Athenians who were already ailing in abject misery (Horgan). In this particular case, the pandemic was a random ‘make-or-break’ factor, as one side was bolstered at the expense of the other’s ruin. But in the broader sense, this historical spat also highlighted a strong link between disease and the outcome of large-scale conflicts within the context of international relations. And no better can we observe this very fact than today when the modern world’s been brought down to its knees at the mercy of a new type of coronavirus.
The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored how vulnerable a hi-tech oriented society can be when there are lingering tensions between countries, doubled by a lack of transparency and wobbly cooperation against the backdrop of globalisation. Admittedly, this pandemic will die down, most likely stamped out by high numbers of people getting vaccinated. However, it leaves us pondering on what new hurdles lie in wait humanity and how governments could work together towards a comprehensive joint global framework meant to address this.
It is for this reason, that this work aims at establishing possible future outcomes by assessing the current state of global affairs, identifying the causes that hinder efficient collaboration and subsequently laying out solutions. The research draws on open-source studies and materials from reputable publishers and approved interstate or independent agencies and organisations, the scope and activity of which are relevant to the topics herewith discussed. The ensuing report seeks to present the following outlines that could most likely unravel by 2100:
- A triumphant world, where humanity, courtesy of consistent and extensive international initiatives among governments, has engineered a sanitised society, fully inoculated against ravaging diseases, keen on wide-scale de-escalation of regional and global frictions and where a successful model of globalisation has been implemented from which the benefits derived far outweigh the risks
- A stagnant world, where the status quo has largely remained the same as in 2021
- A world in disarray, plagued by a high degree of uncertainty due to rife military conflicts, fractured relations, transient inter-state treaties, a starkly steep wealth gap between developed and least developed states where recurring pandemics far outpace the rate at which new counteractive technologies are developed and deployed at due to fragmented cooperation and curbed aid from advanced countries
A TRIUMPHANT WORLD
While the scenario of a triumphant world may seem to verge on utopianism, it is by no means pivoted in the realm of lofty ideas, but rather aimed at conveying the image of a world defined by increased liaison, and conflicts that have been considerably minimized in terms of severity and long-haul consequences. On the contrary, straying off from such a path would inferably demote the state of affairs to a stage of stagnation which could in turn devolve into a regressing phase awash with instability and increasing threats. There are, however, feasible steps that could bring the world closer to such a scenario.
In the triumphant stage countries such as China will have evolved to the point where the rate of technology theft from other countries will be diminished, as the country’s own R&D sector will have caught up with or surpassed that of its competitors. In short, there won’t be as many breakthroughs worth stealing that won’t be already available in China. Therefore, such a state will be more inclined towards cultivating warm relations power with the rest of the world by means of soft in order to boost its market reach. In this respect, within the next 2 decades China will move closer to achieving technological self-sufficiency. From then onwards through 2100, it will funnel plenty of resources for the development and deployment of novel technologies whereby it will secure the position of a world-leader in a multitude of areas. Since its leaders will have learnt harsh lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, a key sphere will be disease control and prevention, coupled with bio-surveillance. This will be underpinned by a robust internet infrastructure bolstered by AI and AI-powered robots (Woetzel et al. 6). A report commissioned by Huawei shows the features of 5G open up various possibilities for future applications of such technologies within the next decade. An important sector that will greatly benefit from them is healthcare; the paper dabbles with the prospects of tele-surgery, telehealth, along with 3D holographic avatars (telepresence) (Future Networks Team 8, 15).
Centralisation and Depoliticisation of Global Health
There has been much debate over the true value that lies in health. On one side, some argue that the right to health, ensured via healthcare, is an uncontested human right, regardless of anything. They also deplore that in some states access to the latest healthcare facilities and treatments is granted by a hefty price. On the other side, there are some who subscribe to the adage ‘to each his own’, embracing a meritocratic system of rights where personal contribution is tied to the extent to which one can access state-of-the-art services, therefore barring those who are considered parasitic elements of society from making full use of vital resources.
