The essay examines the historic roots of this fateful crossroads for world
development, and scans different scenarios that can emerge from contemporary forces and contradictions. This work of engagement as well as analysis
points to strategies, values and choices for advancing a Great Transition.

RASKIN • BANURI • GALLOPÍN • GUTMAN • HAMMOND • KATES • SWART

The book synthesizes the insights of the Global Scenario Group. Convened
in 1995 by the Stockholm Environment Institute, the Group engages
diverse participants in an exploration of the requirements for a sustainable
world. Many global and regional assessments have relied on the Group’s
research.

Great Transition

The planetary phase of history has begun, its ultimate shape profoundly
uncertain. Will global development veer toward a world of impoverishedpeople, cultures and nature? Or will there be a Great Transition toward afuture of enriched lives, human solidarity and environmental sustainability?
Though perhaps improbable, such a shift is still possible.

Great Transition

The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead

PAUL RASKINTARIQ BANURIGILBERTO GALLOPÍN
PABLO GUTMAN
AL HAMMONDROBERT KATESROB SWART

Great Transition

The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead
PAUL RASKIN, TARIQ BANURI, GILBERTO GALLOPÍN,PABLO GUTMAN, AL HAMMOND, ROBERT KATES, ROB SWART

A report of the Global Scenario GroupStockholm Environment Institute - Boston
Tellus Institute11 Arlington Street
Boston, MA 02116
Phone: 1 617 266 8090
Email: info@tellus.org
SEI Web: http://www.sei.se
GSG Web: http://www.gsg.org
SEI PoleStar Series Report no. 10© Copyright 2002 by the Stockholm Environment Institute
Cover:
Stephen S. Bernow
Devera Ehrenberg
ISBN: 0-9712418-1-3
C Printed on recycled paperTo our grandparents, who labored and dreamed for us.
To grandchildren the world over, for whom we labor and dream.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
1. Where Are We?

1

Historical Transitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Planetary Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Branch Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2. Where Are We Headed?

13

Many Futures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Global Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Driving Forces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Market-driven Development and its Perils . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Barbarization and the Abyss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
On Utopianism and Pragmatism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

3. Where Do We Want To Go?

31

Goals for a Sustainable World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Bending the Curve . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Limits of the Reform Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
From Sustainability to Desirability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

4. How Do We Get There?

47

Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Change Agents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Dimensions of Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Values and Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Demography and Social Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Economy and Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Technology and the Environment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Civilizing Globalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

vi

Great Transition

5. History of the Future

71

Prologue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Market Euphoria, Interruption and Revival. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
The Crisis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Global Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Great Transition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

6. The Shape of Transition

91

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

AcknowledgementsWe are grateful to each of our Global Scenario Group
colleagues who joined us over the years in an exhilarating exploration of the global past, present and future—Michael
Chadwick, Khaled Mohammed Fahmy, Tibor Farago, Nadezhda
Gaponenko, Gordon Goodman, Lailai Li, Roger Kasperson, Sam
Moyo, Madiodio Niasse, H.W.O. Okoth-Ogendo, Atiq Rahman,
Setijati Sastrapradja, Katsuo Seiki, Nicholas Sonntag and Veerle
Vandeweerd. This essay is a manifestation of that joint effort.
We thank the Stockholm Environment Institute, Rockefeller
Foundation, the Nippon Foundation, and the United Nations Environment Programme for major funding for GSG activities over theyears, and Steven Rockefeller for both inspiration and a grant for
the early stages of writing. We are deeply indebted to Eric KempBenedict for invaluable contributions to the research and modeling,
Faye Camardo and Pamela Pezzati for rigorous editing and David
McAnulty for publication assistance. We appreciate the commentsof the many reviewers of early versions of the manuscript, and particularly wish to thank Bert Bolin, Michael Chadwick, David
Fromkin, Nadezhda Gaponenko, Gordon Goodman, Roger Kasperson, Lailai Li, Madiodio Niasse, Gus Speth and Philip Sutton.
We hope the product honors the many wellsprings of collective
insight that flowed into it. But any remaining errors of fact, lapses
in judgment and failures of imagination are the responsibility of theauthors alone.

vii

Preface“The future is always present, as a promise, alure and a temptation.”—Karl PopperThe global transition has begun—a planetary society willtake shape over the coming decades. But its outcome is inquestion. Current trends set the direction of departure for the journey, not its destination. Depending on how environmental and social
conflicts are resolved, global development can branch into dramatically different pathways. On the dark side, it is all too easy to envision a dismal future of impoverished people, cultures and nature.
Indeed, to many, this ominous possibility seems the most likely. But
it is not inevitable. Humanity has the power to foresee, to choose
and to act. While it may seem improbable, a transition to a futureof enriched lives, human solidarity and a healthy planet is possible.
This is the story elaborated in these pages. It is a work of analysis, imagination and engagement. As analysis, it describes the historic roots, current dynamics and future perils of world
development. As imagination, it offers narrative accounts of alternative long-range global scenarios, and considers their implications.
As engagement, it aims to advance one of these scenarios—Great
Transition—by identifying strategies, agents for change and values
for a new global agenda.
The essay is the culmination of the work of the Global Scenario
Group, which was convened in 1995 by the Stockholm Environment Institute as a diverse and international body to examine therequirements for a transition to sustainability. Over the years, theixxGreat Transition

GSG has contributed major scenario assessments for internationalorganizations, and collaborated with colleagues throughout theworld. As the third in a trilogy, Great Transition builds on the earlier Branch Points (Gallopín et al., 1997), which introduced the
GSG’s scenario framework, and Bending the Curve (Raskin et al.,1998), which analyzed the long-term risks and prospects for sustainability within conventional development futures.
It has been two decades since the notion of “sustainable development” entered the lexicon of international jargon, inspiring
countless international meetings and even some action. But it is ourconviction that the first wave of sustainability activity, in progresssince the Earth Summit of 1992, is insufficient to alter alarming
global developments. A new wave must begin to transcend the palliatives and reforms that until now may have muted the symptoms
of unsustainability, but cannot cure the disease. A new sustainability paradigm would challenge both the viability and desirability of
conventional values, economic structures and social arrangements.
It would offer a positive vision of a civilized form of globalization
for the whole human family.
This will happen only if key sectors of world society come tounderstand the nature and the gravity of the challenge, and seize theopportunity to revise their agendas. Four major agents of change,
acting synergistically, could drive a new sustainability paradigm.
Three are global actors—intergovernmental organizations, transnational corporations and civil society acting through non-governmental organizations and spiritual communities. The fourth is lesstangible, but is the critical underlying element—wide public awareness of the need for change and the spread of values that underscore
quality of life, human solidarity and environmental sustainability.
Global change is accelerating and contradictions are deepening. New ways of thinking, acting and being are urgently needed.
But as surely as necessity is the spur for a Great Transition, the historic opportunity to shape an equitable world of peace, freedom andsustainability is the magnet. This is the promise and lure of thetwenty-first century.

1. Where Are We?

E

ach generation understands its historic moment as
unique, and its future as rife with novel perils and opportunities. This is as it should be, for history is an unfolding story ofchange and emergence. Each era is unique—but in unique ways. In
our time, the very coordinates through which the historical trajectory moves—time and space—seem transformed. Historical time isaccelerating as the pace of technological, environmental and culturalchange quickens. Planetary space is shrinking, as the integration ofnations and regions into a single Earth system proceeds. Amid theturbulence and uncertainty, many are apprehensive, fearing thathumanity will not find a path to a desirable form of global development. But a transition to an inclusive, diverse and ecological planetary society, though it may seem improbable, is still possible.

Historical Transitions
Transitions are ubiquitous in nature. As physical or biological systems develop they tend to evolve gradually within a given state ororganization, then enter a period of transformation that is often
chaotic and turbulent, and finally emerge in a new state with qualitatively different features. The process of movement from a quasistable condition through an interval of rapid change to
re-stabilization is illustrated in Figure 1. This broad pattern is foundacross the spectrum of natural phenomena: the forging of matter in
the instant after the big bang, the phase shifts between different
states of matter as temperature and pressure change, the epigenesisof individual biological creatures and the evolution of life’s diverse
forms.
With the emergence of proto-humans some 5 million years ago,and especially Homo sapiens about 200,000 years ago, a powerful
new factor—cultural development—accelerated the process ofchange on the planet. Cultural change moves at warp speed relative
1

2

Great Transition

Figure 1. Phases of Transition

Indicators ofdevelopment

Stabilization
Acceleration
Take-off

Time
Based on Martens et al. (2001)

to the gradual processes of biological evolution and the still slower
processes of geophysical change. A new phenomenon—human history—entered the scene in which innovation and cultural information, the DNA of evolving societies, drove a cumulative andaccelerating process of development. With the advent of historicaltime came a new type of transition, that between the phases ofhuman history that demarcate important transformations in knowledge, technology and the organization of society.
Naturally, the course of history is not neatly organized into idealized transitions. Real history is an intricate and irregular process
conditioned by specific local factors, serendipity and volition. The
historic record may be organized in different ways, with alternative
demarcations between important periods. Yet, a long view of thebroad contours of the human experience reveals two sweeping
macro-transformations—from Stone Age culture to Early Civilization roughly 10,000 years ago, and from Early Civilization to theModern Era over the last millennium (Fromkin, 1998). We are now
in the midst of a third significant transition, we argue, toward what
we shall refer to as the Planetary Phase of civilization.

Where Are We?

3

Historical transitions are complex junctures, in which theentire cultural matrix and the relationship of humanity to nature aretransformed. At critical thresholds, gradual processes of change
working across multiple dimensions—technology, consciousness
and institutions—reinforce and amplify. The structure of the socioecological system stabilizes in a revised state where new dynamics
drive the continuing process of change. But not for all. Change radiates from centers of novelty only gradually through the mechanismsof conquest, emulation and assimilation. Earlier historical eras survive in places that are physically remote and culturally isolated. The
world system today overlays an emergent planetary dynamism onto
modern, pre-modern and even remnants of Stone Age culture.
Three critical and interacting aspects at each stage are the formof social organization, the character of the economic system, and thecapacity for communication. Novel features for each of these dimensions are shown for four historical eras in Table 1.
Table 1. Characteristics of Historical Eras
Stone Age

Early
Civilization

Modern Era

Planetary
Phase

Organization

Tribe/village

City-state,kingdom

Nation-state

Globalgovernance

EconomyHunting andgathering

Settledagriculture

Industrial
systemGlobalization

Communications

Language

Writing

Printing

Internet

In the Stone Age, social organization was at the tribal and village level, the economy was based on hunting and gathering, andhuman communication was advanced through the evolution of language. In Early Civilization, political organization moved to the levelof the city-state and kingdom, the basis of economic diversification
was the surplus generated by settled agriculture, and communication
leapt forward with the advent of writing. In the Modern Era, political organization was dominated by the nation-state, the economy
became capitalist with the industrial revolution its apotheosis, and4Great Transition

communication was democratized through printing. Extending thistypology to the Planetary Phase, emerging political, economic andcommunications features are, respectively, global governance, globalization of the world economy, and the information revolution.
Numerous additional dimensions could be added to characterize the differences in historical eras, such as changing features of art,science, transportation, values, war and so on. But the schematic of
Table 1 at least suggests how various aspects of the socio-economic
nexus cohere at different stages in the process of historical evolution. In the transition from one coherent formation to another, eachof the dimensions transforms. We can follow this process by looking
across the rows of the table. Social organization becomes more
extensive—tribal, city-state, nation-state and global governance.
The economy becomes more diversified—hunting and gathering,
settled agriculture, industrial production and globalization. Communications technology becomes more powerful—language, writing, printing, and the information and communication revolution of
the current phase.
Societal complexity—the number of variables needed todescribe roles, relationships and connectedness—increases in thecourse of these transitions. Each phase absorbs and transforms its
antecedents, adding social and technological complexity. In a heartbeat of geological time, the scale of organization moves from thetribe to the globe, the economy becomes increasingly differentiated,
and the technology of communication develops from the capacity
for language to the Internet.
Not only does social complexity and the extent of spatial connectedness increase from one epoch to the next, so does the pace ofchange. Just as historical transitions occur more rapidly than natural
evolutionary transitions, historical transitions are accelerating. Thisis illustrated in Figure 2, which represents schematically the evolutionof complexity of the four major historical phases. Since the time-axis
is logarithmic, the repetitive pattern suggests that change is accelerating in a regular fashion. The duration of successive eras decreases
by roughly a factor of ten—the Stone Age lasted roughly 100,000
years, Early Civilization about 10,000 years and the Modern Era

Where Are We?

5

Figure 2. Acceleration of History

Planetary Phase

Complexity

Modern Era

Early
Civilization
Stone Age

105

104

103

102

Time

some 1,000 years. Curiously, if the transition to a Planetary Phasetakes about 100 years (a reasonable hypothesis, we shall argue) the
pattern would continue.

The Planetary Phase
Scanning the broad contours of historical change suggests a longprocess of increasing social complexity, accelerating change andexpanding spatial scale. A premise of much of the contemporary
globalization discourse is that humanity is in the midst of a new historical transition with implications no less profound than the emergence of settled agriculture and the industrial system (Harris, 1992).
The changing global scene can be viewed through alternative windows of perception—disruption of the planetary environment, economic interdependence, revolution in information technology,
increasing hegemony of dominant cultural paradigms and newsocial and geopolitical fissures.
Globalization is each of these and all of these, and cannot be
reduced to any single phenomenon. It is a unitary phenomenon withan array of reinforcing economic, cultural, technological, social and6Great Transition

environmental aspects. At the root of the diverse discourse anddebate on globalization, and transcending the differences between
those who celebrate it and those who resist it, one theme is common.
The hallmark of our time is that the increasing complexity and scaleof the human project has reached a planetary scale.
Of course human activity has always transformed the earth system to some extent, and the tentacles of global connectedness reachback to the great migrations out of Africa, to the spread of the great
religions, and to the great voyages, colonialism and incipient international markets of a century ago. Capitalism has had periods ofrapid expansion and integration of regions on the periphery ofworld markets. It has also had phases of retraction and stagnation
associated with economic, political and military crises. The international system and its institutions have been restructured and dominant nations have been displaced (Sunkel, 2001; Ferrer, 1996;
Maddison, 1991). At the end of the nineteenth century, the international integration of finance, trade and investment was comparable
to contemporary levels when taken as a percentage of the muchsmaller world economy.
The claim that a planetary phase of civilization is taking shape
does not deny the importance of economic expansion and interdependence in earlier eras. Indeed, the increasing imprint of humanactivity on nature and the expanding reach of dominant nations
were necessary antecedents of globalization. The essence of thepremise of a planetary transition is that the transformation of natureand the interconnectedness of human affairs has reached a qualitatively new stage. Growing human population and economies
inevitably must butt against the resource limits of a finite planet.
The increasing complexity and extent of society over hundreds ofmillennia must at some point reach the scale of the planet itself. That
point is now.
Planetary dynamics operating at global scales increasingly govern and transform the components of the earth system. Global climate change influences local hydrology, ecosystems and weather.
Globally connected information and communication technology
penetrate to the furthest outposts, changing values and cultures,

Where Are We?

7

while triggering traditionalist backlash. New global governancemechanisms, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) andinternational banks, begin to supersede the prerogatives of thenation-state. The stability of the global economy becomes subject toregional financial disruptions. Excluded, marginalized and inundated with images of affluence, the global poor seek immigration
and a better global bargain. A complex mix of despair and fundamentalist reaction feeds the globalization of terrorism. All of theseare signs that we have entered a new planetary phase of civilization.
These phenomena are the legacy of the Modern Era of the lastthousand years, which brought us to the threshold of planetary society. From the first flickering of the humanistic sensibility nearly athousand years ago, through the intellectual and theologicalupheaval of the scientific revolution, to the firestorm of capitalist
expansion, modernism challenged the authority of received wisdom,
the paralysis of birth-right and class rigidity, and the economic stasis of traditionalism. The culmination was the Industrial Revolutionof the last two centuries. It fused a host of modern developments—
law-governed institutions, market economies and scientific ingenuity—and tapped into the human potential for accumulation,acquisition and innovation. A permanent revolution in technology,
culture and desire spawned an explosion of population, productionand economic complexity. Ever hungry for new markets, resources
and investment opportunities, the self-expanding and colonizing
industrial system began its long march toward a world system.
The world has now entered the Planetary Phase, the culmination of the accelerating change and expansion of the Modern Era. A
global system is taking shape with fundamental differences fromprevious phases of history. We would search in vain for a precise
moment that demarcates the origin of the new era. The past infuses
the present. Surely the growth of world trade a hundred years ago,
the two world wars of the twentieth century and the establishmentof the United Nations in 1948 were early signals.
But the primary phenomena that constitute globalization
emerged as a cluster over the last two decades. Critical developments between 1980 and the present are seen in:

8Great Transition• The global environment. The world becomes aware of climate change, the ozone hole and threats to biodiversity, andholds its first Earth Summit.
• Technology. The personal computer appears at the beginningof the period and the Internet at the end. A manifold communications and information revolution is launched andbiotechnology is commercialized for global markets.
• Geo-politics. The USSR collapses, the Cold War ends and amajor barrier to a hegemonic world capitalist system isremoved. New concerns appear on the geo-political agenda
including environmental security, rogue states and global
crime and terrorism.
• Economic integration. All markets—commodity, finance,labor and consumer—are increasingly globalized.
• Institutions. New global actors, such as the WTO, transnational corporations and an internationally connected civilsociety—and global terrorists, the dialectical negation ofplanetary modernism—become prominent.
Our hypothesis is that these various elements represent constituent aspects of the global transition. This is illustrated in Figure
3, which shows global connectivity, loosely defined, as following thecharacteristic S-shaped curve of transition, with “take off” over thelast two decades. The schematic suggests that we are in the earlyphase of an accelerating transition. In this turbulent period, thecharacter of the global system that will emerge from the transition
cannot be predicted. The ultimate shape of things to come depends
to a great extent on human choices yet to be made and actions yet
to be taken.

Branch Point
A transition toward a planetary phase of civilization has beenlaunched, but not yet completed. The critical question is: Whatform will it take? Inspired by the turn of a new millennium, astream of popular books, pensive editorials and scholarly essays
have sought to understand and find meaning in globalization andWhere Are We?

