DEVELOPMENT

4 The Afd2025 scenarios
Using the methodology outlined earlier, this foresighting approach resulted in the formulation
of four scenarios representing four contrasted pictures of how the world and
the context within which AFD evolves might change by 2025/2030. Their aim is not to
forecast what is going to happen but to prompt strategic questions that are relevant, new
or seldom raised.
Foresighting for Development
Development agencies, steering through future worlds. Afd2025
I
IMPASSE
Ecological tipping points have been reached sooner than expected, giving rise to a succession
of crises across the world. The global demographic transition is still ongoing and
urban development has become anarchic, leading to unsustainable pressure on resources.
The benefits of the technological revolution are confined to a minority. Under the guise
of ideologies, identitarian closure has been fueled by mounting inequality and poverty.
With an America that has adopted a more self-reliant posture and lost its world leadership,
and a fragmented Europe, globalization goes into reverse, taking an anarchic turn
in a disordered and non-cooperative multi-polar world where the most powerful countries
impose their own interests. But for how long?
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