ENERGY SHORTAGE – THE MAIN THREAT TO GLOBAL GROWTH

On two occasions, in 2005 and 2008, Kairos Future has asked its Futuretrackers community about what they think of the future development of the world. Futuretrackers is a global network of experts representing various disciplines, sectors, managerial levels and different political orientations. By participating in surveys on different topics these experts receive a summary from each survey in return.

What trends will have the largest impact on the global economic outlook over the coming years and which organizations are most likely to have a positive impact? These are examples of questions that we have sought to answer in our Global Growth Surveys. The results could be summarized briefly as followed:

• While terrorism was the most imminent negative trend in 2005 it is the problem with energy supplythat’s on people’s minds today. Evidently these results reflect a shift in what issues that are most publicly exposed and debated. It seems as if the challenge of how we can protect our world from the negative effects of climate change has overridden terrorism as the most crucial global problem. However, increasing economic growth in countries such as India and China is the most important trend of all. The diagram below shows the ten most important trends that our experts believe will impact global growth in a 10-year perspective.

• If China and India are the hopes for the future and energy shortage is the main threat – who has got the power to make a change? Just as in 2005, it is representatives of the private business world that are perceived to have the greatest chances of positively influencing growth. Interestingly, politics fall way behind.

• In the survey in 2005, Japan was the country of the future; both Japanese business and government were perceived to be the best prepared for the future. Today, Western Europe has climbed the ranking and is challenging Japan, at least on the governmental side. North America, on the other hand, is losing ground. In general, the scores for business and government are low, indicating that our experts are skeptical of the capabilities of actors from both the private and political world.

• On a personal level, respondents are very optimistic about the future, while, just as in previous studies of Kairos Future, they believe in a pretty grim future for the world in general.

Diagram 1. What impact will the following trends have on global growth over the next 10 years if they continue/materialize? (Answers 6 & 7 on a 7-grade scale where 7 is ”very strong impact”). NB. The diagram only shows the ten most highly ranked trends, out of a list with 20.

CONTACT

If you want to know more about the Global Growth Surveys or about the Futuretrackers network, please contact Ms. Elin Åström.