9

Global Connectivity

Figure 3. Planetary Transition

United Nations

Take-off
1980–2000

Apollo1950

2000

Climate signal, ozone hole, Earth Summit
PC, Internet, information revolution
Collapse of USSR, hegemony of capitalism
Globalization, WTO, TNCs
NGOs, Seattle

2050

its discontents. The sense that momentous changes are afoot has
stimulated a proliferation of explications of what they may portend. As Wittgenstein once noted, the fly in the bottle has difficulty
observing the fly in the bottle.
Considerable quantities of old ideological wine have been
decanted into the new bottle of global change. As the new realities
are refracted through the prism of political and philosophicalpredilections, the full spectrum of worldviews is revealed—technological optimists and pessimists, market celebrants and Cassandras,social engineers and anarchists. Crudely, archetypal social philosophies can be placed in three broad streams—the evolutionary, thecatastrophic and the transformational. They reflect fundamentallydifferent mindsets about how the world works. In the contemporary
context, they find expression in divergent outlooks on the longrange prospects for global development.
Evolutionists are optimistic that the dominant patterns we observe
today can deliver prosperity, stability and ecological health. Catastrophists fear that deepening social, economic and environmental

10Great Transition

tensions will not be resolved, with dire consequences for the world’s
future. Transformationists share these fears, but believe that global
transition can be seized as an opportunity to forge a better civilization. In a sense, these represent three different worlds—a world ofincremental adjustment, a world of discontinuous cataclysm and aworld of structural shift and renewal.
Each worldview sees the future through cloudy crystal balls ofinterpretation, fear and hope. And in truth, each has a plausible
story to tell, for diverse and contradictory forces are at play that
could drive global development toward some form of conventional
globalization, barbarism or a great historical transition. Fundamentally different worlds could crystallize from the complex and turbulent state of the planet, depending on unfolding events, serendipity
and human choice.
Uncertainty and indeterminacy lie deep in the fabric of reality.
At the microscopic scale, subatomic matter undergoes discontinuous
quantum leaps between states. At the macroscopic scale, as well,apparently identical complex systems can bifurcate into distinct
futures at critical crossroads. Similarly, biological systems canabsorb and assimilate external disturbances until critical values are
exceeded, and then transition to one of multiple possible states. At
critical points, small perturbations can have big effects.
Human reflexivity and volition add further dimensions of indeterminacy. The biography of any individual will include decisive
moments when experiences and choices shape the lived life, whileother possibilities are filed under “what-could-have-been.” Human
history, too, is not inevitable, as illustrated by counterfactual histories that re-tell the past with plausible “what ifs?” (Ferguson,
1999)—what if Stalin had been ousted in the 1920s or Germany had
won World War II? History is a tree of possibilities, in which critical events and decisions are branch points defining one of many
alternative pathways.
The horrific terrorist attacks on the United States of September
11, 2001 and their aftermath provide a vivid real-time example ofhistorical branching. “9/11” was a rip in time that defined a“before” and “after,” a cultural short-circuit that revealed deep

Where Are We?

11

global fissures and interrupted complacent attitudes. At one level, it
revealed a strain of pan-Islamic fundamentalism that violently
rejects the modernist project itself. As a fanatical fight for purity andagainst any form of assimilation, it cannot be palliated. At the sametime, the despair and anger that is the seedbed for extremism has
been brought to the world’s attention like never before, exposing thecontradictions and failures of global development.
Certainly the world will not be the same after 9/11, but the ultimate implications are indeterminate. One possibility is hopeful: newstrategic alliances could be a platform for new multinational engagement on a wide range of political, social and environmental problems. Heightened awareness of global inequities and dangers could
support a push for a more equitable form of global development asboth a moral and a security imperative. Popular values could eventually shift toward a strong desire for participation, cooperation andglobal understanding. Another possibility is ominous: an escalating
spiral of violence and reaction could amplify cultural and politicalschisms; the new military and security priorities could weaken
democratic institutions, civil liberties and economic opportunity;and people could grow more fearful, intolerant and xenophobic as
elites withdraw to their fortresses.
In the critical years ahead, if destabilizing social, political andenvironmental stresses are addressed, the dream of a culturally rich,inclusive and sustainable world civilization becomes plausible. If they
are not, the nightmare of an impoverished, mean and destructive
future looms. The rapidity of the planetary transition increases theurgency for vision and action lest we cross thresholds that irreversibly reduce options—a climate discontinuity, locking-in to unsustainable technological choices, and the loss of cultural and biologicaldiversity. Postponing the rectification of how we live together on thisplanet could foreclose the opportunity for a Great Transition.

2. Where Are We Headed?

In the past, new historical eras emerged organically andgradually out of the crises and opportunities presented by
the dying epoch. In the planetary transition, reacting to historicalcircumstance is insufficient. With the knowledge that our actions
can endanger the well-being of future generations, humanity faces
an unprecedented challenge—to anticipate the unfolding crises,
envision alternative futures and make appropriate choices. The
question of the future, once a matter for dreamers and philosophers,
has moved to the center of the development and scientific agendas.

Many Futures
How do scientific forecasters predict the future of a national economy, local weather or other systems? The key steps are description,
analysis and modeling—data are gathered on current conditions,factors are identified that drive change, and future behavior is represented as a set of mathematical variables that evolves smoothly
over time. This is a powerful approach when the system under study
is well understood and the time horizon is limited. But predictivemodeling is inadequate for illuminating the long-range future of ourstunningly complex planetary system.
Global futures cannot be predicted due to three types of indeterminacy—ignorance, surprise and volition. First, incomplete information on the current state of the system and the forces governing
its dynamics leads to a statistical dispersion over possible futurestates. Second, even if precise information were available, complex
systems are known to exhibit turbulent behavior, extreme sensitivity
to initial conditions and branching behaviors at critical thresholds—
the possibilities for novelty and emergent phenomena render prediction impossible. Finally, the future is unknowable because it issubject to human choices that have not yet been made.

13

14

Great Transition

In the face of such indeterminacy, how can we think about the
global future in an organized manner? Scenario analysis offers ameans of exploring a variety of long-range alternatives. In the theater, a scenario is a summary of a play. Analogously, development
scenarios are stories with a logical plot and narrative about how the
future might play out. Scenarios include images of the future—snapshots of the major features of interest at various points in time—andan account of the flow of events leading to such future conditions.
Global scenarios draw on both science—our understanding of historical patterns, current conditions and physical and social
processes—and the imagination to articulate alternative pathways ofdevelopment and the environment. While we cannot know what willbe, we can tell plausible and interesting stories about what could be.
Rather than prediction, the goal of scenarios is to support
informed and rational action by providing insight into the scope of
the possible. They illuminate the links between issues, the relationship between global and regional development and the role ofhuman actions in shaping the future. Scenarios can provide a
broader perspective than model-based analyses, while at the sametime making use of various quantitative tools. The qualitative scenario narrative gives voice to important non-quantifiable aspects
such as values, behaviors and institutions. Where modeling offers
structure, discipline and rigor, narrative offers texture, richness andinsight. The art is in the balance.

Global Scenarios
What global futures could emerge from the turbulent changes shaping our world? To organize thinking, we must reduce the immense
range of possibilities to a few stylized story lines that represent themain branches. To that end, we consider three classes of scenarios—
Conventional Worlds, Barbarization and Great Transitions. These
scenarios are distinguished by, respectively, essential continuity, fundamental but undesirable social change, and fundamental andfavorable social transformation.
Conventional Worlds assume the global system in the twentyfirst century evolves without major surprise, sharp discontinuity, orWhere Are We Headed?

15

fundamental transformation in the basis of human civilization. The
dominant forces and values currently driving globalization shape thefuture. Incremental market and policy adjustments are able to copewith social, economic and environmental problems as they arise.
Barbarization foresees the possibilities that these problems are not
managed. Instead, they cascade into self-amplifying crises that overwhelm the coping capacity of conventional institutions. Civilization
descends into anarchy or tyranny. Great Transitions, the focus of
this essay, envision profound historical transformations in the fundamental values and organizing principles of society. New values
and development paradigms ascend that emphasize the quality oflife and material sufficiency, human solidarity and global equity, andaffinity with nature and environmental sustainability.
For each of these three scenario classes, we define two variants,
for a total of six scenarios. In order to sharpen an important distinction in the contemporary debate, we divide the evolutionary
Conventional Worlds into Market Forces and Policy Reform. In
Market Forces, competitive, open and integrated global markets
drive world development. Social and environmental concerns aresecondary. By contrast, Policy Reform assumes that comprehensive
and coordinated government action is initiated for poverty reduction and environmental sustainability. The pessimistic Barbarization
perspective also is partitioned into two important variants, Breakdown and Fortress World. In Breakdown, conflict and crises spiralout of control and institutions collapse. Fortress World features anauthoritarian response to the threat of breakdown, as the world
divides into a kind of global apartheid with the elite in interconnected, protected enclaves and an impoverished majority outside.
The two Great Transitions variants are referred to as Eco-communalism and New Sustainability Paradigm. Eco-communalism is avision of bio-regionalism, localism, face-to-face democracy and economic autarky. While popular among some environmental andanarchistic subcultures, it is difficult to visualize a plausible pathfrom the globalizing trends of today to Eco-communalism, that does
not pass through some form of Barbarization. In this essay, Great
Transition is identified with the New Sustainability Paradigm,

16Great Transition

which would change the character of global civilization rather thanretreat into localism. It validates global solidarity, cultural cross-fertilization and economic connectedness while seeking a liberatory,
humanistic and ecological transition. The six scenario variants areillustrated in Figure 4, which shows rough sketches of the time
behavior of each for selected variables.
The scenarios are distinguished by distinct responses to thesocial and environmental challenges. Market Forces relies on the
self-correcting logic of competitive markets. Policy Reform depends
on government action to seek a sustainable future. In Fortress Worldit falls to the armed forces to impose order, protect the environment
and prevent a collapse into Breakdown. Great Transitions envisiona sustainable and desirable future emerging from new values, arevised model of development and the active engagement of civilsociety.
Figure 4. Scenario Structure with Illustrative Patterns

Scenario

Conventional Worlds
Market Forces
Policy Reform
Barbarization
Breakdown
Fortress WorldGreat Transitions
Eco-Communalism
New Sustainability
Paradigm
Source: Gallopín et al. (1997)

Population Economy Environment

EquityTechnology

ConflictWhere Are We Headed?

17

The premises, values and myths that define these social visions
are rooted in the history of ideas (Table 2). The Market Forces bias
is one of market optimism, the faith that the hidden hand of wellfunctioning markets is the key to resolving social, economic andenvironmental problems. An important philosophic antecedent is
Adam Smith (1776), while contemporary representatives include
many neo-classical economists and free market enthusiasts. In Policy Reform, the belief is that markets require strong policy guidance
to address inherent tendencies toward economic crisis, social conflict and environmental degradation. John Maynard Keynes, influenced by the Great Depression, is an important predecessor of those
who hold that it is necessary to manage capitalism in order to temper its crises (Keynes, 1936). With the agenda expanded to include
Table 2. Archetypal Worldviews
Worldview

Antecedents

Conventional Worlds
MarketSmith

Policy Reform

Barbarization
Breakdown

Fortress WorldGreat Transitions
Eco-communalism
New Sustainability
Paradigm
Muddling ThroughPhilosophy

MottoMarket optimism;
hidden & enlightened
hand

Don’t worry, be happy

KeynesBrundtland

Policy stewardship

Growth, environment,
equity through better
technology & management

Malthus

Existential gloom;
population/resource
catastrophe

The end is coming

HobbesSocial chaos;nasty nature of man

Order through strong
leaders

Morris & social
utopians
Ghandhi

Pastoral romance;
human goodness;
evil of industrialism

Small is beautifulMill

Sustainability as
progressive global
social evolution

Human solidarity, newvalues, the art of living

Your brother-inlaw (probably)

No grand philosophies

Que será, será

18

Great Transition

environmental sustainability and poverty reduction, this is the perspective that underlay the seminal Brundtland Commission report(WCED, 1987) and much of the official discourse since on environment and development.
The dark belief underlying the Breakdown variant is that theworld faces an unprecedented calamity in which unbridled population and economic growth leads to ecological collapse, rampaging
conflict and institutional disintegration. Thomas Malthus (1798),
who projected that geometrically increasing population growthwould outstrip arithmetically increasing food production, is an
influential forerunner of this grim prognosis. Variations on thisworldview surface repeatedly in contemporary assessments of the
global predicament (Ehrlich, 1968; Meadows et al., 1972; Kaplan,
2000). The Fortress World mindset was foreshadowed by the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (1651), who held a pessimistic view of
the nature of man and saw the need for powerful leadership. While
it is rare to find modern Hobbesians, many people in their resignation and anguish believe that some kind of a Fortress World is thelogical outcome of the unattended social polarization and environmental degradation they observe.
The forebears of the Eco-communalism belief system lie withthe pastoral reaction to industrialization of William Morris and thenineteenth-century social utopians (Thompson, 1993); the small-isbeautiful philosophy of Schumacher (1972); and the traditionalismof Gandhi (1993). This anarchistic vision animates many environmentalists and social visionaries today (Sales 2000; Bossel 1998).
The worldview of New Sustainability Paradigm has few historicalprecedents, although John Stuart Mill, the nineteenth century political economist, was prescient in theorizing a post-industrial andpost-scarcity social arrangement based on human development
rather than material acquisition (Mill, 1848). Indeed, the explication of the new paradigm is the aim of the present treatise.
Another worldview—or more appropriately anti-worldview—
is not captured by this typology. Many people, if not most, abjure
speculation, subscribing instead to a Muddling Through bias, thelast row of Table 2 (Lindblom, 1959). This is a diverse coterie,

Where Are We Headed?

19

including the unaware, the unconcerned and the unconvinced. They
are the passive majority on the grand question of the global future.

Driving Forces
While the global trajectory may branch in very different directions,the point of departure for all scenarios is a set of driving forces andtrends that currently condition and change the system:
Demographics
Populations are growing larger, more crowded and older. In typicalprojections, global population increases by about 50 percent by
2050, with most of the additional three billion people in developing
countries. If urbanization trends continue, there will be nearly fourbillion new city dwellers, posing great challenges for infrastructuredevelopment, the environment and social cohesion. Lower fertility
rates will lead gradually to an increase in average age and an increasein the pressure on productive populations to support the elderly. A
Great Transition would accelerate population stabilization, moderateurbanization rates and seek more sustainable settlement patterns.
Economics
Product, financial and labor markets are becoming increasingly integrated and interconnected in a global economy. Advances in information technology and international agreements to liberalize trade
have catalyzed the process of globalization. Huge transnational
enterprises more and more dominate a planetary marketplace, posing challenges to the traditional prerogatives of the nation-state.
Governments face greater difficulty forecasting or controlling financial and economic disruptions as they ripple through an interdependent world economy. This is seen directly in the knock-on effects ofregional financial crises, but also indirectly in the impacts of terrorist attacks and health scares, such as mad cow disease in Europe. In
a Great Transition, social and environmental concerns would bereflected in market-constraining policies, a vigilant civil society
would foster more responsible corporate behavior and new values
would change consumption and production patterns.

20Great Transition

Social Issues
Increasing inequality and persistent poverty characterize the contemporary global scene. As the world grows more affluent for some,life becomes more desperate for those left behind by global economic growth. Economic inequality among nations and withinmany nations is growing. At the same time, the transition to marketdriven development erodes traditional support systems and norms,
leading to considerable social dislocation and scope for criminal
activity. In some regions, infectious disease and drug-related criminal activity are important social factors affecting development. A
central theme of a Great Transition is to make good on the commitments in the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights tojustice and a decent standard of living for all, in the context of aplural and equitable global development model.
CultureGlobalization, information technology and electronic media foster
consumer culture in many societies. This process is both a result
and a driver of economic globalization. Ironically, the advancetoward a unified global marketplace also triggers nationalist andreligious reaction. In their own ways, both globalization, whichleaves important decisions affecting the environment and social
issues to transnational market actors, and religious fundamentalist
reaction to globalization pose challenges to democratic institutions(Barber, 1995). The 9/11 attacks on the United States left no doubtthat global terrorism has emerged as a significant driving force inworld development. It appears to have contradictory causes—toomuch modernism and too little. Its hardcore militants seem energized by utopian dreams of a pan-Islamic rejection of Western-oriented global culture. Its mass sympathy seems rooted in the anger
and despair of exclusion from opportunity and prosperity. In the
clamor for consumerism or its negation, it is sometimes difficult tohear the voices for global solidarity, tolerance and diversity. Yet,they are the harbinger of the ethos that lies at the heart of a Great
Transition.

Where Are We Headed?

21

Technology
Technology continues to transform the structure of production, thenature of work and the use of leisure time. The continued advanceof computer and information technology is at the forefront of thecurrent wave of technological innovation. Also, biotechnology could
significantly affect agricultural practices, pharmaceuticals and disease prevention, while raising a host of ethical and environmental
issues. Advances in miniaturized technologies could revolutionize
medical practices, material science, computer performance andmany other applications. A Great Transition would shape technological development to promote human fulfillment and environmental sustainability.
Environment
Global environmental degradation is another significant transnational driving force. International concern has grown about humanimpacts on the atmosphere, land and water resources, the bioaccumulation of toxic substances, species loss and the degradation of
ecosystems. The realization that individual countries cannot insulatethemselves from global environmental impacts is changing the basisof geo-politics and global governance. A core element of a new sustainability paradigm would be the understanding of humanity as partof the web of life with responsibility for the sustainability of nature.
Governance
There is a significant trend toward democratization and decentralization of authority. On an individual level, there is increased
emphasis on “rights,” such as women’s rights, indigenous rights andhuman rights broadly conceived. In the private sector, it is reflected
in “flatter” corporate structures and decentralized decision-making.
Some entities, such as the Internet or NGO networks, have no formal authority structure. The emergence of civil society as an important voice in decision-making is a notable development. A Great
Transition would see the emergence of a nested governance structurefrom the local to the global that balances the need to sustain global

22Great Transitionsocial and environmental values with the desire for diversity in cultures and strategies.

Market-driven Development and its Perils
In the Market Forces scenario, dominant forces and trends continue
to shape the character of global development in the coming decades.
The tendencies supporting a sustainability transition remain secondary forces. This is the tacit assumption of “business-as-usual”
scenarios. But it should be underscored that, like all scenarios, Market Forces is a normative vision of the future. Its success requires
policy activism, and it will not be easy. Comprehensive initiatives
will be required to overcome market barriers, create enabling institutional frameworks and integrate the developing world into theglobal economic system. This is the program of the IMF, WTO andthe so-called “Washington consensus”—we call it the conventional
development paradigm.
An earlier study analyzed the Market Forces scenario in depth
for each global region (Raskin et al., 1998). A thumbnail sketch of
selected global indicators is shown in Figure 5. The use of energy,
water and other natural resources grows far less rapidly than GDP.
This “dematerialization” is due both to structural shifts in the economy—from industry to the less resource-intensive service sector—andto market-induced technological change. But despite such reductions,the pressures on resources and the environment increase as thegrowth in human activity overwhelms the improved efficiency perunit of activity. The “growth effect” outpaces the “efficiency effect.”Among the projections in the Market Forces scenario:• Between 1995 and 2050, world population increases by morethan 50 percent, average income grows over 2.5 times andeconomic output more than quadruples.
• Food requirements almost double, driven by growth in population and income.
• Nearly a billion people remain hungry as growing populations and continuing inequity in the sharing of wealth counterbalance the poverty-reducing effects of general economic
growth.

