It’s 2050, and here in the UK, as in other developed countries, population growth has stabilised through much enhanced personal education and government encouragement of small families. However, in the time that it has taken to achieve this, cities have both expanded and become denser, leading to far less green space and agricultural land. Much of the farming needed to support the larger population is now outsourced. Though fossil fuel use is now virtually eradicated and transport is almost wholly sustainable, this importation of food is expensive, and has pushed food prices up. 

People now live longer than they did a few decades ago, due to huge improvements in medicine, genetic analysis and manipulation, which have worked to wipe out degenerative diseases, and bring about improvements in the quality of food through genetic modification. Environmental controls are tight – very small amounts of space are now allocated for landfill, as almost all waste produced by the population can now be recycled thanks to improvements in technology.

As we move towards 2050, we are going to have to learn and adapt to living within our environmental limits. In order for this to occur we will need good governance, with policy based on strong scientific evidence. However it must also take into account public opinion and employ the precautionary principle.

I believe that there will be a plateau in population growth due to stresses of the environment and education. This could begin a trend of having smaller families due to the realization of the harsh realities that appear from oversized populations. I believe that CO2 emissions will begin decreasing, yet places like New Orleans and the Netherlands will still be under great threat from flooding due to sea level rise and storm events.  

Our homes will be much more energy efficient than they are currently and may generate more energy that they actually consume.  The increased populations will put great stresses on the food industries and the large demand for these goods will drive prices continually higher.

Education and healthcare have improved considerably over the last few decades as the country has developed, but many families are still large. With increased population growth, this pushes up demand for basic food items. 

Though the ecological effects of climate change have been brought under control by developed countries, it has greatly affected the land available for agricultural use. Crops and grazing animals now yield far less than they used to, and coupled with increased population, this has pushed food prices up, and out of reach of more of the poorest people. This has led to high numbers of rural people migrating into cities looking for work. As a result, cities have expanded into land which would previously have been used for agriculture. 

World environmental controls in production mean that India has had to find other ways of developing, and it is growing more slowly than would have otherwise been expected. The richer members of the population have placed tighter controls on resources, which has mean that social inequality remains a significant problem.

Society is stuck in an ‘iron cage of consumerism’. A dismissal of the impacts of resource exhaustion and exploitation and poor transparency of polluting practices by firms and government, has led to a laissez-faire approach to pollution abatement by society at its most local scale. 

Income inequalities have resulted from the government’s inability to redistribute income effectively, partly due to its conflict of interest with financial regulation and party funding. The environment has not been synchronised successfully into the macroeconomic model, leading to a distancing of sustainable development in growth agendas. 

The economy’s reliance on foreign non-renewable energy is increasing the cost of living through imported inflation, as well as increasing the vulnerability of the west to resource conflicts with its trading partners in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies and the Middle East.

Nationalistic approaches have been taken in terms of protectionism and subsidising domestic firms, excluding the participation of developing economies in global markets; widening the development gap between the developed north and the underdeveloped south.

Consumers have realised their ability to lobby government from the bottom upwards. Transparency of the supply chain has led to attitudinal changes in the lifestyles of the vast population, and a reduced reliance on technological advancements for addressing issues of scarcity and pollution abatement.   

Education on the impacts of climate change and methods to reduce emissions has resulted in an emerging environmental consciousness, not evident in the start of the 21st century, and a population inclined to act to reverse its consequences. The cultural relationship with the environment evident in many indigenous tribes has been echoed and aspired to in the West. Although complete harmonisation will never exist under the current social logic, there is a strengthening sense of responsibility over the environment and its fragility. 

Economically, the foundations of the global economy have been restructured to facilitate growth within ecological limits. Trade barriers have been alleviated, stimulating contestability in previously monopolised markets, and allowing for developing nations to participate on the global platform. Freer trade has also been adopted as Governments are looking ahead and can see the opportunities for western markets to expand as the developing world prospers and begin to demand income elastic goods.

