The global futures scenarios vary widely along different demographic, socio-economic, and technological dimensions, as shown in Table 2.2. Scenarios range from economic collapse to virtually unlimited economic prosperity; from population collapse (caused by famine, disease, and/or war), to stabilization near current levels, to explosive population growth. Governance systems range from decentralized, semi-autonomous communities with a form of direct democracy to global oligarchies. Some scenarios posit large improvements in income and social equality, within and among nations, while others foresee a widening of the income gap. Many scenarios envisage a future world that is high-tech, with varying rates of diffusion, but some envisage a world in which a crisis of some kind leads to a decline in technological development and even a loss of technological capability. Most scenarios are pessimistic with respect to resource availability; some are more optimistic, pointing to the ability of technology and demand changes to alleviate scarcity. Most scenarios also project increasing environmental degradation; more positively, many of these scenarios portray this trend reversing in the long-term, leading to an eventual improvement in environmental quality. The sustainable development scenarios, on the other hand, describe a future in which environmental quality improves throughout the scenario.

Table 2.2: Descriptive statistics for global futures scenario dimensions
showing	Number of scenarios	Range	Most common (mode)	Number of scenarios changes (compared to current situation)
				Declining	Same	Rising
Total Scenarios	124
Size of Economy	102	collapse to high growth	Rising	24	13	65
Population Size	84	collapse to high growth	Rising	10	5	69
Level of Technology	98	stagnation & decline to very high	Rising	4	9	85
Degree of Globalization	84	isolated communities to global civilization	More global	22	1	61
Government Intervention in Economy	76	laissez-faire to strong regulation	Declining	36	9	31
Pollution	85	very low to very high	Rising	34	3	48
International Income Equality	99	very low to very high	Rising	32	16	50
Intranational Income Equality	53	very low to very high	Rising	24	0	29
Degree of Conflict	76	peace to many wars/world war	Rising	26	14	36
Fossil Fuel Use	49	virtually zero to high		24	1	24
Energy Use	51	low to high	Rising	14	0	37
GHG Emissions	45	low to high	Rising	11	1	33
Climate Change (yes/no)	0	no climate change to severe climate change
Structure of Economy	50	agrarian/subsistence to “quaternary” (leisure)	Increasingly post-industrial	4	6	40
Percentage of Older Persons in Population	11	primarily young population to ageing population	Rising	2	0	9
Migration	30	low to high	Rising	10	0	20
Human Health	38	worsening to improving	Improving	13	3	22
Degree of Competition	41	low to high	Rising	14	0	27
Citizen Participation in Governance	56	autocracy to meaningful participation	Rising	14	14	28
Community Vitality	42	breakdown to very strong	Rising	12	0	30
Responsiveness of Institutions	75	irrelevant to very responsive/citizen-driven	Improving	21	16	38
Social Equity	38	low to high		19	1	18
Security Activity	30	low to high	Rising	13	0	17
Conflict Resolution	30	inadequate to successful	Improving	10	1	19
Technological Diffusion	58	low to high	Improving	9	13	36
Rate of Innovation	45	low to high	Rising	3	14	28
Renewable Resource Availability	28	low to high	Declining	19	1	8
Non-renewable Resource Availability	35	low to high	Rising	15	4	16
Food Availability	45	low to high	Rising	16	4	25
Water Availability	18	low to high	Declining	12	0	6
Biodiversity	33	low to high	Declining	21	2	10
Threat of Collapse	26	unlikely to likely	Rising	9	1	16

The scenarios were grouped together according to their main distinguishing features and were combined into four groups, according to whether they described futures in which, according to the scenario authors, conditions deteriorate (group 1), stay the same (group 2), or improve (groups 3 and 4). These groups are summarized in Table2.3.

Table 2.3: Global futures scenario groups
Scenario group	Scenario subgroups	Number of scenarios
1. Pessimistic Scenarios	Breakdown: collapse of human society	5
	Fractured World: deterioration into antagonistic regional blocs	9
	Chaos: instability and disorder	4
	Conservative: world economic crash is succeeded by conservative and risk-averse regime	2
2. Current Trends Scenarios	Conventional: no significant change from current and/or continuation of present-day trends	12
	High Growth: government facilitates business, leading to prosperity	14
	Asia Shift: economic power shifts from the West to Asia	5
	Economy Paramount: emphasis on economic values leads to deterioration in social and environmental conditions	9
3. High-Tech Optimist Scenarios	Cybertopia: information & communication technologies facilitate individualistic, diverse and innovative world	16
	Technotopia: technology solves all or most of humanity’s problems	5
4. Sustainable Development Scenarios	Our Common Future: increased economic activity is made to be consistent with improved equity and environmental quality	21
	Low Consumption: conscious shift from consumerism	16

The scenarios in group 1 describe futures in which conditions deteriorate from present. Some of these scenarios describe a complete breakdown of human society, because of war, resource exhaustion, or economic collapse. Other scenarios describe a future in which the world is fractured into antagonistic blocs or in which society deteriorates into chaos. Still others describe futures in which the global economic system crashes and is succeeded by a conservative, risk-averse regime.

The scenarios in group 2 describe futures in which conditions do not change significantly from the present, or in which current trends continue. Many of these scenarios are “reference” scenarios, which are used by their authors to contrast other alternative future scenarios. In general, these scenarios are pessimistic; they describe futures in which many current problems get worse, although there may be improvement in some areas. This is particularly true of the “Economy Paramount” scenarios, which describe futures in which an emphasis on economic over other values leads to deteriorating environmental and social conditions. Other scenarios in group 2 describe a more optimistic future in which government and business co-operate to improve market conditions (generally through market liberalization and free trade), leading to an increase in prosperity. Several of the group 2 scenarios foresee a shift in economic power from the West to Asia.

The group 3 scenarios could be characterized as “High-Tech Optimist” scenarios. They describe futures in which technology and markets combine to produce increased prosperity and opportunity. Many of these scenarios describe “Cybertopias” in which information and communication technologies enable a highly individualistic, diverse, and innovative global community. Other group 3 scenarios describe worlds in which technological advances solve all or most of the problems facing humanity, including environmental problems.

The scenarios in group 4 are “Sustainable Development” scenarios. In general these scenarios envisage a change in society towards improved co-operation and democratic participation, with a shift in values favouring environment and equity. These scenarios can be subdivided into two subgroups. The first subgroup might be described as “Our Common Future” scenarios in which economic growth occurs, but is managed so that social and environmental objectives may also be achieved. The second subgroup could be characterized as “Low Consumption” sustainable development scenarios. They describe worlds in which economic activity and consumerism considerably decline in importance and, usually, population is stabilized at relatively low levels. Many of these scenarios also envisage increasing regional autonomy and self-reliance.

These groups correspond quite closely with the scenario archetypes that have been developed by the Global Scenarios Group (see Box 2.4). They also roughly correspond with the 4 new emission scenario “families” that were developed in the IPCC SRES (see Section 2.5.1 below) and the scenarios developed by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD, 1997).

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