Where Are We Headed?

23

Figure 5. Global Indicators in Market Forces Scenario
5

1995
2025
4

2050

1995 = 1

3

2

1

0

Population

GDP per
Capita

World
GDP

Food
DemandHungerEnergyDemandWater
DemandCO2
Emissions

ForestArea• Developing region economies grow more rapidly than the
average, but the absolute difference in incomes between
industrialized and other countries increases from an averageof about $20,000 per capita now to $55,000 in 2050, as
incomes soar in rich countries.
• Requirements for energy and water increase substantially.
• Carbon dioxide emissions continue to grow rapidly, further
undermining global climate stability, and risking serious ecological, economic and human health impacts.
• Forests are lost to the expansion of agriculture and humansettlement areas and other land-use changes.
A Market Forces future would be a risky bequest to ourtwenty-first century descendants. Such a scenario is not likely to beeither sustainable or desirable. Significant environmental and social
obstacles lie along this path of development. The combined effects
of growth in the number of people, the scale of the economy and thethroughput of natural resources increase the pressure that humanactivity imposes on the environment. Rather than abating, theunsustainable process of environmental degradation that we observe24Great Transition

in today’s world would intensify. The danger of crossing criticalthresholds in global systems would increase, triggering events that
could radically transform the planet’s climate and ecosystems.
The increasing pressure on natural resources is likely to cause
disruption and conflict. Oil would become progressively scarcer in
the next few decades, prices would rise and the geopolitics of oil
would return as a major theme in international affairs. In many
places, rising water demands would generate discord over the allocation of scarce fresh water both within and between countries—
and between human uses and ecosystem needs. To feed a richer andlarger population, forests and wetlands would continue to be converted to agriculture, and chemical pollution from unsustainableagro-industrial farming practices would pollute rivers and aquifers.
Substantial expansion of built-up areas would contribute significantly to land cover changes. The expansion of irrigated farming
would be constrained sharply by water shortage and lack of suitablesites. Precious ecosystems—coastal reefs, wetlands, forests andnumerous others—would continue to degrade as a result of landchange, water degradation and pollution. Increasing climate change
is a wild card that could further complicate the provision of adequate water and food, and the preservation of ecosystem goods, services and amenities.
The social and economic stability of a Market Forces world
would be compromised. A combination of factors—persistence of
global poverty, continued inequity among and within nations anddegradation of environmental resources—would undermine social
cohesion, stimulate migration and weaken international security.
Market Forces is a precarious basis for a transition to an environmentally sustainable future. It may also be an inconsistent one. The
economic costs and social dislocation of increasing environmental
impacts could undermine a fundamental premise of the scenario—
perpetual global economic growth.
Fraught with such tensions and contradictions, the long-term
stability of a Market Forces world is certainly not guaranteed. It
could persist for many decades, reeling from one environmental,social and security crisis to the next. Perhaps its very instability

Where Are We Headed?

25

would spawn powerful and progressive initiatives for a more sustainable and just development vision. But it is also possible that its
crises would reinforce, amplify and spiral out of control.

Barbarization and the Abyss
Barbarization scenarios explore the alarming possibility that a Market Forces future veers toward a world of conflict in which themoral underpinnings of civilization erode. Such grim scenarios areplausible. For those who are pessimistic about the current drift ofworld development, they are probable. We explore them to be forewarned, to identify early warning signs and to motivate efforts thatcounteract the conditions that could initiate them.
The initial driving forces propelling this scenario are the same
as for all scenarios. But the momentum for sustainability and arevised development agenda, which seemed so compelling at theclose of the twentieth century, collapses. The warning bells—environmental degradation, climate change, social polarization and terrorism—are rung, but not heeded. The conventional paradigm gains
ascendancy as the world enters the era of Market Forces. But insteadof rectifying today’s environmental and socio-economic tensions, amulti-dimensional crisis ensues.
As the crisis unfolds, a key uncertainty is the reaction of theremaining powerful institutions—country alliances, transnational corporations, international organizations, armed forces. In the Breakdown variant, their response is fragmented as conflict and rivalry
amongst them overwhelm all efforts to impose order. In Fortress
World, powerful regional and international actors comprehend theperilous forces leading to Breakdown. They are able to muster a sufficiently organized response to protect their own interests and to create lasting alliances. The forces of order view this as a necessaryintervention to prevent the corrosive erosion of wealth, resources andgovernance systems. The elite retreat to protected enclaves, mostly inhistorically rich nations, but in favored enclaves in poor nations, aswell. A Fortress World story is summarized in the box below.
The stability of the Fortress World depends on the organizational capacity of the privileged enclaves to maintain control over

26

Great Transition

the disenfranchised. The scenario may contain the seeds of its own
destruction, although it could last for decades. A general uprising of
the excluded population could overturn the system, especially ifrivalry opens fissures in the common front of the dominant strata.
The collapse of the Fortress World might lead to a Breakdown trajectory or to the emergence of a new, more equitable world order.

Fortress World: A Narrative
By 2002, the market euphoria of the last decade of the twentieth-century seems like anaïve and giddy dream. A global economic recession chastens the irrational exuberanceof dot-com investors, and the 9/11 terrorist attack awakens a sleepwalking global eliteto deep fissures cutting across the geo-political landscape. The nations of the world,
mobilized in a cooperative effort to fight terrorism, are offered an unexpected opportunity to redirect development strategy and commit to a form of globalization that is more
inclusive, democratic and sustainable. But they do not seize it. The moment of unity andpossibility is squandered, in a frenzy of militarism, suspicion and polarization. The empty
rhetoric of Earth Summit 2002 is an obituary for the lost era of sustainable development.
Gradually, a coordinated campaign is able to control terrorism at “manageable”
levels, although episodic attacks periodically invigorate the politics of fear. The mantraof economic growth, trade liberalization and structural adjustment continues to beheard in the halls of global governance organizations, such as the WTO, the boardroomsof transnational corporations and corridors of national governments. The old ideology ofindividualism and consumerism flourishes anew, but with a greater respect for the legitimacy of government—as the guarantor of national and individual security, in the first
instance, and as an activist partner in enforcing a global market regime, in general.
But it is a bifurcated form of economic globalization limited largely to the socalled “20/20 club”—the 20 percent of nations that are rich and the 20 percent of theelite in nations that are not. The global economy spawns a new class of internationallyconnected affluent. But there is a counterpoint—the billions of desperately poor whoseboats fail to rise with the general economic tide. Some international agencies and somegovernments continue to mount programs aimed at reducing poverty, promoting entrepreneurship and modernizing institutions. But with financial and political priorities oriented toward security and control, the efforts are woefully inadequate.
As the level of poverty increases and the gulf between rich and poor widens,
development aid continues to decline. The remnants of the institutional capacity andmoral commitment to global welfare are lost. Meanwhile, environmental conditions
deteriorate. Multiple stresses—pollution, climate change, ecosystem degradation—interact and amplify the crisis. Disputes over scarce water resources feed conflict inregions with shared river basins. Environmental degradation, food insecurity and emergent diseases foster a vast health crisis.
(continued)

Where Are We Headed?

Fortress World: A Narrative
Tantalized by media images of opulence and dreams of affluence, the excluded
billions grow restive. Many seek emigration to affluent centers by any means necessary.
Criminal activity thrives in the anarchic conditions, with some powerful global syndicates able to field fearsome fighting units in their battle against international policing
activities. A new kind of militant—educated, excluded and angry—fans the flames of
discontent. The poison of social polarization deepens. Terrorism resurges, escalating fromwaves of suicide attacks at popular gatherings and on symbols of globalism, to use of
biological and nuclear weapons.
In this atmosphere of deepening social and environmental crisis, conflict feeds off
old ethnic, religious and nationalist tensions. Poor countries begin to fragment as civil
order collapses and various forms of criminal anarchy fill the vacuum. Even some of themore prosperous nations feel the sting as infrastructure decays and technology fails. The
global economy sputters and international institutions weaken, while the bite of climatechange and environmental devastation grows fiercer. The affluent minority fears it too
will be engulfed by rampant migration, violence and disease. The global crisis spins outof control.
The forces of global order take action. International military, corporate, and governance bodies, supported by the most powerful national governments, form the selfstyled Alliance for Global Salvation. Using a revamped United Nations as their platform,a state of planetary emergency is declared. A campaign of overwhelming force, roughjustice and draconian police measures sweeps through hot spots of conflict and discontent. With as-needed military and reconstruction support from the Alliance, local forcesnearly everywhere are able to subdue resistance and impose stability backed by international peacekeeping units.
A system of global dualism—some call it a Fortress World, others Planetary
Apartheid—emerges from the crisis. The separate spheres of the haves and have-nots,
the included and excluded, are codified in asymmetrical and authoritarian legal andinstitutional frameworks. The affluent live in protected enclaves in rich nations and instrongholds in poor nations—bubbles of privilege amidst oceans of misery. In the police
state outside the fortress, the majority is mired in poverty and denied basic freedoms.
The authorities use high-tech surveillance and old-fashioned brutality to control social
unrest and migration, and to protect valued environmental resources. The elite have
halted barbarism at their gates and enforced a kind of environmental management anduneasy stability.

27

28

Great Transition

On Utopianism and Pragmatism
The Market Forces worldview embraces both an ambitious vision anda cosmic gamble. The vision is to forge a globally integrated free market by eliminating trade barriers, building market-enabling institutions and spreading the Western model of development. The colossal
gamble is that the global market will not succumb to its internal contradictions—planetary environmental degradation, economic instability, social polarization and cultural conflict.
As environments degrade, it is true that some automatic correction acts through the subtle guidance of the “hidden hand” of themarket. Environmental scarcity will be reflected in higher prices that
reduce demand, and in business opportunities that promote technological innovation and resource substitution. This is why environmental economics draws attention to the critical importance of“internalizing the externalities”—ensuring that the costs of thedegradation of environmental resources are monetarized and borneby the producers and consumers who impose such costs. Will suchself-correcting mechanisms provide adjustments of sufficient rapidity and scale? To believe so is a matter of faith and optimism withlittle foundation in scientific analysis or historical experience. Thereis simply no insurance that the Market Forces path would not compromise the future by courting major ecosystem changes and unwelcome surprises.
Another article of faith is that the Market Forces development
strategy would deliver the social basis for sustainability. The hope isthat general economic growth would reduce the ranks of the poor,
improve international equity and reduce conflict. But again, the theoretical and empirical foundations for such a salutary expectation
are weak. Rather, the national experience in industrial countries
over the last two centuries suggests that directed social welfare programs are required to ameliorate the dislocation and impoverishment induced by market-driven development. In this scenario,
global poverty would likely persist as population growth andskewed income distributions combine to negate the poverty-reducing effect of growth in average income.

Where Are We Headed?

29

Even if a Market Forces future were able to deliver a stableglobal economic system—itself a highly uncertain hypothesis—the
scenario offers no compelling basis for concluding that it would
meet the ethical imperatives to pass on a sustainable world to future
generations and to sharply reduce human deprivation. Economic
and social polarization could compromise social cohesion and makeliberal democratic institutions more fragile. Resource and environmental degradation would magnify domestic and international tensions. The unfettered market is important for economic efficiency,
but only a fettered market can deliver on sustainability. Environment, equity and development goals are supra-market issues that are
best addressed through democratic political processes based on
widely shared ethical values and informed by scientific knowledge.
The dream of a Market Forces world is the impulse behind thedominant development paradigm of recent years. As the tacit ideology of influential international institutions, politicians and thinkers,
it often appears both reasonable and the only game in town. But
drifting into the complexity of a global future by relying on such old
mind-sets is the sanctuary for the complacent and the sanguine.
Ensuring a transition to a sustainable global future requires an alternative constellation of policies, behaviors and values. “Business-asusual” is a utopian fantasy—forging a new social vision is apragmatic necessity.

3. Where Do We Want to Go?

P

ondering the forecaster’s question—where are wegoing?—has led us not to clear answers about the global
future, but to disquieting uncertainties. The global trajectory,
extrapolated into the future assuming the persistence of dominant
trends and values, becomes contradictory and unstable. The curve ofdevelopment splits into numerous possibilities, with some branches
pointing toward barbarous social-scapes and ecological impoverishment. But humans are travelers, not lemmings, who can also ask thetraveler’s question—where do we want to go? Vision and intentionality is the freedom that draws us forward as surely as the past
pushes us onward.

Goals for a Sustainable World
From the tumult of the twentieth century, four great human aspirations crystallized for global society—peace, freedom, material wellbeing and environmental health. In this century a great transition
will need to achieve them.
Peace was to be assured after World War II, but amidst thenuclear arms race, it would be maintained globally but not locallythrough the long Cold War. The international fight for freedom alsobegan in the late 1940s with the struggle to end imperialism andcolonialism, to extend human rights and to combat totalitarian
oppression. Then, came a wave of national independence and aninternational initiative to assist poor countries that aspired to thedevelopment standards of the wealthy nations. Lastly, the concern
for the well-being of the earth itself emerged in the 1970s, initially
focused on natural resources and the human environment, and later
extended to the complex systems that support life on Earth.
Now in the early years of the twenty-first century issues of peaceand freedom arise again, not only from the many ongoing armed
conflicts, but also from acts of terror against non-combatants.
31

32

Great Transition

Grappling with these new threats jeopardizes democratic freedoms.
The transition beyond war and conflict is part of the sustainability
transition. Human rights—economic and social as well as political—
need to become universal. Democratic rule, with minority autonomy
and rights, needs to be maintained and extended. International conventions already codify many of these goals. For their promise to be
fulfilled, they need worldwide ratification and means of enforcement.
The core challenge of development is to meet human needs forfood, water and health, and provide opportunities for education,
employment and participation. Economically productive and equitable societies can provide literacy, primary and secondary education, and widespread access to advanced education. The end of
hunger and deprivation, and the universal right to a healthy and fulllife are achievable by 2050.
A resilient and productive environment is the precondition forsustaining peace, freedom and development. Preserving the essential
health, services and beauties of the earth requires stabilizing the climate at safe levels, sustaining energy, materials and water resources,
reducing toxic emissions and maintaining the world’s ecosystems
and habitats.
At the beginning of a new century, these grand goals forhumanity have not been fulfilled, although there has been progressin pursuit of all. The challenge for the future is fashioning a planetary transition that realizes the dream of a more peaceful, free, justand ecologically conscious world.

Bending the Curve
Sustainability goals have been articulated in a long series of formal
agreements on human rights, poverty and the environment. But
noble sentiments have not been matched by sufficient policy commitments. The vision of sustainability has been a virtual reality
superimposed on the real-world push for market globalization.
The broad goals express a powerful ethos for a sustainable
world. This is the stirring but intangible music of sustainability. Also
needed are the lyrics and the dance—specific targets to concretize

Where Do We Want to Go?

33

the goals and policy actions to achieve them. The Policy Reform scenario visualizes how this might occur. The essence of the scenario isthe emergence of the political will for gradually bending the curve ofdevelopment toward a comprehensive set of sustainability targets.
We examined the prospects for a Policy Reform future in detailin a previous study (Raskin et al., 1998). The scenario is constructed
as a backcast. We begin with a vision of the world in 2025 and 2050
in which minimum sets of environment and social targets have beenachieved. We then determine a feasible combination of incremental
changes to the Market Forces trajectory for meeting these goals. A
narrative sketch of a Policy Reform scenario is presented in the box
below.
What targets are achievable in a Policy Reform context?
Widely discussed social and environmental objectives provide usefulguidance on the scope of the challenge. Naturally, any quantitative
targets are provisional, and subject to revision as knowledge
expands, events unfold and perspectives change. Policy Reform targets for each of the broad sustainability goals—peace, freedom,development and environment—are discussed below and showngraphically in Figure 6, where they are contrasted with patterns in
the Market Forces scenario.
Peace
The Policy Reform path would offer an historic opportunity toaddress the scourge of war. It seeks an inclusive form of global market development that sharply reduces human destitution, incorporates countries in common international regulatory and legal
frameworks and strengthens global governance. The scenario would
mitigate underlying drivers of socio-economic, environmental andnationalistic conflict, while adopting international mechanisms forfostering peace and negotiated settlements. In the last decade of thetwentieth century, there was an average of 28 major armed conflicts—that is, conflicts that resulted in at least 1,000 battle-related
deaths in any single year. The scenario goal is to reduce these to amere handful by the year 2050.

34Great Transition

Freedom
The right of all to participate fully in society without discriminationor bias is a basic right of democratic development. The gradualconferral of equality to women, ethnic groups and racial minorities
is a notable achievement of recent decades. The process of eliminating gender and ethnic inequality would accelerate under sustainable
development, and could be largely completed by 2050. Figure 6
illustrates this for gender equity as measured by the Gender-Related
Development Index that compares life expectancy, educational
attainment and income between men and women (UNDP, 2001).
Development
Poverty reduction is the key development goal of the scenario. The
incidence of chronic hunger, which now afflicts over 800 million
people, is a strong correlate of the poverty nexus. The World Food
Summit’s call to halve hunger by the year 2015 (FAO, 1996) may
have been overly ambitious in light of slow recent progress. The scenario target is to halve hunger by 2025 and halve it again by 2050.
Other measures of poverty, such as lack of access to freshwater andilliteracy, have similar patterns of reduction in the scenario. Anotheruseful indicator is average lifespan, which correlates with generalhuman health. With accelerated effort, longevity, which today averages about 60 years in developing countries, could reach 70 years inall countries by 2025, and approach 80 years by 2050.
Environment
Environmental sustainability means reducing human impacts to levels that do not impoverish nature and place future generations at
risk. Indicators for climate change, ecosystem loss and freshwater
stress are shown in Figure 6.
• The goal for climate change is to stabilize concentrations ofgreenhouse gases in the atmosphere at safe levels (UNFCCC,
1997). Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2),
the most important greenhouse gas, have risen from preindustrial levels of 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv) toabout 360 ppmv today. Since the momentum of increasing

Where Do We Want to Go?