Generally speaking, any large-scale and intangible threat poses delicate challenges, because it requires a multilateral approach to overcome it, i.e., sturdy cooperation between different institutional (such as government and military agencies) and/or independent actors (such as civilian life and society). By and large pandemics represent a touchstone for national resilience and competency; the timeline of such an event also marks a time of utmost vulnerability for the afflicted community and inferably the degree of exploitability its competitors were successful in employing in that period. By drawing upon the basic principle of economics regarding winners and losers in the aftermath of a crisis and other types of unfortunate events, this could be further extrapolated to the topic of this essay and summarised as such: vulnerability means exploitability, depending on which side one finds oneself. As is known, what others may perceive as misfortune, others may acknowledge as an opportunity hard to come by again. It’s become clear that the current model of globalisation has been misdirected, as it heightened rivalry, rather than healthy competition, beyond what could have been imagined decades ago (Campbell and Doshi). The current pandemic has best underscored this when it comes to ‘health economics’ or ‘vaccine politics’. States where biotech companies are headquartered and which have managed to roll out viable vaccines have been accused of hoarding up vaccine supply, so that their citizens can be inoculated in due time (Gurascio), therefore hindering access to poorer regions (Gettleman et al.). Added to this, several countries have adopted a counteractive measure known as ‘vaccine passport’ to reduce the risk of the virus being spread by foreigners (“EU Vaccine Chief Says Vaccine Passports to Be Launched in June, Unveils Document Prototype”). This could be further expanded into a means of soft power that compels foreigners to get the jab and ultimately compels other countries to buy the required number of doses at a higher price.
In the triumphant forecast, humanity’s answer to these hurdles will consist of enacting a global health framework. A similar mechanism has been achieved through the existence of the ISS (Garcia). Following an analogical route, governments and international institutions will liaise in order to found and fund a global health infrastructure. For instance, a global centre for disease prevention where each country can send its brightest scientists to work at. This body will be tasked with studying and monitoring diseases across the world, developing vaccines and deploying the necessary tools to tackle pandemics in a timely manner. The centre will be able to do all these through subsidiaries sprawling various regions (“How Can We Vaccinate the World? Five Challenges Facing the UN-Backed COVAX Programme | | UN News.”), this way ensuring a well-connected network and logistics. Since the aim is to facilitate wide-scale access to innovative biotechnologies, rather than making a profit, the vaccine price will be fixed or subsidized by a joint fund where each country provides its share. Even more, this will take politics and economics out of issues concerning global health at least. It will also be one way to even out the gap between developed states and poorer ones, which would in turn assuage political conflicts that would otherwise arise in this regard. The likelihood of another pandemic will most likely serve as the main incentive for such an international initiative; the cost of preventing it is meagre compared to managing it.
Metagenomics as a means of enhancing bio-surveillance
Bio-surveillance and disease prevention are crucial in detecting and staving off future outbreaks, but in order for this fusion to ever yield efficient results as an early warning system, they must first be improved. Presently there is a relatively new branch extending from the field of biology which has come to be known as ‘metagenomics’. The current flow of events has opened up the possibility of employing metagenomics as a means of enhancing bio-surveillance by tracking molecular changes that occur in pathogens right when they happen. From there, this tool allows scientists to anticipate clusters, the population segments most likely to be affected, as well as the pathogens that are prone to mutate. One state that has managed to highlight the benefits of metagenomics is Iceland: the authorities managed to monitor the health of every citizen who tested positive for the coronavirus, sequenced the virus samples whereby they performed large-scale screening on more than half of the island’s population (Sawyer et al.1, 3-4). It’s foreseeable that within the next 2 or 3 decades many developed countries will start investing even more into perfecting this mechanism. Courtesy of reliable international liaisons, less developed countries will most likely follow suit and by 2100 the ROI that the world will receive will be long periods of peace marked by a fast response to impending outbreaks.