Governments are also being held accountability for enforcing necessary sanctions for polluting firms. By internalising externalities such as air pollution and introducing carbon trading into manufacturing markets, firms are incentivised to adopt greener technologies to maximise profits, subsequently contributing towards a more environmentally literate macroeconomic policy.

Ali is an entrepreneur hoping to establish green technologies and non-renewable methods of energy generation in his heavily oil-dependent country. Throughout his life he has seen the environment around him diminish as a result of Government mega-projects to expand oil-production.

Challenged with the prospect of an increasing climate and stringent regulations on business establishment, Ali is struggling to put forward a new concept for wind technology in a city bordering his town. Years have passed and little social development has occurred within Iran. Whilst the Arab Spring brought about re-establishment and liberated its people, a replication of such action would soon be suppressed under the current regime. 

There are also economic factors hindering greener technologies and Ali’s ability to contribute towards a sustainable future for the next generation; including the reliance of the economy on oil exports and the high barriers to entry into currently monopolised public sector energy markets. The insular nature of Iran’s politics and its portrayal of the western world make it unlikely to fully integrate into the global economy and to act in unison with other nations to reduce energy consumption and waste.

Following the Arab Spring a ripple effect of social uprising and liberated populations has leaked through national borders. For the first time in his life, Ali has felt confident in taking to the street and demanding social and political freedoms. A makeshift government has replaced the existing one and has effectively been shoehorned by the Iranian public in their pursuit for freedom. 

Political, economic and social systems have been reconfigured, allowing for a divergence of innovation into markets, previously uninhabited. Ali has been assisted by government in establishing a small-scale energy project in his nearest city. 

The economic structure of the region surrounding Iran has become more fluid, and Iran has opened its barriers to the developed north, neutralising the once stark differences in political systems. 

Progress is slow in this region due to its historically stagnant societal and economic development. However these incremental changes are significant and are slowly starting to address issues of scarcity, and environmental diminishment on a global scale, opening up new business opportunities for Ali and other like him.

The world’s population has risen considerably since the start of this century. When we look back to the headlines from 2011 when the world’s population reached 7 billion, such a small number seems unimaginable to us now. Today, in the year 2050, the world is home to more than 10 billion human beings. This would have led to serious social, economic and environmental problems if we had not adopted a series of radical environmental measures, which have revolutionized mankind in social, economic and environmental terms. 

At the end of 2015, food supplies had become rare due to the agricultural problems which were facing the world, and more precisely the developing countries at that time. Pesticides were recognized as being the only solution to provide enough food for everyone, but the negative effects on nature were not yet taken seriously enough. Since then, developed countries such as the USA have discovered new agricultural techniques and shared the technology freely with other countries, enabling food supplies to cover the entire food demand without having effects on our biodiversity. 

Another environmental problem, which had to be solved, was the deforestation, which had increased dramatically during the 20th and early part of the 21st centuries. Massive reforestation and plantation projects all over the world enabled us to recover from most of the damage. These projects are still running since we know that the ameliorating the damage caused by previous forest loss is immense. 

Although the key challenges facing the world nowadays are social and environmental ones, mankind has also had to deal with a great number of other problems. One of the greater challenges was to regulate and revolutionize the consumer society which started to develop a century ago in the 1950s and which had dramatic adverse impacts on the environment. It is through managing a successful alliance between economics and the environment that we have been able to maintain the respect of nature whilst continuing to enjoy a good standard of living.

Sunita is a 20 year old woman living in Nawakot, just outside Kathmandu. She works with an international NGO (non-governmental organization) in Kathmandu and studies in her spare time. She works in the booming hydropower industry, making use of the vast abundance of water found in the surrounding areas. This industry has been rapidly growing due to the increasing quality of infrastructure and the decrease in conflict. The year 2050 has brought an increased amount of calm to Nepal, allowing NGOs to take on a leading role in Nepal’s governance. 

Sunita lives in a small community that, despite the improved education systems and international involvement, is increasingly growing, putting great strain on the village and the surrounding areas. Water is becoming increasingly scarce and infectious diseases are spreading daily. The hardships faced by Sunita and her village community have inspired her to encourage other members of her village to become educated. She hopes that this will lead to more people working within environmentally-friendly projects to help build a more sustainable future for Nepal.