35

emissions is inexorable and CO2 persists in the atmospherefor centuries, climate change cannot be avoided, but it can bemoderated. A reasonable, although challenging, goal is tostabilize CO2 at 450 ppmv by the year 2100. This would
keep the cumulative increase in average global temperature
below 2ºC, a gradual enough change to allow most ecosystems and species to adapt (IPCC, 2001). This will requirethat greenhouse gas emissions in industrial countries be cut in
half over the next 50 years to give “atmospheric space” forpoor countries to slowly converge toward common low-emission global standards late in the twenty-first century.
• Climate change is a threat to ecosystems and biodiversity, but
not the only one. Land conversions, disruption of freshwater
patterns and pollution all contribute. At the least, sustainability requires maintaining sufficient natural areas to ensure adequate protection of ecosystems and associated biodiversity(CBD, 2001; CCD, 2001). Currently, 25 percent of the earth’s
land is degraded and more than one-fifth of the world’s tropical forests have been cleared since 1960 (Watson et al., 1998).
A minimum sustainability goal is to halt the loss of ecosystems
by 2025 and thereafter begin the process of restoration, a pattern reflected in the targets for forests. While this implies further loss, it is not feasible to completely reverse the tide ofdestruction in a growing global economy (Raskin et al., 1998).
• Freshwater policy is critical to meeting both environmental
and social goals. Today, nearly a third of the world’s population is living under moderate or severe water stress (Raskin etal., 1998). As water demands grow, conflict increases in two
broad ways—between users in shared river basins and between
humanity and nature. The scenario seeks to meet humanrequirements—the basic needs of people, agriculture and theeconomy—while maintaining ecosystems. Current trends are
not promising—in Market Forces the number of people livingin water-scarce conditions more than doubles by 2025. A minimum sustainability goal is to moderate water stress throughpolicies to promote water efficiency, waste water recycling and36Great Transition

source preservation. Figure 6 shows how water stress could
begin to abate with the commitments to water-use efficiency
and water resource protection of Policy Reform.

25
20
15

Freedom

1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4

hunger (billions)30

gender equity

Peace

35

Development

1.2

0.8

0.4

10
0.2

0
1980

2000

2020

2040

Climate

550
500
450
400
350
300
1980

2000

2020

2040

0.0
1980

2060

2060

0.0
2000

2020

2040

Ecosystems

4,500

1980

2060

billions of people5

forest area (million ha)

CO2 concentration (ppmv)

conflict (>1000 deaths/year)

Figure 6. Policy Reform and Market Forces Compared: Selected
Indicators for Peace, Freedom, Development and Environment

2000

2020

2040

2060

Water Stress

6
5
4
3
2
1

3,000
1980

0
2000

2020

2040

2060

1980

Market Forces

2000

2020

2040

2060

Policy Reform

In a Policy Reform world, “growth with equity” becomes theprevailing philosophy of development strategies. A host of initiatives
increase the incomes of the poor. Reinvigorated multi-national andbi-national livelihood programs build human and institutional
capacity. The flow of investment toward the poorest communities
and technological transfers accelerate. Market mechanisms for
reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental
goals provide additional revenue streams to developing countries,
and contribute to the convergence of incomes between developing
and industrialized regions. Also, population growth moderates asaccess to education and effective family planning programs expand.
Relative to unfavorable Market Forces trends, the scenario promotes two kinds of equity—between rich and poor countries andwithin each country. Actions taken to reduce poverty also reduce theimmense disparities between the rich and the poor that cleave thecurrent social landscape. Beyond poverty reduction, greater equity
in the distribution of wealth between and within countries promotes

Where Do We Want to Go?

37

social cohesion and resilient basis for a peaceful global system.
Today the average income in rich countries is nearly seven times thatin the rest of the world (and 35 times that in the poorer countries).
The scenario reduces this ratio to below 3 by 2050. National
equity—defined by the ratio of the incomes of the poorest 20 percent to those of the richest 20 percent, for example—has been
declining in many countries. In the Policy Reform scenario the drift
toward greater inequality is reversed (Raskin et al., 1998).
The environmental goals require substantial decreases in theenvironmental impacts imposed by rich economies. Elsewhere,
impacts increase and then moderate, as poor economies converge
toward rich country patterns. On the demand side, the efficiency ofenergy, water and resource use rapidly increases. On the productionside, the transition to renewable energy, ecological agricultural andeco-efficient industrial systems accelerates. Policy Reform showshow, with sufficient political commitment, a comprehensive set ofpolicies could begin to redirect development towards sustainability.
These social and environmental initiatives are mutually reinforcing aspects of a unitary project for sustainability. When the poor
have access to health care, education and economic security, population growth tends to fall. Poverty reduction helps protect environmental resources, since poverty is both a cause and an effect ofenvironmental degradation. Environmental stability provides thematerial basis for economic welfare which, in turn, is a precondition
for social and economic equity. Greater equity supports cohesion atcommunity, national and global levels. Human solidarity andhealthy environments reduce the threat of violence and conflict.

38

Great Transition

Policy Reform: A Narrative
With the long view of history, globalization stands out as the major theme of the last
decades of the twentieth century. Like all turning points, the onset of the planetaryphase of world development carries contradictory phenomena in its wake. Superficially,
it seems that the dominant engine for change is the rapid advance of a global market
system, catalyzed by distance-shrinking transportation and information technology. But
a second powerful force, reacting to the predations of heedless global markets, also quietly gestates—the movement for an environmentally sustainable and humane form ofdevelopment.
The momentum for Policy Reform is traced through a series of UN initiatives—the1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, the 1987 World Commission on
Environment and Development and the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. While these had little
immediate effect, in the fullness of time it is clear that they are essential precursors to
the remarkable changes of the first decades of the twenty-first century. But it did notseem that way at the time.
Indeed, at the end of the twentieth century, the international momentum for asustainable future seems squandered. The calls at global conferences for a cohesive
agenda for sparing the environment and bringing development to the poor regions of
the world appears rarely to go beyond rhetoric to effective action. Special interestssquabble, powerful nations resist aligning their development with global environmental
goals, and a fragmented system of global governance holds an unending series of topical conferences that offer inspiring but toothless edicts.
But after 2002 history has begun to swing toward sustainable development. A
number of factors combine to tilt the balance. The World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg in that year, is a hinge event. The political space for thereform agenda comes in part from the end of market euphoria, so triumphant in the
1990s. At the turn of the new century, a global recession is a reminder that the golden
goose of the new prosperity is mortal and that e-commerce has not abolished economic
uncertainties. Then the terrorist attacks of 9/11 rip the affluent world from its complacent slumber, at once kindling insecurity, anger and a sense that global development is
not working.
Forged in the crucible of a war on terrorism, a new globalism offers an unprecedented opportunity for proactive and cooperative global engagement. The dose of reality persuades government that the internationalization of market opportunities andinstitutional modernization must proceed on an accelerated basis. The vision at first is
confined to delivering on the promise of globalization to assimilate the disaffected andexcluded of the earth in the nexus of Western modernism. Free trade institutions are
expanded, global governance for the economy is strengthened and international assistance supports a new generation of business and political leaders. At first the vision of
an inclusive market-driven world has a salutary effect on the global economy and international security. But the response is insufficient.
(continued)

Where Do We Want to Go?

Policy Reform: A Narrative
The environment continues to degrade. The scientific case strengthens thathuman activity is imperiling global environmental stability. The public grows increasingly
impatient, seeing its own evidence in abrupt climate events and mounting reports ofspecies loss. The global economy sputters, and a sense of crisis is amplified by ecological uncertainty and social polarization. In poorer regions, people bitter about the continued failure of globalization to reduce poverty and feeling the bite of climate changedemand a new global deal. A combined social, economic and environmental crisis isbrewing.
The search begins for a more inclusive, democratic and secure form of development. The world-wide coalition, which began in the fight against global terrorism, extends
its mandate to include multilateral action on the environment, arms reduction, international justice and poverty reduction. The goals of international security and sustainable
development become interlaced. The media responds and amplifies the mounting
environmental and social concerns. NGOs acting through international networks expand
their influence. The Internet fuels the global clamor for action. A growing segment of themultinational business community, alarmed at the uncertainties and threats to global stability, become advocates of global policies that reduce risks and provide a level playing
field for business.
New political leaders committed to concerted action eventually heed these rising
voices. A global consensus emerges on the urgent need for policies to secure environmental resilience and to sharply reduce poverty. The Policy Reform response seeks tobalance the agendas of those who want no change—Market Forces advocates—andthose seeking a more fundamental shift in development values—Great Transition advocates. The market remains the basic engine for economic growth, supported by trade liberalization, privatization and the global convergence toward the model of developmentof the rich countries. But globally negotiated targets for environment sustainability andpoverty reduction are the basis for constraining and tempering the market. The United
Nations is reorganized and its mission refocused on the Policy Reform agenda.
The allocation of regional and national responsibilities takes account of the needfor rich countries to radically reduce their environmental footprint while assisting poor
countries to reduce poverty, to build human capacity and to leapfrog to resource-sparing and environmentally sound technology. The mix of policy instruments for achieving
goals—economic reform, regulation, voluntary action, social programs and technology
development—varies among regions and nations. Progress toward the global targets ismonitored carefully and adjusted periodically. Gradually, global environmental degradation moderates and extreme poverty declines.

39

40

Great Transition

Limits of the Reform Path
The Market Forces scenario, we have argued, would undermine its
own stability by compromising ecological resilience and social
coherence. The Policy Reform scenario seeks sustainability by constraining market globalization within politically imposed social andenvironmental targets. But is it enough?
Policy Reform brings both good news and bad news. The goodnews is that great strides toward a sustainability transition are possible without positing either a social revolution or the deus ex
machina of a technological miracle. The scenario shows that deep
environmental degradation is not a necessary outcome of development. It can be mitigated by new choices for technology, resources
and production processes. The cumulative effects of a comprehensive
family of feasible incremental adjustments can make a substantial
difference. Similarly, poverty and extreme inequity are not inevitable,
but result from social policy choices. The long battle against humanmisery can gradually be won by major actions to promote sustainable livelihoods and greater international and social equity.
The bad news comes in two categories. The first concerns theimmense technical challenges of countering conventional development with a reform program. Recall that the Policy Reform scenario
assumes that the underlying values, lifestyles and economic structures of Market Forces endure. Policy Reform shows that wise policies on resource efficiency, renewable resources, environmental
protection and poverty reduction can, in principle, provide a
counter balance. But the required pace and scale of technologicaland social change is daunting. The reform path to sustainability islike climbing up a down escalator.
The second category of bad news is even more discouraging.
The scenario’s plausibility rests on a strong postulate—the hypothesis of sufficient political will. For the reform path to succeed, an
unprecedented and unyielding governmental commitment to achieving sustainability goals must arise. That commitment must be
expressed through effective and comprehensive economic, social andinstitutional initiatives. But the necessary political will for a reform
route to sustainability is today nowhere in sight.

Where Do We Want to Go?

41

To gain ascendancy, the Policy Reform vision must overcome
the resistance of special interests, the myopia of narrow outlooks
and the inertia of complacency. But the logic of sustainability andthe logic of the global market are in tension. The correlation
between the accumulation of wealth and the concentration of power
erodes the political basis for a transition. The values of consumerism
and individualism undermine support for a politics that prioritizes
long-range environmental and social well-being. If the dominantinterests of popular constituencies and influential power brokers areshort-term, politicians will remain focused on the next election,rather than the next generation. It seems that overcoming the dissonance between rhetoric and action will take fundamental changes in
popular values, lifestyles and political priorities that transcend Conventional Worlds assumptions.

From Sustainability to Desirability
So, Policy Reform may not be enough. Taming the juggernaut of
conventional globalization with sustainability reforms faces significant technical and political challenges. To these pragmatic concerns
about the feasibility of the reform path may be added a normative
critique: is it desirable? It envisions a more crowded and engineered
global emporium, albeit one where the environment continues tofunction and fewer people starve. But would it be a place of contentment, choice, and individual and social exploration? It might bea sustainable but undesirable world.
Policy Reform is the realm of necessity—it seeks to minimize
environmental and social disruption, while the quality of life remains
unexamined. The new sustainability paradigm transcends reform to
ask anew the question that Socrates posed long ago: how shall we
live? This is the Great Transitions path, the realm of desirability.
The new paradigm would revise the concept of progress. Muchof human history was dominated by the struggle for survival underharsh and meager conditions. Only in the long journey from tool
making to modern technology did human want gradually give way toplenty. Progress meant solving the economic problem of scarcity. Now
that problem has been—or rather, could be—solved. The precondition
for a new paradigm is the historic possibility of a post-scarcity world

42

Great Transition

Figure 7. Fulfillment Curve

Sur

viva

l

ce
an

g
va

Fulfillment

tra

Co

ENOUGH

Ex

mf

or

t

LuxuryConsumption
Based on Dominguez and Robin (1992).

where all enjoy a decent standard of living. On that foundation, thequest for material things can abate. The vision of a better life can turnto non-material dimensions of fulfillment—the quality of life, thequality of human solidarity and the quality of the earth. With Keynes(1972), we can dream of a time when “we shall once more value ends
above means and prefer the good to the useful.”
The compulsion for ever-greater material consumption is theessence of the growth paradigm of conventional worlds. But acquisition as an end in itself can be a substitute for contentment, a hungerthat knows no food. The “fulfillment curve” illustrates the erroneous
identification of the level of consumption and the quality of life (Figure 7). Past a certain point (“enough”), increased consumption fails
to increase fulfillment. Additional costs exceed the marginal satisfaction of additional luxuries as we work to pay for them, learn to usethem, maintain and repair them, dispose of them and perhaps feelWhere Do We Want to Go?

43

guilty about having them when others have so little. Profligate consumption sacrifices the cultivation of other aspects of a good life—
relationships, creativity, community, nature and spirituality—that
can increase fulfillment (the dotted branch in the figure).
A Great Transition is galvanized by the search for a deeper
basis for human happiness and fulfillment. This has been expressed
through diverse cultural traditions. In the new sustainability paradigm, it becomes a central theme of human development. Sustainability is the imperative that pushes the new agenda. Desire for arich quality of life, strong human ties and a resonant connection tonature is the lure that pulls it toward the future.
Is such a vision possible? It does not seem promising judging by
the global scene today, so full of antagonism, inequity and the degradation of nature and the human spirit. Yet, the cunning of history issure to bring surprises. Some may not be welcome. But favorable
possibilities are also plausible.
Later we offer a “history of the future,” a hypothetical accountof the initial stages of a Great Transition. It is written from the perspective of the year 2068 as the transition continues to unfold. Whatlies beyond this process of change? More change, no doubt. Though
an ideal planetary society can never be reached, we can imagine
good ones. Distant visions guide the journey. One possibility is
sketched in the following box.

44

Great Transition

A Distant Vision
Here is a civilization of unprecedented freedom, tolerance and decency. The pursuit ofmeaningful and fulfilling lives is a universal right, the bonds of human solidarity havenever been stronger and an ecological sensibility infuses human values. Of course, thisis not paradise. Real people live here. Conflict, discontent, mean-spiritedness andtragedy have not been abolished. But during the course of the twenty-first century thehistoric possibility was seized to redirected development toward a far more sustainable
and liberatory world.
The fabric of global society is woven with diverse communities. Some are abuzz
with cultural experimentation, political intensity and technical innovation. Others are
slow-paced bastions of traditional culture, direct democracy and small-is-beautiful
technology. A few combine reflection, craft skill and high esthetics into a kind of“sophisticated simplicity,” reminiscent of the Zen art of antiquity. Most are admixturesof countless subcultures. The plurality of ways is deeply cherished for the choice it
offers individuals and the richness it offers social life.
The old polarizing dualities—cosmopolitanism versus parochialism, globalism
versus nationalism and top-down versus bottom-up—have been transcended. Instead,people enjoy multiple levels of affiliation and loyalty—family, community, region andplanetary society. Global communication networks connect the four corners of theworld, and translation devices ease language barriers. A global culture of peace andmutual respect anchors social harmony.
The World Union (née the United Nations) unifies regions in a global federation for
co-operation, security and sustainability. Governance is conducted through a decentralized web of government, civil society and business nodes, often acting in partnership.
Social and environmental goals at each scale define the “boundary conditions” for thosenested within it. Subject to these constraints, the freedom to fashion local solutions is
considerable—but conditional. Human rights and the rights of other governance units
must be respected. While sophisticated conflict resolution processes limit conflict, theWorld Union’s peace force is called on occasion to quell aggression and human rights
abuse.
Preferred lifestyles combine material sufficiency and qualitative fulfillment. Conspicuous consumption and glitter are viewed as a vulgar throwback to an earlier era. The
pursuit of the well-lived life turns to the quality of existence—creativity, ideas, culture,human relationships and a harmonious relationship with nature. Family life evolves into
new extended relationships as population ages and the number of children decreases.
People are enriched by voluntary activities that are socially useful and personally rewarding. The distribution of income is maintained within rather narrow bounds. Typically, theincome of the wealthiest 20 percent is about two or three times the income of the poorest 20 percent. A minimum guaranteed income provides a comfortable but very basic
standard of living. Community spirit is reinforced by heavy reliance on locally produced
products, indigenous natural resources and environmental pride.
(continued)

Where Do We Want to Go?

A Distant Vision
The economy is understood as the means to these ends, rather than an end in itself.
Competitive markets promote production and allocation efficiency. But they are highly
fettered markets tamed to conform to non-market goals. The polluter pay principle isapplied universally, expressed through eco-taxes, tradable permits, standards and subsidies. Sustainable business practices are the norm, monitored and enforced by a vigilant public. Investment decisions weigh carefully the costs of indirect and long-term
ecological impacts. Technology innovation is stimulated by price signals, public preferences, incentives and the creative impulse. The industrial ecology of the new economy
is virtually a closed loop of recycled and re-used material, rather than the old throwaway society.
Some “zero growth” communities opt to maximize time for non-market activities. Others have growing economies, but with throughputs limited by sustainability criteria. In the formal economy, robotic production systems liberate people from repetitive,
non-creative work. Most everywhere a labor-intensive craft economy rises alongside thehigh technology base. For the producer, it offers an outlet for creative expression; for the
consumer, a breathtaking array of esthetic and useful goods; for all, a rich and diverseworld.
Long commutes are a thing of the past. Integrated settlements place home,
work, shops and leisure activity in convenient proximity. The town-within-the-city balances human scale community with cosmopolitan cultural intensity. Rural life offers amore serene and bucolic alternative, with digital links maintaining an immediate senseof connectedness to wider communities. Private automobiles are compact and pollution
free. They are used in niche situations where walking, biking and public transport
options are not available. Larger vehicles are leased for special occasions and touring.
Advanced mass transportation systems link communities to local hubs, and those hubs
to one another and to large cities.
The transition to a solar economy is complete. Solar cells, wind, modern biomass
and flowing water generate power and heat buildings. Solar energy is converted tohydrogen, and used, along with direct electricity, for transportation. Advanced bio-technology is used cautiously for raw materials, agriculture and medicine. Clean production
practices have eliminated toxic pollution. Ecological farming makes use of high inputs
of knowledge, and low inputs of chemicals to keep yields high and sustainable. Population stabilization, low-meat diets and compact settlements reduce the human footprint,
sparing land for nature. Global warming is abating as greenhouse gas emissions returnto pre-industrial levels. Ecosystems are restored and endangered species are returning,although scars remain as reminders of past heedlessness.
This is not the end of history. In some sense, it is the beginning. For at last, people live with a deep awareness of their connection to one another, future generations
and the web of life.