The foundation for this has already been laid out with a pilot program known as iSIKHNAS which provides real-time close monitoring of animal health and production; this is made possible by allowing people to report unusual activities to local field service providers that are tasked with relaying the information further into the system (“What Makes ISIKHNAS so Special?”). It was set about courtesy of joint efforts made by the Australian Government, GOI and Ausvet. The results surpassed initial expectations, so now it has become an integral part within the governmental infrastructure of Indonesia. This example highlights how pivotal interstate cooperation is in tackling pandemics and how international relations are key to moving towards progress.
Globalisation and Pandemics
Research spanning the last few decades has established a link between population mobility and an increased likelihood of diseases outbreaks (Saker et al. 12-14). This is mainly attributed to unfettered population growth which in turn leads to overpopulation. The prospect of city lifestyle entices people to migrate from less developed regions to urban areas, thus straining the healthcare infrastructure and over-expending critical resources. There are also caveats to advances in transportation such as sea or air travel, doubled by inner city and intercity transit (Institute of Medicine 8). The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how modes of transport can increase the speed and facilitate the ease at which a disease can spread and evolve into a world-wide pandemic. On top of that it is estimated that the potential for foodborne outbreaks is increasing, since the attempts at improving surveillance of foodborne and trade-related diseases undertaken by WHO, WTO and APEC among other organisations have a long way to go (11). In another study it transpires how immigrant groups that have had different foodborne exposures (from the local population) that result in infectious diseases unfamiliar to local health professional (Barnett and Walker 1454), which leads to an additional strain on the healthcare system.
In one study the Institute of Medicine provides possible examples on how to tackle this issue. First, the establishing of research and training partnerships between developed and developing countries (North-South partnerships) such as the joint effort (the Peru-based Gorgas Course in Clinical Tropical Medicine) between the University of Alabama and the Instituto de Medicina Tropical “Alexander von Humboldt”. The study also notes a similar enterprise on the part of the Fogarty International Center of the National Institutes of Health. Second, it mentions the progress in infectious disease made by scientists in the USSR and present-day Russia’s potential for efficient control of the emergence of infectious diseases, courtesy of SRC VB Vector’s global collaborative projects (13-14). These examples highlight how interconnectedness between various countries can lay the groundwork for an efficient global public health system.
As for the issue of overpopulation, Michel Foucault’s theory of biopolitics seems to outline a starting ground for ways to approach it:
It seems to me that one of the basic phenomena of the nineteenth century was what might be called power’s hold over life. What I mean is the acquisition of power over man insofar as man is a living being, that the biological came under State control, that there was at least a certain tendency that leads to what might be termed State control of the biological. (Foucault 239-240)
A Stanford-led initiative known as MAHB published an article by TOP meant to offer feasible solutions to this problem by dividing them into four categories: individual, community, global and national. On a micro-scale, some of these actions encompass reducing the number of kids per household, promoting sexual education amongst teenagers, raising awareness, voting for green parties and politicians, setting growth management boundaries which would discourage sprawl development on cities’ fringes, converting surrounding lands into natural preservations and passing resolutions that aim to limit city growth in order to allot resources towards stabilising or reducing population. On a macro-level, the article focuses mostly on developing areas with a high fertility rate, to which it proposes the wide availability of birth control measures, restriction of child marriage and the raise of legal age, as well as the implementation of compulsory education. As for countries with recorded low fertility rates, TOP suggests a rehaul of pension systems to accommodate aging segments, cancellation of government incentives for fertility treatments, a reduction in immigration and implementation of a set of taxes that would tackle pollution and reduce resource expenditure. On a general level, the article advocates for legaliation of abortion, government funding for sterilization under a healthcare plan and the creation of a policy framework that focuses on optimal population size. Globally, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/) is regarded as a mechanism by which population could be reduced; besides, the creation of a similar platform such as ClimateWatch (https://www.climatewatchdata.org/) designed for population control is regarded as a step towards tracking the growth rate around the world (by country) of different populations (“Solutions to Overpopulation and What You Can Do”).