“In the last 10 years the work on the sugarcane plantation has become exhausting and incredibly hard. The plantation owners constantly overestimate our physical ability as well as our capacity to work without interruption, often between 10 and 12 hours a day. The most difficult aspect of our task is not, as it could seem, to harvest the sugarcane for hours and hours, but to work with very little fresh water supplies. There is simply almost no clean water left and if there is, the plantation workers are not the first to benefit from it. 

“It seems that nature is giving us back what we gave her for so many years: tons of pollution. We have polluted the earth with so much disrespect and have entered a vicious circle, which we won’t get out of fast. Rivers have become brown and filthy streams where no aquatic life is possible anymore, lakes have been transformed by men into stinking swamps. Where green and fresh grass once grew, we now find only dry land and dying vegetation.”

I am putting myself in the place of a woman I lived with for 3 weeks in a hut in the Thar desert in India. She is now 21, she has two children and a husband who owns a hotel in the city. She lives with her in-laws, who run a tiny farm.

In 2050 the woman I know will be 60, and if she has not been widowed she will be the woman of the house. Her husband’s hotel and many others will have closed, and increases in flight prices will have hugely reduced the number of tourists. Consequently, the men will be providing all the income from jobs in cities further a-field, only managing to visit the family home for special occasions. Lots of villages will be made up almost entirely of women, children and elderly. 

It is likely that by 2050 the family well will have dried up and water will be brought in through government pipes to community pumps. This means that the farm will no longer be functioning, daily routine will involve travelling to market and rural women will consequently come into regular contact with people from the cities. This, combined with more widely accessible internet, could result in the disintegration of the desert communities, as it is the women who hold together the traditional structure of the homes and villages. 

Hopefully the wind farms, which already line the nearby hills, will be powering the single naked bulb they have. At present all the power generated is being used by private companies rather than benefiting local communities. If this changes it could mean that her family will have a reliable light source and consequently they will have leisure time. In 2050 her great grandchildren will have the luxury of hobbies. Today anything other than basic academic work and helping on the farm is seen as a waste of time. 

I hope that her world in 2050 will retain many of the ancient cultural and religious practices they have today surrounding family and social values. However I also hope that her community will manage to gain from the inevitable changes and progressions occurring within the country. But I am unsure whether it will be possible for a balance of these things to exist together.

In 2050 the world I know will be one imprinted with the decisions made by our generation. 

The UK will be a split society. We are one of the first generations to have been brought up with a weight of awareness of climate change and over-population, but we are also one of the first generations to have been brought up with a dependence on technology and supermarket culture. These two very different sets of influences will shape how our generation forms its communities.

With supermarkets exercising the dead centre effect and our tendency to replace people with machines as much as possible, it is possible that by 2050 the cities and towns of the UK will be soulless places full of socially inept beings. Our increasing love for new technological advances will, if continued at the current rate, greatly reduce the tactility of our material world, introduce new health issues and diminish our need to learn practical skills. I hope I am not telling my grandchildren fairytales of things called maps, because all they know is a sat nav.

However I think many people will have chosen to revert back to self-sufficiency and alternative ways of living, taking the DIY approach to many aspects of life. More communities will form with economies based on labour exchange rather than monetary systems, and traditional skills will be reintroduced. This will mean sacrificing modern luxuries and will require a very different type of education, but it will become an increasingly popular choice.  

Both groups of people will have made changes to help improve the state of our natural planet. One will have used a progression of technology to make their lifestyles ‘greener’ and the other will have removed modern technology almost altogether. 

The movement towards this divide is already starting to show, but I think that the processes and decisions made in the 39 years between now and then will create two very separate societies living on the same island but with conflicting practices and priorities.  Although we will have made plenty of beneficial advances, I fear we will have eliminated many of the more interactive and physical aspects of life today.

