Sunday, 2 January 2011

Observer: 20 Predictions for the Next 25 Years

Today's Observer features 20 Predictions for the Next 25 Years, as prophesied by the newspaper's "team of experts:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jan/02/25-predictions-25-years

Not all are supremely relevant to global politics; nonetheless, several are quite interesting in that regard, viz.:
  • Geopolitics: 'Rivals will take greater risks against the US'
  • Global development: 'A vaccine will rid the world of Aids' (and other diseases)
  • Energy: 'Returning to a world that relies on muscle power is not an option'
  • Food: 'Russia will become a global food superpower'
  • Nature: 'We'll redefine the wild'
Each of these is worth reading in full - see what you think!

3 comments:

  1. Yes definitely agree with some of those! Interesting stuff.
    Elliot

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  2. The article states that "Today, we have eliminated 99% of the polio in the world and eradication is well within reach." Could this be seen as a success of the UN, and more specifically the World Health Organisation (WHO)? One of the WHO's current targets is the eradication of polio within a few years, and so this demonstrates a success of the WHO. Another of the WHO's targets is to control AIDS and malaria, which the article predicts will happen within the next 25 years.

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  3. As Matthew says, the WHO aims to eradicate AIDS and malaria. We have seen that it is possible to eradicate diseases as the WHO proved by eradicating smallpox back in 1980. Although the WHO has eradicated the disease, they still keep a small stockpile of smallpox vaccine in case there is an outbreak. This therefore suggests that no disease can be fully eradicated, if there is still a threat.
    The following article is also quite interesting: http://www.who.int/csr/disease/smallpox/preparedness/en/index.html

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