DEVELOPMENT

4 The Afd2025 scenarios
ALIGNING
ASPIRATIONS
Many fragile situations nonetheless persist, but bold efforts for national and international
solidarity are being made: social disintegration in the Global South is now addressed
without calling on “universalist” paradigms, which helps re-establish a North-South trust
and weaken the clienteles on whom the entrepreneurs of violence feed (particularly in
the “Impasse” and “Babel 3.0” scenarios discussed earlier). Security improves overall
thanks to this certainly costly but reassuring effort for solidarity, which also involves
re-launching global public goods management. This positive momentum resembles that
found in the wake of Europe’s first social policies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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“It is for this reason that we need to rethink governance. First, by opening up widely
to non-state actors and second, by setting the strengthening of social ties as a priority
for any public policy.” Bertrand Badie
Agenda-wise, the world’s attention is above all focused on protecting the biosphere. The
return to growth has not settled the issue of climate change, which remains a serious
problem, particularly under the strain of rampant urbanization and the explosion of the
middle classes. While technology has brought substantial progress as regards impacts on
natural resources, large swathes of the population, now ready to adopt a more consumerist
lifestyle, continue to flow into and expand urban spaces and depopulate rural areas.
Other environmental preoccupations are still on the governance agenda. The impacts of
climate change – exacerbated by melting ice caps and the thawing Siberian permafrost,
vast tracts of primary forests moving away from their natural equilibrium, and the disappearance
of coral reefs – are still a major cause of concern for the international community,
and crystallize the scientists’ fears. Even though landmark global agreements are regularly
revised to include more ambitious targets followed by genuine commitments, global
warming has not been reversed, but it is progressing at a slower pace.
Foresighting for Development
Development agencies, steering through future worlds. Afd2025
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