It’s almost 40 years since my first university tutorial on population growth, and several countries have now entered phase four of the demographic transition. Land in popular urban areas has begun to be sold vertically. At a point, it was thought that the population would stabilize at around eight billion (due to decreasing birth rate, higher education and changing attitudes towards childbirth). However, in 2045, we proceeded to reach nine billion and are currently around 10.5 billion, although the rate of population growth is now slowing.

Architecture has become more practical. Despite the fact that in 2012, the 7 billion population could theoretically stand in Los Angeles, the land masses’ true potential is yet to be exploited, for two reasons: firstly, the human necessity to crowd together, and secondly, the introduction of several major laws protect overexploited resources and secure ecological recovery.

I’m now 58 years old, and I have a good 12 years before I need to consider my limited chance for a pension. People live longer than they ever did and there is not enough work to support pensions for all. A ‘one child’ policy has been implemented in the UK. The UN predicted that the world would reach replacement fertility by 2030. The largest generation of adults entering their child-bearing stages for some time countered this, and so, following Asia’s’ success, the policy was implemented in other countries. India has now surpassed China in population. As I move into retirement, I am considering a robotic carer, since most retirement homes have closed due to the lack of young labour. 

Food and energy is rationed. Friends in India have told me of the increasing poverty that population pressure is inflicting on their country. Rising sea levels over the past decades have been displacing many Bangladeshis. The situation in some areas is becoming dire. Food shortage seems to be pressuring global civilisation.

Population growth is not the only problem we face. Regardless of population size, alternative energy is a must and the new aggressive birth control won’t stop sea level rising. Tensions are rising in the worst off parts of Asia and Africa.

I remember reading as a student that “it’s too late to stop the middle class of 2030 being born, but it’s not too late to change how they, and us, will produce and consume our resources”. Thirty eight years later, things are changing, but it’s still a work in progress.

Today we live in a world which is dominated economically mainly by the USA, China and Europe. However, by 2050, this power may have shifted. For example, the Chinese economy relies heavily on exports now, whereas in the future, it will move more towards consumption. Other countries will face economic change due to the demand for certain resources. Resource exhaustion will force the USA to move towards more renewable energy resources. Demand for other natural resources will also increase in demand in the future, and the availability of vital resources such as water could dramatically improve the state of one country’s economy. 

By 2050, there will have been progress in terms of reducing carbon emissions well below the levels they were in the early 21st Century, due to more efficient renewable energies, especially energy generated by solar panels. However, with the long lag time between the reduction of carbon emissions and deforestation and any observable impact on climate, weather patterns will continue to become more and more extreme, including tornadoes and rising sea levels. 

Coastal areas could very well be the most affected areas, with important areas being destroyed due to the rising sea levels. This could have a disastrous effect on many countries which rely heavily on ports for the running of their economy, such as Rotterdam in the Netherlands. By 2050 it is estimated that 45% of the Amazon rainforest may have been destroyed, but due to its size, the basic ecology of the system will still be intact. 

As medicine and social care continue to improve, people will be living longer, meaning that more people will be needed to care for them, which will in turn cost the tax payer more money.

It is thought that by 2050 Africa’s population will grow to between 2 and 2.2 billion. As the population continues to increase, the amount of people that could contract HIV/Aids in many of the worst affected countries will probably increase, leading to a reduction in life expectancy and an increase in death rate. However, money from charities and investment from overseas in healthcare, combined with free and widely available birth control, could reverse this. 

Corruption is likely to remain a problem in many African countries, with the money received from charities and international aid remaining in the hands of a few people and not reaching its targets.

In many poor, developing countries there is presently a high risk of cholera due to a lack of drinking water. Considering that in the future there is likely to be a shortage of water for most countries, this could potentially drive the price up. As a result many poorer economies won’t be able to purchase it and many developed countries may choose to look after themselves and guarantee their own supplies. 

Despite many African countries having an abundance of minerals that are highly valued, they will remain poor as they can’t process them into high value goods. Richer countries and trans-national corporations will continue to take these resources for a small price and convert them into large profits, having a negative effect on the host country. Once these resources become depleted, these countries will receive less money from these large organisations and will be even worse off than when they started.