45

4. How Do We Get There?

How can we navigate the planetary transition toward asustainable and desirable global society? Market Forces
could shipwreck on the shoals of environmental and social crises,
and risk sinking into the barbarism of a Fortress World. The Policy
Reform vision would steer toward sustainability with programs for
improving technology and reducing poverty, but the momentum of
global economic growth could swamp incremental adjustments.
And if consumer culture prevails, where would vision and politicalleadership come from? We must look to more fundamental coursechanges to guarantee safe passage.

Strategies
The Great Transitions approach to a sustainable civilization builds on
the wealth-generating features of Market Forces and the technologicalchange of Policy Reform. But it transcends them by recognizing thatmarket-led adaptations and government-led policy adjustments are notenough. Great Transitions adds a third ingredient—a values-led shift
toward an alternative global vision. Powerful additional opportunities
for mending the global environment and forging more harmonious
social conditions would then open. The new development paradigm
would include lifestyle changes and greater social solidarity. The distinctions between Market Forces, Policy Reform and Great Transitions
visions are illustrated in Figure 8.
Market Forces maintains the conventional correlation of humanwell-being and the level of consumption, with material consumption,in turn, driving greater throughput of natural resources and impact
on the environment. In the Policy Reform strategy, the link between
well-being and consumption is maintained, but consumption isdecoupled from throughput (the “dematerialization wedge”). Great
Transitions adds a second “lifestyle wedge” that breaks the lockstep
connection between consumption and well-being. Environmental
47

48

Great Transition

Figure 8. Tools for a Transition
Market ForcesRich
Well-being
Consumption
Throughput
Poor

Policy Reform
Poverty
SpringDematerialization
Wedge

Great Transitions

Equity Clamp

Lifestyles
Wedge
Dematerialization
Wedge

Source: “Wedges” based on Robinson and Tinker (1996)

impacts may be decomposed into the product of human activity—
miles driven, steel produced, food harvested and so on—and impact
per activity. Policy Reform focuses on the second factor, introducing
efficient, clean and renewable technologies that reduce impacts per
activity. Great Transitions complements such technology improvements with lifestyles and values changes that reduce and change
activity levels in affluent areas, and provide an alternative vision ofdevelopment globally.

How Do We Get There?

49

A second critical distinction between the scenarios concerns
equity, as illustrated in the right-hand column of sketches in Figure
8. In the Market Forces world, the economic growth of the poorer
regions of the world is more rapid than the rich regions, but, nevertheless, the absolute difference between rich and poor widens. At thebottom of the income pyramid, a billion people remain mired inabsolute poverty. Policy Reform strategies substantially reduce
absolute poverty through targeted aid and livelihood programs (the“poverty spring”). While the yawning gap between rich and poor ispartially abated, global and national inequity remains a threat tosocial cohesion. Poverty eradication is a fundamental tenet of Great
Transitions, as well. But in addition to pulling up the bottom, greatvalue is placed on urgently creating more just, harmonious and equitable social relations (the “equity clamp”).
Conventional Worlds strategies operate on the direct levers ofchange that can influence economic patterns, technology, demographics and institutions. Mainstream development policy focuseson these proximate drivers. A Great Transition would go deeper tothe root causes that shape society and the human experience. Theseultimate drivers include values, understanding, power and culture(Figure 9). Proximate drivers are responsive to short-term intervention. The more stable ultimate drivers are subject to gradual culturaland political processes. They define the boundaries for change andthe future. The Great Transition project would expand the frontierof the possible by altering the basis for human choice.

Change Agents
All global visions inevitably confront the question of agency: Whowill change the world? The agents driving the Market Forces scenario are global corporations, market-enabling governments and a
consumerist public. In Policy Reform, the private sector and consumerism remain central, but government takes the lead in aligningmarkets with environmental and social goals. Civil society andengaged citizens become critical sources of change for the new values of Great Transitions.

50

Great Transition

Figure 9. Proximate and Ultimate Drivers

Proximate Drivers
Population

Values&Needs

EconomyTechnology

Knowledge&
Understanding

Power Structure

Governance

CultureUltimate Drivers
In truth, all social actors shape—and are shaped by—world
development. The play is difficult to distinguish from the players.
The prospects for a Great Transition depend on the adaptations of
all institutions—government, labor, business, education, media andcivil society. But three emerging global actors—intergovernmentalorganizations, transnational corporations and non-governmentalorganizations—move to center stage. The fourth essential agency isless tangible—public awareness and values, especially as manifested
in youth culture. Meanwhile, other powerful global players—criminal organizations, terrorist rings and special interest groups—lurk in
the wings, threatening to steal the show.
The formation of global and regional intergovernmental organizations has tracked the emergence of the Planetary Phase. The
United Nations, in particular, embodies the hope that world peace,
human rights and sustainable development might rise from theHow Do We Get There?

51

destruction and suffering of the twentieth-century. But the UN has
not been given the authority to fulfill that lofty mission, its effectiveness compromised by the politics of its member nation-states. Still, it
remains the legitimate collective voice of the world’s governments.
That voice would differ across scenarios. In a Market Forces
world, power moves to the private sector, international banks andthe WTO—the UN is largely a toothless platform for international
conferences, high-minded rhetoric and crisis management. But in
Policy Reform, the UN becomes a key venue for implementing environmental and social goals. In Barbarization scenarios, the UN isrelevant only to historians. In a Great Transition, a reorganized UN
expresses the international solidarity of the new development
agenda as the dominance of the nation-state fades.
To a great extent, the evolution of intergovernmental entities
will reflect the political imperatives of the ascendant global system.
The ultimate source of the value changes and political choices for a
Great Transition lie elsewhere. But the UN and the others are notsimply dependent variables in the calculus of global change; at critical moments they can provide leadership and initiative for the transition, as well.
The scale, market reach and political might of transnational
corporations have soared since World War II. The power of transnational corporations continues to grow in Market Forces. Policy
Reform requires their support, or at least acquiescence; big businesscomes to understand sustainable development as a necessary condition for preserving the stability of world markets. The Great Transition process transforms the role of business. As the new values
spread among the consuming public, forward-looking corporations
seize the new reality as a business opportunity and a matter of social
responsibility. In partnership with government and citizens’ groups
they establish tough standards for sustainable businesses and innovative practices to meet them.
To some degree, business can drive progressive change. Many
win-win opportunities are available for bringing the corporatebottom line of profit into harmony with the societal bottom lineof sustainable development. Most directly, good environmental

52

Great Transition

management at facilities can reduce the costs and risks of doing
business. In addition, some companies can expand their market
share by projecting an image of corporate responsibility. Some business visionaries advocate sustainability as both a business and moral
imperative. But the aggregation of these adjustments does not guarantee a transition, nor are business-initiated changes likely to maintain momentum when economic conditions turn sour or the public’s
interest in sustainability wanes. Nevertheless, sustainability-oriented
businesses are an important part of the dynamic of change as they
constructively respond to, and reinforce, new pressures from consumers, regulators and the public.
Non-governmental organizations—the organizational expression of civil society—are critical new social actors in global, regional
and local arenas (Florini, 2000). The explosive growth in the number and diversity of NGOs has altered the political and culturallandscape. They use modern communications technology to build
public awareness and mount campaigns to influence policy and alter
corporate behavior. At official international meetings, some areinside the building as active participants, and some are in the streets,challenging the drift of globalization and, in some cases, globalization itself. They are for the most part positive forces for fostering
debate and progressive change. But on the dark side, it must be
noted, are organizations of terrorists and criminals—perverse formsof NGOs that also use modern information technology, but tospread violence, hate and fear.
NGO success stories include micro credit, social forestry, environmental advocacy, community development and appropriate technology programs. These activities enable communities to participate
more effectively in economic and social decisions, and give poor populations access to skills and financial resources. They influence business practices through monitoring, direct action and boycotts. They
promote alternative lifestyles. More recently, global public policy networks have begun to link individuals and organizations from multiple countries and stakeholder groups. These networks engage in
research, public outreach, advocacy and organized protest on a rangeof sustainability issues (Reinicke et al., 2000; Banuri et al., 2001).

How Do We Get There?

53

In doing all this, civil society organizations fill major gaps inpublic policy-making. By harnessing expert opinion from a diverse
set of viewpoints, they have helped create capacity to analyze andrespond to emerging problems. By mobilizing stakeholder groups
and by refining participatory methodologies, they have helped create channels of public participation. By increasing public awareness,they have fostered transparency in decision-making. Finally, andmost importantly, they have injected ethical and normative voices
into the political arena.
Like all social actors, civil society is a phenomenon in flux,
transformed by the very processes of global change it seeks to influence. Unleashing wellsprings of energy and activism, the new civilsociety is beginning to discover itself as a globally connected force forchange, experimenting with different forms of alliance and networking. Yet, as a global movement, it remains fragmented and responsive, lacking a cohesive positive social vision and coherent strategy.
A critical uncertainty for a Great Transition is whether civilsociety can unify into a coherent force for redirecting global development. This would require a coalescence of seemingly unrelatedbottom-up initiatives and diverse global initiatives into a joint project for change. Such a force would entail a common framework ofbroad principles based on shared values fostered through the activities of educational, spiritual and scientific communities.
Intergovernmental organizations, transnational corporations
and civil society are key global actors. The underlying engine of aGreat Transition, however, is an engaged and aware public, animated by a new suite of values that emphasizes quality of life,
human solidarity and environmental sustainability. In this regard,
the international youth culture will be a major force for change,
albeit a diffuse one. Connected by the styles and attitudes spread bymedia, global youth represent a huge demographic cohort whose
values and behaviors will influence the culture of the future. If they
evolve toward consumerism, individualism and nihilism, theprospects would not be promising. But as globalization and its problems mature, the world’s youth could rediscover idealism in a common project to forge a Great Transition.

54

Great Transition

Finally, it should be noted that some see technology, rather
than social agents, as the primary driver of change. Optimists celebrate the potential for information technology, biotechnology andartificial intelligence to entrain a broad web of favorable societal
transformation. Pessimists warn of a dehumanized digital, robotic
and bio-engineered society. But all scenarios—Market Forces, Policy
Reform, Great Transitions and even Fortress World—are compatible with the continuing technological revolution. Technology is not
an autonomous force. The agenda, pace and purpose of innovationis shaped by the institutions, power structure and choices of society.
To envision a Great Transition is to imagine the continued evolution of civil society organizations toward formalization and legitimacy, new roles for business and government and, especially, newvalues and participation by global citizens. With no blueprint, thiswill be a long project of social learning and discovery, a process ofexperimentation and adaptation (BSD, 1998). Where political will islacking, civil will drives the transition forward. The question iswhether change agents will remain fractional and fragmented, orwhether they will expand and unify to realize the historic potential
for transformation. If the many voices form a global chorus, it will
herald a new sustainability paradigm. The story of change in a Great
Transition is a tale of how the various actors work in synergy andwith foresight as collective agents for a new paradigm.

Dimensions of Transition
A Great Transition envisions a profound change in the character ofcivilization in response to planetary challenges. Transitions have
happened before at critical moments in history, such as the rise of
cities thousands of years ago and the modern era of the last millennium. All components of culture change in the context of a holistic
shift in the structure of society and its relation to nature. The transition of the whole social system entrains a set of sub-transitions thattransform values and knowledge, demography and social relations,
economic and governance institutions, and technology and the environment (Speth, 1992). These dimensions reinforce and amplify one
another in an accelerating process of transformation.

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55

Values and Knowledge
Prevailing values set the criteria for what is considered good, trueand beautiful. They delineate what people want and how they wantto live. Values are culturally conditioned, reflecting the social consensus on what is considered normal or desirable. Depending on its
dominant values, a society lies along a continuum between antagonism and tolerance, individualism and solidarity, and materialism
and a concern for deeper meaning. Individualism and consumerism
drive the unsustainable trends of Conventional Worlds. But they areneither inherent nor inevitable. The plausibility of a Great Transition rests with the possibility that an alternative suite of values
emerges to underpin global development.
The distinction between “needs” and “wants” has profound
implications for the transition. Physiological, psychological andsocial needs are universal, but culture shapes how they are perceived
and how they are expressed as wants (Maslow, 1954). Advertisingand media can stimulate new wants and the experience of them as
felt needs. Values mediate how needs are transformed into wants
and how they are satisfied. The need for sustenance can be satisfied
by steak or vegetables. The need for self-esteem can be satisfied bya luxury car or a circle of friends. A value transition to post-consumerism, social solidarity and ecology would alter wants, ways oflife and behaviors.
A complex set of factors drives the search for new values. Bothangst and desire—the concern about the future and its lure—playroles. Anxiety over ecological and social crises leads people to challenge received values. This is the “push” of necessity (Table 3). At
the same time, visions of a more harmonious world and richer lives
attract people toward the new paradigm—the “pull” of desire.
Together they lead to a revised notion of wealth that underscores
fulfillment, solidarity and sustainability.
Individualism, consumerism and accumulation may help themarket reach its full potential. But as dominant values in the Planetary Phase, they are shackles on the possibility of humanity reachingits full potential. On the path to a Great Transition, awareness ofthe connectedness of human beings to one another, to the wider

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Great Transition

Table 3. Pushes and Pulls Toward a New Paradigm
PushesPulls

Anxiety about the future

Promise of security and solidarity

Concern that policy adjustments are
insufficient to avoid crises

Ethics of taking responsibility for others,
nature and the future

Fear of loss of freedom and choice

Participation in community, political andcultural life

Alienation from dominant culture

Pursuit of meaning and purpose

Stressful lifestyles

Time for personal endeavors and stronger
connection to naturecommunity of life and to the future is the conceptual framework fora new ethic (ECI, 2000). Taking responsibility for the well-being ofothers, nature and future generations is the basis for action.
The knowledge transition would expand the ways in which
problems are defined and solved. The fundamental units of analysis
of a new sustainability science are socio-ecological systems, as they
form and interact from the community to planetary levels. These arecomplex and non-linear systems with long time lags between actions
and their consequences. A systemic framework is required to illuminate key problems such as the vulnerability of systems to abruptchange and interactions across spatial scales. Sustainability researchdefines a fascinating new program of scientific research. It also is thebasis for an early warning system that can alert decision-makers andthe public on future perils and provide guidance on ways to respond.
The linkages between human and biophysical systems require
the unification of knowledge. The reduction of whole systems totheir constituent components was an important methodologicaladvance of the scientific revolution. The division into separate disciplines of inquiry was essential for focus and rigor. These are necessary for addressing the complex problems of transition—but they
are insufficient. An interdisciplinary focus on holistic models must
now complement the reductionist program.
The challenge is to develop appropriate methodologies, train a
new cadre of sustainability professionals and build institutional

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57

capacity. A science of sustainability would highlight integration,
uncertainty and the normative content of socio-ecological problems(Kates et al., 2001). Sustainability science proceeds along parallellines of analysis, action, participation, policy and monitoring in an
adaptive real-world experiment. To be trustworthy, knowledge must
be rooted in scientific rigor. To be trusted, it must reflect social
understanding. The peculiar nature of sustainability problems
requires that diverse perspectives and goals be brought to the scientific process. This requires the cooperation of scientists and stakeholders, the incorporation of relevant traditional knowledge, andthe free diffusion of information.
For all this to happen, research and educational institutions
will need to encourage, support and professionally reward this typeof research. The institutional basis for a knowledge transition must
be constructed, especially in developing countries. In this regard,
information technology offers unprecedented opportunity to provide universal access to data systems, analytic tools and scientificfindings. Scientists, policy makers and citizens can interact throughnetworks of research and exchange. The democratization of knowledge would empower people and organizations everywhere to participate constructively in the coming debate on development,
environment and the future.
Demography and Social Change
People, their settlements and their social relationships are undergoing
rapid and profound change. Growing populations, expanding cities, acontinuing rights revolution and globalization are critical demographic
and social trends. These will play out differently in the various scenarios of global development. A demographic and social transition is a
critical aspect of the wider enterprise of a Great Transition.
Cresting populations and reinventing cities Population
growth is slowing. The world population of over 6 billion people is
growing at an annual rate of 1.3 percent, adding about 80 million
people each year. The peak growth rate of about 2.2 percent occurredin the early 1960s and the peak population increase of about 87
million per year occurred in the late 1980s. Under mid-range

58Great Transition

assumptions for changes in birth and death rates, population is projected to be over nine billion in 2050 (UNPD, 2001), with almost allof the increase in developing countries.
The acceleration of population stabilization is both an end for,and means to, a Great Transition. As an end, decreased birth anddeath rates can enhance life quality—for children, increased survival, growth and development; for their mothers, lower mortality
and greater opportunity for education, work and income; for theirfathers, healthier living; and for their grandparents, a longer life. At
the same time, the family, the oldest of institutions, is challenged toredefine itself, as siblings diminish and parents age. As a means, aGreat Transition becomes more feasible in a lower populationworld. Fewer people would reduce pressure on the environment andreduce the ranks of the impoverished.
The value and social policy changes on the path to a Great
Transition could decrease projected populations by a billion people
by 2050. This would result from satisfying the unmet need for contraception and from parents opting for smaller families and postponing parenting. A key is to join reproductive health services indeveloping countries with education, particularly for girls, and job
opportunities for using their training.
The number of city dwellers has grown much faster than population, with over half the population now urban. If trends continue,
the urban share of population could grow to as much as 75 percent
by 2050, swelling cities by nearly four billion people, or the equivalent of 400 cities the size of Buenos Aires, Delhi, or Osaka. On average, people who live in urban areas receive more income, have fewer
children, have better access to education and live longer than theirrural counterparts. But cities are also places of extreme contrast in
wealth and opportunity. For the poor of many cities, urban life ismore difficult and less healthy than life in the countryside.
The challenge that faces the planners, designers, builders andfinanciers of expanding cities is also an opportunity. The urban transition is about creating urban settlements that make efficient use of land
and infrastructure, and require less material and energy, while providing decent living conditions. The new vision would unify concerns

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59

with habitability, efficiency and environment, concerns that are currently fragmented in different agencies and disciplines. Then, theneed to replace much of the current infrastructure over the next twogenerations could become an opportunity to create habitable cities
that are resource efficient and ecosystem conserving.
The transition to sustainable urban environments is animmense challenge. The magnitude of the task would be abated tothe degree that the demographic transition reduces overall population. Also, a Great Transition could diminish urbanization rates bydeveloping more attractive rural alternatives. Communication andinformation technology would create more flexible options forremote work, reducing the growth of cities. Urban and town settlement patterns that place home, work, commerce and leisure activity
in closer proximity would reduce automobile dependence andstrengthen communities. The elimination of the urban underclass,and the strengthening of social cohesion would support the transition to diverse, secure and sustainable communities.
Institutionalizing the rights revolution The last quarter century witnessed remarkable progress toward a consensus on universal rights for people, children, indigenous cultures and nature. Theserights protect civilians caught in civil and international conflict, prohibit genocide and torture, forbid hunger as an instrument of war or
repression, provide refuge for abused women, proscribe child
exploitation, protect endangered species and affirm diversity in bothnature and society.
Rights are expressed through international agreements andadministered through new institutions. But their enforcement is far
from complete. The transition envisions the acceleration of thatprocess—the institutionalization of inviolable rights of people andof nature. One task is to build popular awareness of establishedrights and to enforce those rights. Another is to expand themthrough the extension of freedom and democracy.
But rights are often in conflict. The challenge is to respectminority rights, while avoiding fragmentation into separate identities, territories or even species. Armed conflict will not be reduced

60Great Transition

unless alternative ways of providing ethnic or religious autonomy
without fragmentation are developed and widely accepted. Life-support systems will not be preserved without well-recognized rights fornature that go beyond single favored species preservation toembrace natural communities and ecosystems.
The eradication of cruelty toward humans will not be served bycondoning cruelty toward animals. The Great Transition is a human
event and humans are at its center. Meeting human needs or extending life quality inevitably involves finding the balance between the useof domesticated and experimental animals and the universal rights ofsentient creatures. Rights in conflict are among the most difficult but
meaningful challenges. Over time, humankind learns how to extend
rights, resolve some conflicts and live in peace with the remainder.
Poverty and equity Currently the global economy has a dual
character. A dynamic, modern, formal component coexists with arural, informal livelihood economy. The income of the richest 1 percent of the world’s people equals that of the poorest 57 percent,while nearly three billion people live on less than $2 per day (UNDP,
2001). Globalization would threaten further marginalization if local
economies are subject to the imperatives of global markets with little commitment to place or people. In that kind of globalization, theegalitarian and democratic aspirations of the modern era would
remain unfulfilled.
The social transition would focus on the well-being of the poor,
sustainable livelihoods and greater equity. The foundation for a
Great Transition is a world where human deprivation is vanishingand extremes of wealth are moderating. Then the promise of thetwentieth century for universal access to freedom, respect and decent
lives may be fulfilled in the twenty-first. As new values and priorities
reduce the schism between the included and excluded, the space
opens for solidarity and peace to flourish. Poverty reduction andgreater equity would feed back to amplify the process of transition.
Economy and Governance
A Great Transition implies a revision in human institutions—therelationships and patterns that organize the behavior of a society.

