Another week, another apocalypse. After making hay and hype over the supposed end of the world when a 5,000-year cycle of the Mayan calendar ended on December 21, 2012,

world media stoked another round of apocalyptic fears, at least for economy and market watchers, with reports and commentary on the impending “fiscal cliff” when US tax cuts expire and budget reductions take effect on New Year’s Day.

Fortunately for the world, the denizens of both ancient Mayan temples and today’s Capitol Hill proved anything but doomsayers. The end of the age-old culture’s calendar merely signals the start of another cycle, just as the closing of 2012 on December 31 heralds the beginning of 2013.

In Washington, meanwhile, economic Armageddon was averted with a January 1 deal between the White House and the US Senate extending tax breaks indefinitely and deferring spending cuts for two months. With the subsequent approval by the Republican-controlled House, the compromise spared world financial markets a bloodbath on their first trading day of 2013.

Yet the world of today does not need misconstrued ancient calendars and mismatched revenues and budgets to divine an end of the way things are. Leading nations, international agencies and global corporations constantly monitor, distill and extrapolate trends, forces and factors shaping the world and its key sectors, and make educated guesses about how the world, its structures, systems, processes and peoples may change in years, decades, even generations to come.

Such future-gazing tomes are the main subject of The CenSEI Report in its first two issues of 2013, with special focus on Global Trends 2030, the latest assessment and forecast of geopolitical, security, economic, social, technological and environmental directions for the world, published just last month by the United States’ National Intelligence Council.

With similar projections for 2010, 2015, 2020 and 2025, NIC provides long-term strategic analysis for the US Intelligence Community. IC includes the State, Homeland Security, Energy and Treasury Departments; the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency; the military and aerospace intelligence arms of the Defense Department; plus the intelligence divisions of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard.

This article summarizes the most substantive themes, insights, arguments and data of Global Trends 2030, with cross-references to the earlier reports, as well as related projections done by other countries, international bodies, and major corporations. Three more reports in this installment of The CenSEI Report focus on future directions and challenges in disaster risk reduction, technology, and health. Another three articles in the next issue will cover strategic implications and recommendations in geopolitics, business and energy.

If Global Trends 2030 readers end up wondering if the much-hyped Mayan prediction of earthy demise got it wrong by just a decade or so, it’s understandable. Among the highlights are four major scenarios divined by NIC for the next two decades, from the most optimistic—productive collaboration among America, China and major non-state groupings—to the dismal and dangerous: world political and economic paralysis and escalating strife between haves and have-nots. Plus a planet-wide killer pandemic, deadlier and more destructive weather, and growing world food and water shortages.

A quick comparison of the 2030 overview with the past four Global Trends projections, done in 2000, 2004 and 2008, shows both enduring issues as well as shifting perspectives. The first megatrend of individual empowerment underscores the growing clout and assertiveness of citizens.
“Individual empowerment will accelerate substantially owing to poverty reduction and a huge growth of the global middle class, greater educational attainment, and better health care,” Global Trends 2030 forecasts (page 8 in the report). A number of projections expect the world middle class population to reach between 2 billion and 3 billion by 2030 from today’s 1 billion or so, based on $10-$50 spending a day at purchasing power parity, which accounts for price differences between countries.

Sharing and augmenting the U.S. report from across the Atlantic is Europe’s own Global Trends 2030 tome, subtitled “Citizens in an Interconnected and Polycentric World,” and produced last year by the European Union Institute for Strategic Studies. The EUISS 20-year projections echoed several of the NIC’s 2030 themes, especially the main ones in the EU report’s introduction:

“The empowerment of the individual, which may contribute to a growing sense of belonging to a single human community. Greater stress on sustainable development against a backdrop of greater resource scarcity and persistent poverty, compounded by the consequences of climate change. The emergence of a more polycentric world characterised by a shift of power away from states, and growing governance gaps as the mechanisms for inter-state relations fail to respond adequately to global public demands.”

With a different spending threshold, the Asian Development Bank’s Asia 2050 report forecast nearly 5 billion middle-class citizens by 2030, with more than half of them in Asia. But big questions loom: How assertive and empowered will Asia’s affluents be, especially the 1.1 billion projected to be China? How long and in what ways can authoritarian governments make citizens with more money and education accept limited freedoms? And with people connected across the globe via the Internet, will the world of Netizens join hands with governments and multilateral institutions to drive democratic change and good governance?

(From The CenSEI Report on global trends, with articles on geopolitics, business, technology, society and environment issues. For a copy, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .)