Institute For The Future

Ben Crow on disturbances in the global ecology

Shift from mechanical/industrial to ecological paradigm is one of the keys to the intellectual history of the future.

Agriculture: We see the potential for turbulence around the growing roles that agriculture will play in food, fuel, climate, and health, and the conflicting demands and roles that each will require.

Migration: Migration as a human right and key for long-term species survival was a subject of last year's work. This year, we've looked at women migrants, who are an increasingly important part of the global workforce. They're moving for economic gain, cultural experiences, and opportunities for mobility.

Sick Herd: growth of noncommunicable diseases, with worsening air and water quality,

atmospheric radiation, and industrial food as the culprits.

Discussion with Rod Falcon and Jody Ranck

Water is a great example of the interdependencies of natural resources, health, agriculture, economic production, and other things. Water is central to both economic livelihood and human health, and can be seen as both a human right and an economic resource.

Giving households better access to water can increase their economic and physical health: for example, it enables all kinds of small business or agricultural activity around the home, including farming in periurban areas. This has created new challenges for providing water to cities.

Weak Third World governments have a lot of trouble doing a decent job delivering it, and water supplies are plagued by losses at the infrastructure level (30-50% of water is lost by utilities), and the financial (money is lost or siphoned off by utilities).

The assumption has been that by introducing entrepreneurial incentives would increase efficiency of delivery. It's worked better where there were already existing infrastructures; it's done worse where the task has been to bring water to urban or periurban areas.