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61

Institutional change would both drive and respond to parallel evolution in values, knowledge and ways of life. Critical to this process
would be the changing character of the economy and governance.
Contours of a new economy The economic transition means
moving towards a system of production, distribution and decisionmaking that is harmonized with equity, sustainability and humanfulfillment. It would balance multiple objectives: eradicating humandeprivation, reducing inequality, staying within environmental carrying capacity, and maintaining innovation. This would certainly
include such policy instruments as eco-taxes, social subsidies andgreen accounting. But these would be manifestations of deep
processes that reorient the way the economy functions. The economy becomes a means of serving people and preserving nature,
rather than an end in itself. The transition would be expressed inaltered behaviors and practices of people, firms, governments andinternational governance systems.
As people aspire to sustainable living, purchasing patterns
would reflect ecological sensitivity, consumerism would abate andtravel patterns would shift toward mass transport. People might
increasingly share their time, through voluntary and non-profit
work, and their income, through voluntary donations and support
for redistribution through taxation. As affluent countries reduce
their environmental footprint, resources would be freed for others.
The changes in consumption patterns would send powerfulmarket signals. The self-interest of business remains an importanteconomic engine, but business interests, too, change. Enlightened
businesses would increasingly seize the initiative, showing that ecoefficiency, green marketing and social responsibility offer a competitive advantage. Corporations that pursue new codes of conduct
would be rewarded in the market place, while those that do not
would be punished by an increasingly informed and vigilant public
mobilized by NGOs.
In the course of transition, business would gradually revise thebottom-line to include social equity and environmental sustainability,
not only as means to profit, but also as ends. Big corporations would
play a leading role in this transformation as their huge technical and62Great Transition

financial resources provide space for strategic innovation. But with
their human links and local roots, small businesses also would be
important players.
While substantial investment in environmental and social goals
would be required, the world economy has the resources for such anundertaking. Moreover, the transition would mobilize “new dividends.” A green dividend would flow from the cost-savings ofeco-efficient corporations and the maintenance of society’s environmental capital. A peace dividend would stem from gradual reduction of the world’s $700 billion annual military expenditure to a
sufficient level for world peace-keeping, perhaps $30 billion (Renner, 1994). A human capital dividend would come from harvesting
the creativity and contributions of the billions who would otherwise
be consigned to poverty. A technological dividend would derivefrom new opportunities for innovation and wider access to theinformation revolution. A solidarity dividend arises from reduced
security and police costs.
The economic transition is a matter of will, not resources. Ifvalues and priorities were to change, economic resources are at
hand.
New institutions The governance transition is about building
institutions to advance the new sustainability paradigm throughpartnerships between diverse stakeholders and polities at local,
national and global levels. While specific structures will remain amatter of adaptation and debate, a proliferation of new forms ofparticipation can be expected to complement and challenge the traditional governmental system. In the new paradigm, the state isembedded in civil society and the nation is embedded in planetarysociety. The market is a social institution to be harnessed by society
for ecology and equity, not simply wealth generation. The individualis the locus of a web of social relationships, not simply an atom ofpain and pleasure.
Expansion of individual or household entitlements would
address social equity. For example, a minimum basic income could beguaranteed to all, possibly through the mechanism of a negative

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63

income tax. This would both reduce poverty and advance genderequality by increasing the economic independence of women. A guaranteed income would indirectly benefit the environment, as well, by
reducing the incentive to combat unemployment and poverty
through greater economic growth (Van Parijs, 2000). At the otherend of the income distribution, progressive taxation would limit individual income and wealth to what Great Transition societies findacceptable based on equity and sustainability considerations.
Market regulations would ensure that market forces do not
violate social and environmental goals. They would rely on self-regulation by socially and environmentally conscious producers, publicpressure, and local, regional, national and international agreements.
An empowered and information-savvy network of NGOs, issuebased associations and green producers would reduce the need forgovernment regulation and enforcement.
Income transfers from urban to rural populations could pay forthe nature conservation services that the latter perform, such as theEuropean Union policy of paying farmers to maintain rural landscapes. In the transition, analogous mechanisms could transfer
resources from rich cities to poor rural areas to simultaneously reducepoverty and secure the provision of ecosystem services such as biodiversity, forest and water conservation, and carbon sequestration.
New roles would evolve for national government in response
to pressures coming from all directions. From below, responsibilities would move to local levels in the spirit of subsidiarity and particpation. From above, the expanding needs for global governancewould move greater decision-making to the international context.
From the side, businesses and civil society would become more
active partners in governance. That said, national governments
would retain considerable authority, not the least of which would
be playing a central role in brokering societal agreements. They
would need to do so in ways that are transparent, accountable anddemocratic.
International negotiation and regulation would grow inimportance, since economic, environmental and social issues are
increasingly of a global character. These enlarged processes would

64Great Transition

set and enforce minimum sustainability standards such as basic
human entitlements, environmental resource protection and humanrights. The strategies for implementing such standards would be left
to national and sub-national deliberations, and would take diverse
forms depending on political cultures. In addition to formal governmental processes, international discussions and agreements
would involve business groups, consumers’ associations and otherglobal networks.
The global information revolution would spawn new international experiments to reshape corporate governance. This would
include collaborative processes of corporations, governments,
NGOs and grassroots organizations. Current initiatives offer a
glimpse of new approaches for increasing transparency and accountability, and aligning business practices with sustainability principles
that are appropriate to a planetary society.
Key elements for reducing poverty would be egalitarian policies
for wealth redistribution and targeted social expenditures for thepoor. In addition to macro-policies, civil society programs would
work from the bottom up to address poverty from the perspective of
the poor themselves. The goal would be to enhance the individual andcollective capacity of the poor to cope with their situation. They
would channel resources back to the livelihood economy through collective institutions, financial systems and appropriate technology, andwould foster cooperation among businesses, NGOs and communities.
Technology and the Environment
The technology transition would sharply reduce the human footprint on nature. The three pillars are efficient use, renewable
resources and industrial ecology. Efficient use means radically reducing the required resource inputs for each unit of production and consumption. Renewable resources means living off nature’s flows while
maintaining its capital stocks—solar-based energy rather than fossil
fuels, sustainable farming rather than land degradation and preserving ecosystems rather than liquidating them. Industrial ecology
means largely eliminating waste through re-cycling, re-use, re-manufacturing and product life extension. We consider several key sectors.

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65

Energy The challenge is to provide affordable and reliableenergy services without compromising sustainability. This is a botha social and environmental transition. The social energy transition
would give access to modern fuels to the global billions who still rely
on dwindling traditional biomass sources. The environmental
energy transition would cut the demand side through moderated
consumption in affluent areas, high end-use efficiency and deployment of renewable sources.
The imperative to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions sets
the magnitude and pace for the energy agenda. Climate stabilization
at safe levels requires transcending the age of fossil fuels. The path
to a solar future would be bridged by greater reliance on natural gas,a relatively low-polluting fossil fuel and modern biomass technologies. Nuclear power is climate-friendly, but other problems—longterm radioactive disposal, uncertain safety and links to weapons
proliferation—are incompatible with a resilient and sustainableenergy future.
The challenge is immense, but so are the technological possibilities. On the demand side of the energy equation, appliances,
lighting, buildings and vehicles can be made highly efficient. Combined heat and power systems can capture energy that would otherwise be wasted. Compact settlements can reduce travel andencourage energy-sparing modes of travel, such as mass transportand cycling. The Internet has the potential to substitute informationfor energy and materials through e-commerce.
On the supply side, solar energy can be captured in diverse
forms—directly by solar cells and heating systems, and indirectly
through wind, moving water and biomass. Solar energy can be used
to generate hydrogen, a clean liquid fuel that can substitute forpetroleum in vehicles. Solar technologies have been gradually
expanding their market share, but at a snail’s pace. They tend to costmore than fossil fuels, but the gap is gradually decreasing, andwould close entirely if environmental costs were factored into prices.
The technological remedies are either at hand or could bematured through a re-prioritization of research, development
and deployment efforts. Institutional barriers are more serious.

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Great Transition

Technological and infrastructural inertia maintains dominant patterns that have locked-in over the decades. Powerful vested interests
seek to preserve dominance in conventional energy markets. Perverse
policies subsidize fossil fuels and inefficiency. The incentives for a
new energy era must be built into policies, prices and practices thatcan counteract the recalcitrant fossil fuel economy in high-income
countries, and allow developing countries to leapfrog to the solar era.
In a Great Transition, this would become a popular imperative.
Food and land The goal is to provide sufficient food for all,while preserving soil quality, protecting biodiversity and preserving
ecosystems. The “green revolution” had great success in raising crop
yields. But heavy use of chemicals has polluted soils and groundwater, and nearly a billion people remain undernourished. Forests andother ecosystems continue to be lost to agricultural expansion as
growing populations, higher incomes and more meat in diets require
more farmland and pastures.
The agriculture transition would promote farming practices
that are more knowledge-intensive and less chemical-intensive.
Complex farming systems would build on natural synergies such as
nitrogen-fixing plants grown in combination with other crops toreduce fertilizer requirements, and integrated pest management to
reduce pesticide use. Soil conservation would maintain quality
through efficient drainage, terrace agriculture, conservation tillage
and other techniques. Fish farming would adopt strong environmental standards, while marine harvesting would be kept within the
carrying capacity of wild fisheries. On the demand side, moderated
food demands would lower pressure in a Great Transition as populations stabilize and diets shift away from meat.
Biotechnology holds the promise of increasing yields, reducing
chemical input, conserving water and improving the nutritional
content of crops. But it carries the risks of reducing crop diversity,of degrading ecosystems through accidental release of pest-resistantorganisms into the wild, and of increasing the dependency of farmers on transnational agribusinesses. The transition would be guided
by the precautionary principle, deploying biotechnology where itHow Do We Get There?

67

can enhance agriculture production in an environmentally soundand safe manner. At the same time, complementary advances would
be sought in areas with lower risk and greater public acceptance,such as improved breeding.
The preservation and restoration of the world’s ecosystems is acentral theme of the transition. This would be supported by the valorization of what ecosystems provide in goods, services, aesthetics andhabitat. Trends in land use would change, including controlling urban
sprawl through more compact and integrated settlements patterns.
The reduced stress from pollution, climate change and excessive water
extraction would help maintain the resilience of ecosystems.
Water Freshwater sustainability seeks to provide sufficientwater for human needs, economic activity and nature. Diverse solutions matched to local conditions will be needed to manage demand
growth and enhance supplies.
Water requirements can be reduced through efficiency
improvements in irrigation and other water using activities; byreducing transmission losses; and by considering non-hydropower
generation supply. New crop varieties and improved cropping methods would increase the “crop per drop” for both irrigated and rain
fed agriculture. Some arid places would need to rely on greater foodimports to reduce local water requirements for agriculture. In areasof high water stress, the lower populations and revised consumption
patterns of a Great Transition are critical to the water transition.
Intact ecosystems would help to maintain resources by moderating flood runoff and enhancing groundwater storage. Also, greater
deployment of unconventional supply methods, such as small-scalewater harvesting schemes, rainwater capture, desalination in coastal
cities and recycling treated wastewater for agriculture, would
contribute. The key is to place the freshwater issue in a systemic
framework that comprehensively considers ecological and humanneeds. Decision-making would move from centralized agencies to thewatershed where the allocation of water can best be resolved. The
principle of the active participation of stakeholders representing
diverse interests would be critical for balanced and resilient solutions.

68Great Transition

Environmental Risk

Environmental risk and development In the mature industrial
countries, the goal is to phase in technologies, practices and infrastructure as capital stock turns over. In developing countries, thegoal is to leap to advanced eco-efficient technologies that are well
suited to their social and ecological endowments, thus avoiding arecapitulation of the resource-intensive stages of industrialization.
Alternative pathways are illustrated in Figure 10. By adopting innovative technologies and practices, developing countries could tunnel
below the safe limit.
On the sustainability path, technologies and practices can act
synergistically—ecosystem protection sequesters carbon, water conservation reduces soil degradation, renewable energy mitigates bothclimate change and air pollution. The mandate for applied scienceand human ingenuity is to radically reduce the flow of materials into
the global economy, and the waste that is generated. The available
pool of technologies and creative capacity provides a strong platform for launching a technology and environmental transition.

Safe limit“Tunnel”

Development Level
Based on Munasinghe (1999).

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69

Civilizing Globalization
Globalization is more than economic integration. Words, images
and ideas outpace the flow of products, raising fears of loss of language, culture and values. Counter-currents emphasize ethnic,
national and religious distinctiveness. Flows of people—temporary,
permanent and forced—also swell. Refugees and world trade growat similar rates. The influx of immigrants makes places of wealthand opportunity more diverse, and that has often not been welcome.
Diseases move with people and products, affecting human health,crops and livestock. Biological invasions can destroy native biota.
Environmental harms are exported to countries with weaker protection. Terrorism becomes globalized. Aggressive marketing and rapid
cultural change fuel global consumption. Yet, billions are excluded
from prosperity.
But as communication carries a culture of consumption, it also
carries a culture of concern with the fate of the earth and future generations. It links people and groups in an expanding project to share
information and influence development. The widening, deepening
and accelerating interconnectedness that characterizes globalizationis the precondition for a Great Transition. Globalization forges
expanded categories of consciousness—seeing humanity as a whole,its place in the web of life and its links to the destiny of the planet.
It distributes systems of production and participation, creates potential roles for corporate and civil society and makes greater equity
possible.
For those who aspire to a more humane, sustainable and desirable future, simply being “against globalization” is not satisfactory.
Rather, the struggle is over the character of globalization in the
coming decades. If its promise is to be realized and its perils
avoided, globalization must be reshaped. A Great Transition needs
globalization and needs to deal with its discontents. The victims ofglobalization and their many concerned allies are doing more thandemonstrating in the streets. They are also developing an understanding of what is needed to civilize it (Held et al., 1999; Helleiner,
2000).

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Great Transition

The principles and means for shaping a new kind of globalization are in place. A Great Transition would find rights assured,
nature treasured, culture rich and the human spirit animate.

5. History of the Future

Dateline: Mandela City, 2068

A century ago, the Apollo 8 mission first transmitted the imageof our Blue Planet, a beautiful and delicate pearl floating amidst thedark cosmos. This icon from space gave vivid witness to the fragility
and preciousness of our common home, and was forever riveted on
the human imagination. But it could not reveal the great changes
that were quietly building, changes that were destined to transformhuman history and the Earth itself.

Prologue
From the current vantage point, with the planetary transition
unfolding before our eyes, it would be premature and vain toattempt a definitive account of this extraordinary era. Our history
remains the subject of energetic debate among twenty-first century
scholars, complexity specialists and a public whose fascination withthe past knows no bounds. But the past remains ambiguous, while
the future defies prediction—who can say what new surprises await
us? The task of analyzing the causes and significance of our tumultuous century must be left to future historians, who can tell the story
with greater objectivity, subtlety and wisdom. In this brief treatise,
we can offer only a thumbnail sketch of the broad historical contours of what we have come to call the Great Transition, and ouradmittedly subjective observations on the momentous events thatshaped it.
With a long view, our century of transition is but a moment ina long process of human evolution. We think of earlier great transitions—Stone Age culture, Early Civilization and the Modern Era—asfulcrums in time when the very basis of society was transformed. To
this august list of celebrated milestones along the path of human history, we may now add, in our judgment, a new one. The planetary71

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Great Transitiontransition has ushered in a new stage of social complexity, culture
and novelty. For the first time, the dynamics of human development
must be understood as a phenomenon occurring at the global scale.
Where earlier transitions evolved slowly over many millennia or centuries, this one occurred in a heartbeat of historic time. Where change
once radiated from local innovation, this was a transformation of the
global system as a whole, involving all the world’s peoples and,indeed, the whole community of life on the planet.
The immediate antecedent for the Great Transition was theindustrial revolution. Centuries of institutional, cultural and technological change during the Modern Era prepared the groundwork.
Then, the industrial explosion launched an exponential spiral ofinnovation, economic expansion and population growth, the Big
Bang that propelled humanity toward its Planetary Phase. As industrial society inexorably grew, it absorbed traditional societies on its
periphery into the market nexus and pushed against the boundariesof the planet’s environmental capacity.
Wherever it went, industrial capitalism left a contradictory
legacy. In part, its story is an emancipatory tale of wealth generation, modernization and democracy. But it’s also a heartless saga ofsocial disruption, crushing poverty and economic imperialism. Not
surprisingly, oppositional movements arose to challenge its humaninjustices and environmental devastation. Socialists the world overstruggled for an egalitarian society where wealth was generated forpeople instead of profits and where a collectivist ethos replaced thegreed of the profit motive. But that dream was dashed by real-worldsocialist experiments. Challenged militarily and isolated economically, they degenerated into bureaucratic tyrannies that eventually
were re-absorbed by the global market system.
In 1948, the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights crystallized the soaring aspirations of a generation. World
peace could rise from the agony of world war, the family of man
could temper the wounds of hatred, and the bells of freedom could
ring in every land. The vision was to be postponed through the longyears of human suffering. But it remained a beacon of hope to illuminate the path ahead.