In a similar fashion, WPB, an organisation concerned with overpopulation, urges for the establishment of a think tank that seeks to tackle overpopulation; in order to implement their vision, the organisation is focused on expanding global collaborative efforts with other groups around the world (“Our Vision to Solve Overpopulation”).
A Cashless Society
By 2100 it is very likely that significant advancement will be made towards the transition to a cashless society around the globe. It’s noteworthy that during the context of a pandemic, cash is a sure way of accelerating the rate at which the virus spreads, as revealed in a CSIRO-led study (McFarlane). This gradually comes to be reflected in the attitude that most people have to handling money, showing an increasing preference for online transactions over cash payments. A report by the Joint Research Centre within the European Commission breaks down the crypto currency model by analysing existing ones, before listing innovative ideas to generate and use virtual currency such as converting tangible and intellectual assets into a digital form of payment, or a method resembling bartering which entails using electric energy or the user’s privacy as a compensation for advertisements (Muftic 45).
One of the countries that is leading the transition to a cashless society is China. Mitsui & Co. Global Strategic Studies Institute published a report outlining the mechanism that PBOC intends on using in issuing CBDC and implementing DCEP ahead of other states (Yatsui 1). While the DCEP will most likely function in a similar way to Alipay, it is intended to be managed in a digital wallet independent of a savings account. It is maintained that a real-time issued CBDC could boast several benefits for the domestic market, including safe and efficient payments alongside an observable reduction in cash management costs for banks (3). This allows for a country such as China to spearhead the implementation of a cashless society and export the technology and means to other countries (7). Another report from the Financial Times mentions the existence of 84 domestic patents that have been procured by the PBOC, which reveals the extent to which the CCP has heavily invested in integrating digital currency into the existent banking infrastructure (Murphy and Yang).
A Stagnant World
Without enough advancements made towards the initiatives above-mentioned, by 2100 humanity may find itself in an unprecedented position of languishing behind projected forecasts if inter-state efforts are hindered and major international disputes remain unsolved. A prolonged period of time in which lingering issues of the past and present continue to exist along with newer ones due to emerging technologies and innovations across a range spectrum of areas can only overstretch the world’s ability to tackle them. This in turn may very likely lead to the third scenario which sees a world in disarray where rivalry and various threats are rife and where humanity is moving down a path of devolution in crucial fields.
CONCLUSIONS
Current trends indicate that international disputes will most likely represent the main reasons for a diminished degree of cooperation in tackling common problems, as governments will seek out their interests at the expense of others. Highly developed states will want to retain their dominance in certain areas, thus perpetuating the ‘us vs them’ approach to decision-making and policies. The depleting levels of finite resources, i.e., non-renewable resources such as gas and oil and even land, will compel different actors to prioritise internal, rather than collective, desires to raise their world market share in order to sustain a dominant position for as long as possible. This continuous rivalry will also be incentivised by a lack of high interstate trust which can be attributed to cultural polarity; different perspectives on the same issue often times clash, since parties are adamant to yield to the other side’s wishes and come to a compromise, which can be perceived as a sign of defeat and weak negotiating skills. The world has still a long way to go when it comes to rethinking the current model of globalisation. Overpopulation will remain a constant far into the future, together with increasing population mobility; states will struggle with accommodating a far larger number of people to the national economy, as automation will be employed on a wide-scale more so than it is currently. Therefore, this prompts the question: will the pace at which present jobs are automated be higher than that at which new ones emerge?
However, based on the progress that has been made thus far, by 2100 humanity will have moved forward at a much slower pace than envisioned in the triumphant scenario. While there will be noticeable improvement, there will also be drawbacks to inherit and carry on across generations. In conclusion, the world will find itself somewhere between the first and second scenario, as states will not be willing to scale back fierce pursuit of national interests over utilitarian strategies for international causes.
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