History of the Future73

The planetary transition accelerated after 1990 when the fall of
the Soviet Union released the world from the stasis of the Cold War.
With this major impediment removed, the march of capitalism
toward an integrated world system accelerated. Developments in theprior decades set the stage—the birth of the technological underpinnings of the information and communications revolution; the proliferation of international institutions following World War II; therise of civil society as a “third force” in world affairs; the widespread spiritual revivals and environmental movements that foreshadowed the values-led movements of our own century; themounting human impacts on the environment that began to trigger
planetary-scale processes; and the integration of the global economy
catalyzed by increasing international flows of trade, finance andinformation.
We track the story of transition as it evolved through several
phases. The first phase began with the euphoria of market-driven
globalization, was punctuated by terror, and ended in despair. The
Crisis that followed fundamentally changed the course of global
development. Global Reform was a time of renewed attempts at
global governance through official channels. Then the Great Transition phase ushered in the values-led, bottom-up resurgence of ourown time.

Market Euphoria, Interruption and Revival
1990–2015
In the 1990s, an economic growth surge was fueled by the maturingof information and communication technologies into the first flowering of a network economy. The global media were abuzz with agiddy enthusiasm that was difficult to escape. Business gurus, technological forecasters and cultural critics alike pontificated on the
new era of “frictionless capitalism.” A surging bull-market banishedmemories of the business cycle. An endless stream of digital gadgetry
renewed an orgy of consumption. A globalizing economy was constructing a planetary emporium, bringing Western modernism anddollars to the underdeveloped. A richer world would apply the
magic of the market to saving the global environment.

74Great Transition

It was never thus. The start-up companies of the dot-com billionaires were dripping with red ink. The then-popular thesis of the“end-of-history” was a comforting ideology for celebrants of capitalist hegemony, rather than serious scholarship. The quest for material excess could not long provide a satisfactory basis for people’s
lives. Globalization fed new forms of anger and resistance, rather
than ameliorating polarization. The market’s magic had its powers,
but they did not include the foresight and coordination required forenvironmental sustainability.
In fact, the market euphoria was confined to a small but vocal
minority with great access to media, great power to shape public
perceptions and great influence on political agendas. Nevertheless,during the 1990s, a loose coalition of environmental, labor andsocial justice groups held demonstrations against the international
economic organizations of that time. The increasingly militant
protests challenged a “corporate globalization” that they saw associally unfair and environmentally insensitive, and threatening tosacrifice hard-won safeguards on the altar of global competition.
This early protest movement was fragmented and lacked a clear positive vision of a humane and sustainable alternative. But it was aportent of what was to come. The long struggle over the meaning
and character of globalization had begun.
By 2002, the irrational exuberance of the 1990s had vanishedas quickly as it arrived. In the first years of the new century, economic retrenchment, bear markets and global terrorism sobered theintoxicated. It had been a “false boom” that was largely confined to
the United States, its allies and a few of its supplier countries inSoutheast Asia. The economic base was small—less than 5 percentof the world’s population had access to digital networks—and thepredictable market excesses led to a downturn. The benefits of economic integration were confined to a global elite. At the same time,
growing concerns with the environment, persistent global poverty
and the culture of consumerism were expanding the popular challenge to the market consensus, especially among youth.
The denouement of naïve market euphoria came in 2001 withthe horrific “9/11” terrorist attacks on the citadels of global financial

History of the Future75

and military might—the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the
United States. This traumatic rip in the culture of complacency
awoke the world to the depths of anger fermenting among those
exposed to globalization but excluded from it. The desperation of billions was revealed as a fertile seedbed for indoctrination and fanaticism by cynical self-styled Islamic fundamentalists. Where an
arrogant West seemed to offer little more than indignity, transnational Islamist organizations could offer the salvation of martyrdom
in the armies of global Jihad. Terrorism, too, had gone global.
At the time, it was widely feared that the terrorists would succeed in sparking a spiral of violence as the United States, joined atleast passively by virtually all the nations of the world, hit back hardwith its War on Terrorism. But instead—and this is the central ironyof this period—the international mobilization brought a moremature and realistic form of market-driven globalization. At first,
two polar theories on the root cause of terrorism were proffered—
too much modernism and not enough. On the one hand, militantfundamentalism, with its violent rejection of tolerance and pluralism, was understood as the dying gasp of traditionalism as it resisted
assimilation into the modernist project. As such, it could be exterminated but not palliated. On the other hand, terrorism revealed agreat anger on the streets of third-world cities that indicted the failure of modern development, not its success. A globalization thattantalized a global underclass with images of prosperity, but failed
to provide opportunity, was surely a recipe for anger and violence.
Correspondingly, the nations of the world, acting in coalition
and through the United Nations and other intergovernmental bodies international, adopted a two-prong “carrot and stick” strategy.
The “carrot” took the form of major new initiatives to modernize
poor countries and bring the moderating influence of market institutions to the masses. The “stick” was the elimination of hard-core
fanatics and their organizations through coordinated covert action
and, as needed, military assault. Both elements were partially successful. The War on Terrorism gradually destroyed the capacity of
global terrorism to mount sustained large-scale attacks. However,sporadic violence, a sense of peril and heightened security became a

76Great Transition

way of life as the romance of martyrdom drew an endless trickle ofalienated youth.
The affirmative program for expanding modern market institutions has been dubbed the Era of Inclusive Growth. Between 2002
and the Crisis of 2015, a redoubled international effort to promotetrade liberalization, modernization and extension of market institutions launched a new wave of globalization. Chastened and moremodest in ambition, the second wave brought economic growth
almost everywhere and gradually installed a new generation of modernizing technocrats in most countries of the world. The set of policy strategies was not new—the International Monetary Fund had
been promoting structural adjustment for years, and the WTO had
advanced open markets. But the sense of urgency and level ofresources was unprecedented. Before 2002, the United States andsome of its allies had been drifting toward an unstable mix of economic globalization and political isolationism. After 2002, they had
re-engaged in a vast project to build an interconnected and law-governed global market system.
Debt was forgiven on a strategic basis, new flows of foreignassistance supported modernizing forces in the most underdeveloped
countries, nation-building initiatives created more stable regimes andpeacekeeping forces maintained stability. By the time of the Crisis,
networks were spreading far and wide, and user-friendly technologies
like voice recognition and touch screens with universal graphic interfaces had extended at least some access to nearly half of the earth’s
then seven billion inhabitants. The wiring of the world is a justly celebrated achievement—ironically the “wires” were optical fiber andwireless links. Although the network did not become truly universal
until later, the economic upsurge of the period was dependent in parton the global extension of the digital infrastructure.
It was a time of powerful corporate giants whose reachspanned the globe and who could increasingly out-maneuver andinfluence national governments. The digital giants that built the
infrastructure and wrote the software, the consumer product companies that used those links as distribution channels to reach everlarger markets, the energy behemoths that fueled and powered theHistory of the Future

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boom and transported its products, the global banking and securities firms that financed the expansion—all generated enormous
wealth and reached a size and power unprecedented before or since.
A number of important global governance initiatives paved theway. The WTO provided the legal basis for the global trading system. A multilateral agreement liberalized investment regimes, first in
the rich countries and then throughout the world. Barriers to tradeand capital movements gradually vanished as a host of international
instruments promoted market openness and global competition.
Almost all national governments were able to overcome internal
resistance to aligning their institutions with the imperatives of globalization. They steadily advanced a policy package of modernizationof financial systems, public education reform for the new global
economy and privatization.
But beyond promoting economic globalization and keeping thepeace, global governance became increasingly irrelevant. Of course,international negotiation continued on critical environmental andsocial problems. But they were either vastly insufficient like the
Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gasses, or nothing more than rhetorical appeals for “sustainable development” and poverty reduction,with little programmatic and financial follow-through. The ideology
of “inclusive growth” was compatible with efforts to build theenabling institutions for market progress, but not with proactive
pursuit of such non-market goals as environmental sustainability
and poverty reduction. Faith in market solutions and trickle-down
economics—backed by security and military apparatus—prevailed
among powerful world institutions and leaders.
The world became increasingly more integrated culturally aswell as economically. The values of consumerism, materialism andpossessive individualism spread rapidly, reinforced by communications media. In some countries, fears of being engulfed by Westernculture (“McWorld” was the pejorative of choice) continued tostimulate strong traditionalist reactions. But, except for notable
fundamentalist strongholds, the lure of the God of Mammon and
the Almighty dollar proved too strong, especially while the boom
continued and prosperity spread. The protest movement against

78Great Transition

corporate-driven globalization continued and even grew. But failingto put forth a credible positive vision and strategy for development,
it could not galvanize the mainstream in rich or developing countries, and lost political traction.
Although huge inequities persisted throughout this era, economic and digital globalization brought benefits to many, often in
unforeseen ways. For example, virtual banking originated in the richworld as a convenience to customers, but in the developing world
made a whole suite of financial services available in poor communities where there were no banks or other sources of credit. With theproliferation of digital networks, on-line micro-finance organizations grew rapidly. With credit and connectivity—and decreased
corruption due to more transparent virtual banking—came an
explosion of small-scale enterprise and increases in productivity.
Digitally-connected farmers learned about improved techniques, got
loans to buy more productive seeds, used weather information to
guide planting and harvesting, and checked market prices for theircrops before deciding when and where to sell. Artisan cooperatives
could sell traditional handicrafts or made-to-order clothing to major
retailers and customers a country or a continent away. Small manufacturers, merchants and service providers expanded to become
regional competitors.
Real incomes, even in some poor communities, rose rapidly,
radiating out from those countries, such as India, China, Brazil andSouth Africa, that early on had embraced universal digital accessand open commerce. The gradual convergence of the developingworld toward the standards of rich countries—the Holy Grail ofconventional development thinking—seemed a plausible though distant possibility. But the laser-beam focus on economic growth had
dark sides, as well. The market jubilation emanating from the media
and the public relations machines of multinational corporations
drowned out the voices of concern. All the while, the signals of ecological instability, biological destruction and human health risks
became stronger and more frequent. Mounting environmental
changes—a warmer and more variable climate, collapsing ecosystems, failing fisheries—hurt poor communities most. Scientists

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warned with increasing urgency that stresses on the global environment could be approaching thresholds beyond which catastrophic
events could ensue.
Billions of the global poor left behind by the boom were growing restive. As the rich got richer and new social strata achieved
affluence, deep poverty still chained billions to meager existences.
Income distribution became more unequal. Nearly a billion people
still went hungry, a figure that put the lie to the homily of market
ideologues that the “tide of economic growth would lift all boats.”
With greater connectivity, the growing disparity between rich andpoor was increasingly visible to both. As migration pressure, anger
and political dissent mounted, wider social unrest and conflictseemed to loom. Infused with new support, anti-globalizationgroups increased their agitation for a new direction of social andenvironmental renewal.

The Crisis
2015
Eventually, as all booms do, the period of market-driven growthcame to an end. With the benefit of hindsight, the Crisis of 2015
might seem like a predictable consequence of the tensions and contradictions that had been brewing in the preceding decades. But life
is lived forward, not backward, and what seems inevitable in retrospect, in fact, took the world by surprise. The reforms of the Era of
Inclusive Growth had their successes—modern institutions and economic expansion were extended to most countries and terrorism
was managed at tolerable levels. But they failed to address deep
crises that were maturing in proportion to the success of the global
market program. Environmental degradation, social polarizationand economic distortions were on a collision course, but in the midstof market frenzy, few were able to see it coming.
The Crisis had multiple causes. The bite-back from resource
degradation and ecological disruption imposed growing costs on
people, ecosystems and the global economy. The collapse of major
fisheries contributed to food shortages and stressed international
food programs; water shortages grew acute in many places, requiring

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Great Transition

costly efforts to maintain minimum standards; and resource costs,
such as forest products for paper and packaging, rose sharply. Whileelites emerged even in the poorest countries, persistent poverty andsocial polarization were eroding the very basis for rule-governedmarket-driven development. As disparities became more extreme andmore visible, social protest and even violent riots became widespread,the march of a million displaced fishermen on New Delhi and thewater riots in Iraq being notable examples. Aggravated by environmental and social crises, and with little global governance capacity torespond beyond traditional and ineffective monetary and fiscal measures, the expected contraction after the long global boom triggereda general economic crisis.
The Crisis unleashed a widespread social revolt against thedominance of global corporations, against a quarter century ofappalling environmental degradation, and against the persistence ofpoverty and social squalor amidst great wealth. The Crisis released
all the discontent and apprehension about the drift of global development that had been building beneath the surface since the 1990s.
The consensus underpinning the era of Market Euphoria was
rapidly unraveling. Especially for the world’s youth, it was a revolt
against what they saw as the soulless materialism and inequity of theestablished global order. It was at this time that the Yin-Yang Movement was formed out of separate cultural and political youth movements (see box below). Although it was derisively referred to as theChildren’s Crusade at the time, the unified youth movement was a
critical partner in the coalition for a new global deal that led to the
Global Reform process.
Under the category “what could have been,” it is worth mentioning here the abortive movement known as the Alliance for Global
Salvation that arose at this time. The Alliance included a motleygroup of global actors from the corporate world, the security community and right-wing political elements. Concerned that the crisis
could spiral out of control, they came to the conclusion, many reluctantly, that the vacuum of international control must be filled, andthat they were the ones for the job. Ironically, this authoritarian
threat served to further galvanize the reform movement that warned

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against the danger of a Fortress World “solution.” A century before,a previous experiment in globalization had collapsed into the tragedyof the Great War. The forces for a democratic renewal were determined to thwart another return to barbarism.

Global Reform
2015–2025
One of the indirect impacts of the global boom was the expansion
and consolidation of democratic governance at national and local
levels. Information and communications technologies gradually
improved the efficiency of government, allowing people to vote; pay
taxes; register land, vehicles, births and deaths; and file complaints
more readily and in more transparent ways. Pressure from a more
informed and prosperous citizenry—and often from global companies—became harder to resist. Both demanded more responsive governance and more reliable enforcement of laws. Those with holdout
dictators or repressive regimes became increasingly isolated.
By 2015, governments were ready to assert themselves onbehalf of their citizens. As political leaders everywhere sought tocope with the Crisis, the result was an eruption of governmental
leadership at national and local levels. The response took many
forms, as governments found ways to re-establish order, to rein in
the giant corporations, to clean up the environment, to improve
equity, and address persistent poverty and a host of other concerns.
This burst of governmental leadership was echoed on the international level.
Before the Crisis, global governance was effective primarily in
one area—setting the terms for liberalized trade, de-regulation andprivatization. But the renaissance that occurred during the Global
Reform era went far beyond anything known before. The World
Court, the reconstituted World Union (formerly the United Nations)and the World Regulatory Authority (descended from the last century’s Bretton Woods institutions)—all date from this period.
As the world struggled to regain its economic footing, whilealtering the rules for economic activity, these strengthened institutions offered a new basis for regulating the global market. Chastened

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Great Transitionby the crisis and buoyed by the popular outcry for leadership, world
leaders acted decisively. Sustainable development, the half-forgotten
battle cry of the late twentieth century, was resurrected. But insteadof rhetoric, a comprehensive set of environmental and social goals
were set and the policy muscle was enacted to enforce them.
Treaties were negotiated on global caps and trading regimes forclimate-altering emissions, strict limits on ocean fisheries, and outright bans on international trade in wood and other products fromendangered ecosystems. Small taxes were imposed on trade and international currency flows, and the revenues used by the world’s governments to fund international health, education and environmental
restoration. Innovative and generous programs to reduce poverty andprovide sustainable livelihoods to all were launched. In a landmark
ruling, the World Court asserted jurisdiction over an antitrust caseagainst the world’s largest energy company, and subsequently
ordered it broken up into half a dozen separate companies, setting a
precedent that was applied in many areas of commerce.
By 2020, global economic growth had resumed, not in spite of
the imposition of sustainability goals, but because of it. Orchestrated by the new governance institutions, the massive projects tocomplete the unfinished business of Wiring the World, investing in
the poor and saving the environment proved to be a stimulant to an
unprecedented period of economic expansion and technologicalinnovation. But this new boom was different from its predecessor.
Instead of disparities between North and South increasing, the gap
was closing through global programs targeted at raising the standard of living of the poor. Instead of national income distributions
becoming more unequal, the gap between rich and poor withincountries was either maintained or gradually decreased. Instead ofenvironmental heedlessness, under activist governments the pressure
on natural resources and ecological systems began to abate.
The age of sustainable development had arrived, but not forlong. Although it created institutions and reforms that have continued to play an important role, the era of Global Reform was relatively brief. Its golden years were from 2015–2020, when the needfor post-Crisis recovery led to the strong political unity needed toHistory of the Future83

maintain the reform process. Multinational corporations, seeing
their markets stagnate, got on board. But once the boom resumed,
many business leaders advocated a return to free markets and aweakening of reforms. By contrast, environmentalists, pleased at
first with the accomplishments of the reform agenda, eventuallycame to see the imposition of restraint on the global growth machine
as inadequate—like going down the up escalator. The inherent political and environmental tensions of the forced marriage between sustainability and market growth deepened.
Governments could not keep up with the complex and rapidly
shifting concerns of their populations. The public confidence in topheavy government management mechanisms eroded as the limits ofgovernment-led Global Reform institutions to effectively address thecomplex task of global sustainability became clear. A new cause
would appear out of one on-line discussion forum or another, sweep
across cyberspace and the media, dominate political discussion withdemands for immediate action—and then, just as suddenly, disappear while government was still struggling to act. And global governance through the formal international institutions proved
inadequate to monitor and influence rapidly changing social andindustrial practices across the kaleidoscope of two hundred nations.
More fundamentally, as mathematicians have since established,
deterministic management of an often chaotic, non-deterministic,
multiplayer system is simply impossible. Policy reform made a difference, as did strong and competent governments, but neither
proved adequate to make the changes increasingly demanded by theworld’s peoples.
At a global scale, building the consensus for new treaties, oreven for allocating global funds generated from existing mechanisms,
became ever more difficult and contentious. The bureaucracies thatevolved to implement the global regulatory regimes became everlarger and more ponderous. A number of countries simply opted out
of some treaties, creating loopholes in enforcement that weakened
the new international regimes. Global companies proved very agile inadapting to internationally imposed bans or restrictions, while notfundamentally changing their practices.

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The clear lesson of the Market Euphoria era was that footloose
market-driven globalization was simply not viable. The governmentled post-crisis reorganization restarted economic growth and tamed
environmental impacts, while bringing up the bottom of the social
pyramid. But by the mid-2020s, Global Reform was losing momentum as the will of political leadership waned, governance became
enfeebled and the dream of sustainable development was threatened.
Another crisis loomed on the horizon.
A growing global coalition of individuals and organizations
came to the conviction that reform was not enough. Fundamental
notions were challenged—that endless economic growth could beharmonized with ecology, that consumerism could coexist with asustainability ethic, and that the pursuit of wealth was the path to
the good life. The coalition mushroomed into a planetary mass
movement for basic change. Sometimes called the Coalition for a
Great Transition, it was more popularly known by the name we use
today, “The Bouquet,” which of course referred to its icon and its
slogan (“let a thousand flowers bloom”).
The coalition included civil society in all its stunning diversity—spiritual communities, Yin-Yang, networks of special-interest
organizations. All parts of the world community were represented—
communities, nations, regions, river basins—in a kind of spontaneous global assembly from below. The basis of their unity was acommon set of values—the rights of all people to a decent life,
responsibility for the well-being of the wider community of life andthe obligations to future generations. The project for more just,more ecological and more fulfilling ways of life was not to bedenied.

History of the Future

The Yin-Yang Movement
The youth of the world played a critical role throughout the long transition. Young people have always been the first to take to new ways and to dream new dreams. And so it
was with communications technology and the exploration of the possibilities for a new
global culture. The main manifestation in the first blush of market euphoria was, ofcourse, the promotion of a consumerist youth culture. But other consequences of the digital information revolution were equally important. The pedagogic impacts of accelerated
learning and information access had a great democratizing effect that empoweredyounger generations to participate fully in the economy and all aspects of society. By
2020, the vast majority of the world’s secondary and university students used the Internet as a matter of course, and websites and wireless portals in more than 200 languages
catered to them.
The huge surge in Internet-ready young people graduating from schools in thedeveloping world had some unexpected effects. To ease its chronic shortage of skilledworkers and take advantage of lower salaries, the burgeoning digital industry increasingly moved its programming, web design, e-learning courseware and other software
tasks to India, China and other centers of talent. Leadership of the industry began to follow. And this new leadership played a major role in providing digital services designed
for poor communities.
Even more unexpected were the cultural and political changes that universal
access set in motion. Internet-powered awareness of a wider world and access to unlimited information accounted for part of the change. Equally important were the proliferation of ways to communicate across cultures and even—with automatictranslation—across language barriers through e-mail, mobile phones and messaging
networks, and through swapping music, videos, underground political tracts and calls
for protest demonstrations in huge informal networks.
The gradual coalescence of a discernable global youth culture is difficult to date.
But certainly by 2010, two broad streams had emerged to challenge the prevailing market paradigm. The YIN (Youth International Network) was a cultural movement that
advanced alternative lifestyles, liberatory values and non-materialistic paths to fulfillment. The YANG (Youth Action for a New Globalization) was a loose political coalitionof activist NGOs that eventually were forged into a more cohesive network through along series of global protests and actions.
Before 2015, there was some tension between the two strands. To many YANGs,
the YINs seemed hedonistic, apolitical and complacent, the heirs to the legacy of 1960s
hippies and Timothy Leary. For their part, the YINs saw the YANGs as humorless politicos, who were playing the power game. But the rhetoric of the spokespeople for the twotendencies was more polarized than the participants. In fact, the YIN global celebrations
and festivals increasingly had a political tonality. At the same time, the huge YANG
demonstrations and protests were as much cultural as political events.
(continued)

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Great Transition

The Yin-Yang Movement (continued)
During the Crisis of 2015, these distinctions evaporated entirely. The aspirations
that each expressed—the search for more fulfilling lifestyles and the quest for a sustainable and just world—became understood as two aspects of a unitary project for abetter future. The Yin-Yang Movement was born.
Many activists saw their movement as a global echo of the youth revolution of the
1960s, an explosion of youth culture, idealism and protest. But in truth, it was far more.
The Movement was vastly larger and more diverse than its predecessor, and far moreglobally connected, organizationally adaptive and politically sophisticated. Without it,
what would have emerged from the post-2015 world? Perhaps a descent into chaos; perhaps the authoritarian forces for world order, which were waiting anxiously in the wings,
would have triumphed.
While counterfactuals are always speculative, it is certainly clear that in theabsence of the Yin-Yangs history would have taken a different turn. The Movement was
critical at two key moments in the transition. First it provided a base for the new political leadership that was able to fashion the Global Reform response to the Crisis. Later,
throughout the 2020s, it carried forward the spirit of 2015, expressing the new values
and activism of civil society, culminating in the landmark changes of 2025, and the consolidation of the Great Transition.

Great Transition
2025–
The values-driven movements of our time have their antecedents in
the human rights and environmental movements that go back to thetwentieth century and the spiritual revivals of this century. The
search for meaningful and fulfilling lives and alternatives to materialistic lifestyles has deep historical roots. But only in our era, when
the dream of a post-scarcity society that could provide enough for
all became a practical possibility, could a post-materialist ethos gain
a popular basis.
In the cultural revolution of the mid-2020s, lifestyles and eventastes began to change. For one example, traditional families, now
shrunken in size as populations stabilized, and extended in time as
populations aged, evolved as values of caring and support extended
to more of humankind and even to other species. Or for another, themodern “sustainable diet” movement, which resurrected last century’s slogan “you are what you eat,” reflected the new vegetarianism. This was reinforced by environmental and health concerns that
had given rise to organic agriculture and the animal rights movement.

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Increasingly, people took pride in living lives that were rich in time,and sufficient in things. The cultivation of the art of living displaced
consumerism as the pathway to happiness and status. The anachronisms of the past, such as immense private vehicles with a thousand
gadgets, found a home in museums of cultural history, not in people’s
lives. The sense that individuals are responsible for what they consume was pervasive.
The values movements touched sympathetic chords throughout
the world and were amplified by the discussion forums and rapid
global communications on digital networks. The “equal participation” movement that has contributed so much to the openness andaccountability of political and institutional processes today drew its
inspiration both from anti-poverty activists and from earlier civilrights movements. But sympathy alone does not always translate
into action. It was the globalization of civil society—the proliferation of global networks and alliances of Value-Based Organizations(VBOs) dedicated to action—that provided the staying power forpermanent change. This was a simple but fundamental transformation in world history—the willingness of people, individually and ingroups, to take responsibility for solving problems themselves. Thisphenomenon has become a defining characteristic of the current era.
Information has always been a source of power, and by 2025
power was shifting rapidly. Global networks of VBOs, armed withdigital cameras and other sensors, proved to be the ideal counterforce to predatory global corporations and incompetent governments. They organized vast networks to monitor corporate
behavior—how and where they logged forests, the quality of theirworking conditions and wages, and their contributions to local communities. The information was posted on the Internet, often withvideo footage. They pressured retailers to shun offending companies
and consumers to boycott their products. The VBO networks
brought powerful market pressures on global companies. Governments who failed to provide basic services to the poor, to protect
environmentally sensitive resources or to uphold universal rights,
were the objects of equally powerful political pressures.
By enforcing transparency and demanding accountability,
these bottom-up networks of activist citizens provided a rapid and88Great Transition

powerful social feedback mechanism, far more potent than formal
regulatory efforts of governments and intergovernmental bodies.
One global banking firm that denied services to a particular
Moslem sect in Indonesia, found thousands of its offices around theworld shut down by protestors and its brand name badly damaged.
A repressive African regime, targeted by a global ad hoc alliance ofVBOs, found itself trying to combat hundreds of web sites withdamaging video linked to names, photos, and unflattering bios of
the president and senior military officers, as well as the names ofglobal companies who were the primary buyers of the country’s
products (and who hastened to cancel their contracts).
The accountability movement accelerated a leadership transition already underway in corporations and governments alike.
More and more, business leaders not only accepted the legitimacy
of many social and environmental demands, but found creative
business approaches to meet them. Hundreds of global manufacturing firms adopted “zero impact” goals and met them—producing no waste and releasing no pollution in their worldwide
operations, and accepting responsibility for post-consumer recovery and recycling of their products. A number of large firms foundways to cut costs dramatically in order to provide affordable basic
goods and services, and often jobs, in poor communities—in theprocess creating large new markets for themselves. Others
employed new nano-technologies to produce better products with
far less raw materials and energy; “reindustrialization,” as it cameto be called, aimed at more sustainable ways to provide the material support to human civilization.
For governments and other official institutions, the accountability movement meant not only far more transparency, but
expanded participation in decision-making processes of all kinds.
Proposed new regulations or laws were now routinely posted onelectronic networks for widespread comment and debate before
adoption; so were terms of logging or mining leases on public landor plans to develop natural resources. Elections themselves were
mostly electronic, making election fraud far scarcer.

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The personal and philosophical dimensions of the Great Transition complemented and reinforced these changes. Since the YinYang Movement, the disenchantment of youth with consumerism as
an organizing principle for their lives and communities had been
spreading. Increasingly, people explored more fulfilling and ethicalways of life that offered a renewed sense of meaning and purpose.
In the wealthier areas, the values of simplicity, tranquility and community began to displace those of consumerism, competition andindividualism. Many reduced work hours in favor of increased time
to pursue study, artistic endeavors, interpersonal relations and craft
production. Throughout the world, a cultural renaissance, rooted inpride in, and respect for, tradition, and an appreciation of local
human and natural resources, unleashed a new sense of possibility
and optimism.
The accountability movement, the widespread sense of individual responsibility, the newfound corporate stewardship on environmental and social issues, the readiness (especially among young
people) to protest injustice, the search for culturally rich and materially sufficient lifestyles—all of these marked the emergence of what
we now think of as the planetary ethic. While history has not ended,a new foundation for the future has been laid. Poverty still survives
in small pockets around the globe, but its eradication is in sight.
Conflict and intolerance still flare, but effective tools for negotiation
and resolution are in place. Our ailing planet has not yet healed
from its environmental wounds, but the world is mobilized torestore it to health. The lure of economic greed and political domination has not vanished, but powerful feedback mechanisms are inplace to protect the core commitments that continue to shape ourera—the right of all to pursue a high quality of life, cultural pluralism within global unity and humanity as part of a vibrant community of life on planet Earth.

Epilogue
We who live in yesterday’s tomorrow can know what those who once
speculated on the planetary future could not. Turn-of-the-century

90Great Transition

prophesies of global calamity have been refuted by choices people
made both politically and personally. The exuberance of market optimists, who once wielded such influence, has long ago been revealed
as a dangerous absurdity. The utopian dreams of a post-capitalist
paradise have also, as they must, been defied. The old reformers, whogathered at Earth Summits and a thousand conferences to design
management strategies for a sustainable and humane future, could
take us only part of the way. But we are forever grateful for theirforesight and commitment, for they gave us, their descendents, thegift of choice.
The timeless drama of life continues, with all the contradictionsof the human condition; the hopes and heartbreaks, the triumphs
and failures, the beginnings and endings. But the drama unfolds ina theater of historical possibility that few would trade. It is little
wonder that we so abundantly honor the struggles and achievementsof our parents and grandparents. Now our own generation grows
perplexed and troubled by the youth of today, with their cultural
rebelliousness, political restlessness and search for new challenges.
Are they the harbingers of a new transition struggling to be born?
Time will tell.

6. The Shape of TransitionD

epending on how the uncertainties of planetary transition are resolved, the global future can branch into distinct paths. The scenarios discussed in this essay are alternative
stories of the future, each representing a unique combination of
institutions, values, and culture. The narratives can be further elaborated with a quantitative sketch of how key indicators unfold overtime. We focus on four of the scenarios—Market Forces, Policy
Reform, Fortress World and Great Transition.
All scenarios begin with the same set of contemporary trends
that are now driving the world system forward. Social, economicand environmental patterns then gradually diverge as they are conditioned by different events, institutional change and value choices.
Market Forces is a world of accelerating economic globalization,
rapid spread of dominant institutions and values, and minimal environmental and social protection—the competitive global market
shapes the planetary transition. Policy Reform features government
initiatives to constrain the economy in order to attain a broad set ofsocial and environmental goals—sustainability policy shapes theplanetary transition. Fortress World envisions a period of crisis leading to an authoritarian and inequitable future—tyranny shapes theglobal transition. In Great Transition, a connected and engaged
global citizenry advances a new development paradigm that emphasizes the quality of life, human solidarity, and a strong ecologicalsensibility—new values shape the planetary transition.
Global patterns are compared in Figure 11 (Raskin et al., 1998;
Kemp-Benedict et al., 2002; PoleStar, 2000). Market Forces aredefined by counteracting tendencies. Technological innovation
steadily reduces the environmental impact per unit of human activity, but the increase in the scale of human activity drives impacts
higher. Economies in poor regions grow rapidly, but so do disparities between and within countries. The result is a continued erosion
91

92

Great Transition

Peace

20
10

0.8
0.6
0.4

2040

2060

Climate
500
450
400

2000

2020

2040

10
9
8
7

2020

2040

3,000
1,500

2000

2020

2040

2020

2040

2060

Market Forces

0.8

2000

2020

2040

2060

Water Stress

6
5
4
3
2

Economy

160
120
80

0
1980

1980

2060

40

2000

1.2

1
0

0
1980

6
5
1980

1.6

0.0
1980

2060

Ecosystems

4,500

2060

Population

11

2000

billions of people

2020

Development

2.0

0.4

0.0
1980

poor/rich income ratio

2000

550

300
1980

1.0

0.2

forest area (million ha)

01980

hunger (billions)

30

350

billions of people

Freedom
gender equity40

GDP (trillions of $)CO2 concentration

conflict (>1000 deaths/year)

Figure 11. Scenarios Compared: Selected Indicators

2000

2020

2040

2060

International Equity
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0

2000

2020

Policy Reform

2040

2060

1980

Great Transition

2000

2020

2040

2060

Fortress Worldof environmental health and the persistence of poverty. Policy
Reform “bends the curve” through the rapid deployment of alternative technology—eco-efficient industrial and agricultural practices, highly resource efficient equipment and renewable
resources—and targeted programs to reduce poverty. Fortress Worldis a dualistic world of modern enclaves of affluence for the few, andunderdeveloped areas of destitution for the many.
Great Transition includes the rapid penetration of environmentally benign technologies, as does Policy Reform, but at a more
rapid pace. A second major feature also supports environmental sustainability—the shift toward less materially-intensive lifestyles.
Resource requirements decrease as consumerism abates, populations
stabilize, growth slows in affluent areas, and settlement patterns
become more integrated and compact. At the same time, poverty
levels drop, as equity between and within countries rapidly
improves.

The Shape of Transition

93

Great Transition patterns are shown in Figure 12 for “rich” and“poor” regions, essentially the OECD countries and the rest-of-theworld, respectively. Population growth moderates in response topoverty eradication, universal education and greater gender equality.
In affluent regions, income growth slows as people opt for shorter
formal workweeks to devote more time—an increasingly valued
resource—to cultural, civic and personal pursuits. Rapid investment
and transfers to poor regions stimulates rapid growth and international equity. The affluent reduce the fraction of meat in diets forenvironmental, ethical and health considerations. National equity inmost countries approaches the levels currently seen in European
countries such as Austria and Denmark. Reliance on automobiles
decreases in rich areas, as settlements become more integrated andalternative modes of transportation more prevalent. The energy transition ushers in the age of renewable energy, the materials transition

Income$1,000 per capita

billions of people

Population
8
7
6
5
4
3

30

20

hours per week

Figure 12. Great Transition Patterns
Worktime

45

30

15

10

2
1
2020

2040

Food Demand

4

3

3

2
1980

2000

2020

2040

0
1980

2060

Diet

25
20
15
10
5
2000

4
2
0
1980

2000

2020

2040

2060

2040

2000

0.06

0.03

0.00
1980

2000

2020

2040

2060

2040

2060

Equity1:6
1:8
1 : 15

1980

2060

0.09

2020

1:3

2000

2020

2040

2060

Renewable Energy
modern renewables (%)

8
6

2020

0
1980

2060

Settlement Patternbuilt environment (ha/cap)

1,000 km per person

12
10

2040

30

Private Auto
14

2020

35

0
1980

2060

2000

average low:high income ratio

2000% calories from meat and fish

1,000 kcal/cap/day

0
1980

50
40
30
20
10
0
1980

Poor Regions

2000

2020

2040

2060

Rich Regions

94

Great Transition

radically reduces resource throughput and phases out toxic materials,
and the agricultural transition brings greater reliance on ecologicalfarming.
The Great Transition is a complex story. Just as aspects of all
scenarios are simultaneously at play today, the world system will
unfold as a mixed state as the various tendencies compete for dominance. One possibility for the phased emergence of a Great Transition is reflected in the three eras of the “history of the future”(Section 5). The overlay and sequence of scenarios is illustrated in
Figure 13. Market Forces dominates until its internal contradictions
lead to a global crisis, as Fortress World forces surge briefly andineffectually. Policy Reform ascends in the wake of the crisis. Eventually the Great Transition era begins as the long-brewing popular
desire for fundamental change surges.
The analysis suggests that the momentum toward an unsustainable future can be reversed, but only with great difficulty. The
Great Transition assumes fundamental shifts in desired lifestyles,
values and technology. Yet, even under these assumptions, it takes
many decades to realign human activity with a healthy environment,
Figure 13. Overlapping Tendencies in a Great Transition

Relative Dominance

GT

?

PR
MF

FW
1990

2015

2040

2065

MF = Market Forces, PR = Policy Reform, GT = Great Transition, FW = Fortress WorldThe Shape of Transition

95

make poverty obsolete, and ameliorate the deep fissures that divide
people. Some climate change is irrevocable, water stress will persist
in many places, extinct species will not return, and lives will be lostto deprivation.
Nevertheless, a planetary transition toward a humane, just andecological future is possible. But the curve of development must be
bent twice. A radical revision of technological means begins thetransition. A reconsideration of human goals completes it. This is
the promise and the lure of the global future.

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