The "third billion"

S+B authors DeAnne Aguirre and Karim Sabbagh have suggest the move of women from agrarian to knowledge work will profoundly change the future in developing-world regions and the world at large.

http://www.strategy-business.com/article/10211?pg=all

"A huge and fast-growing group of people are poised to take their place in the economic mainstream over the next decade, as producers, consumers, employees, and entrepreneurs. This group’s impact on the global economy will be at least as significant as that of China and India’s billion-plus populations. But its members have not yet attracted the level of attention they deserve.

"If China and India each represent 1 billion emerging participants in the global marketplace, then this “third billion” is made up of women, in both developing and industrialized nations, whose economic lives have previously been stunted, underleveraged, or suppressed. These women, who have been living or contributing at a subsistence level, are now entering the mainstream for the first time. We estimate that about 870 million of them will do so by 2020, with the number conceivably passing 1 billion during the following decade.

"Their presence as economic actors will be widely felt, because they have long been overrepresented in the ranks of subsistence agriculture and other resource-based forms of work. As they move into knowledge work, in domains ranging from manufacturing to medicine to education to information technology, their sheer numbers will hasten the integration of the regions where they live into the larger economy."

Posted via email from The Future Café: People, Policy, Trends, Technology, Leadership, Foresight, Innovation, Design

Japan plans 9 more nuclear reactors by 2020 and 14 by 2030; Finland plans 2 more by 2020

Update on nuclear energy expansion from Next Big Future:

Japan is planning to build nine new nuclear power plants by 2020, and 14 by 2030, according to a draft strategy document by METI, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

Nuclear power's security of supply and low-carbon output have made it a strategic priority for the country, the report said. The report said that the 2020 plants should have a load factor of 85%; Japan's reactors had a load factor of 84% in 1998, prior to the 2007 earthquake that shut down all seven units of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, among others. The 2030 plants would have an even higher load factor of 90%.

The Japanese energy plan also the goal of halving carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from homes and passenger cars by 2030.

The Finnish Ministry of Employment and Industry says preliminary permission has been given to Finnish utility TVO and Fennovoima, a consortium including Germany's E.On AG, to build the reactors by 2020. The government proposal requires parliamentary approval, expected this summer.

The initial loading of fuel into the reactor core has begun at unit 1 of the second phase of the Ling Ao nuclear power plant in Guangdong province, China.
Unit 1 of phase II is scheduled to begin commercial operation by the end of 2010. The main structural work on Phase II of the Ling Ao plant started in December 2005. Unit 2 of Ling Ao Phase II is due to begin operating in 2011. So if the schedule is maintained it will about 5 years from start of construction until commercial power generation is started.

Posted via web from The Future Café: People, Policy, Trends, Technology, Leadership, Foresight, Innovation, Design

Ontario looks to its future (Ontario 2020)

Alway's a good thing when a city or region is prepared to look ahead and manage proactively. The second day of a 2-day Ontario 2020 conference is under way. More at www.ontario2020conference.ca

"This conference is a great opportunity to rise above the latest crises, visualize some of our possible futures, and imagine what we can do today to build the Ontario we want tomorrow," said Warren (Smokey) Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union in his opening address.

Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, spoke on: "Who killed Canada's education advantage? Thomas Homer-Dixon, Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo, discussed "Building resilience and strategies for coping with an uncertain future." Mary Robinson former president of Ireland and current Chair of The Ethical Globalization Initiative, will spoke on "prosperity and compassion."

The two-day conference will build and discuss possible scenarios of the future in four key areas: the economy, community, health care, and education. Ontario 2020 is chaired by noted Canadian journalist Wendy Mesley.

7 Predictions For 2010-2020 from Business Week

With the Business Week platform behind him, Bruce Nussbaum put out these predictions for the next 10 years (he admits sticking only 'to things I know about': to economics, innovation, design, politics, demographics, policy, global):

1- Peak Globalization:
Just as the world globalized in the second half of the 19th century, only to return to nationalism in the first half of the 20th, so too will we see a strong backlash against globalization in the decade ahead...As China, India, Korea, India, Japan and other countries pursue strictly national strategies, Western governments and publics increasingly counter with theirs... the Boeing 787 fiasco highlights the problems with extreme outsourcing of complex systems. As Boeing has moved to insource and control the 787, so too other US and European companies follow.

2- Radical Remodeling (around social media):
The social media form of organization found in Facebook and Twitter spread to business, healthcare, education and, politics. This is Gen Y’s technology platform and the 16-27 year-old demographic cohort take social media with it as it takes power and moves through it’s life cycle... A culture-centric, behavior-focussed model replaces the current rationalistic, math-basaed, theoretical economic model. Bye-bye to the Chicago school of economics. Hello Harvard.

3- US-sclerosis:
America becomes increasingly ungovernable and incompetent. Ideological polarization, political corruption (legal lobbying but pay-to-play), growing inequality, globalization of corporate and financial elites, and large-scale social system failures (education, healthcare, intelligence, industry), cut America’s economic, political and military power. The shift to a green economy is slow. The dollar sinks and inflation rises to ease paying for huge government debt.

4- Return to Big Power Conflict:
The rise and fall of nations generates new Big Power conflict. China challenges the US militarily in Taiwan and nearly succeeds in blinding US naval computer systems. China and India fight a small-scale border war that is really about controlling water. Pakistan and India engage in conflict.

5- China stalls out:
A huge aging population, soaring inequality and anger at the rich, over-investment in infrastructure, industrial capacity and failure to shift from a producer/exporter to a consumer/importer economy combine to produce a financial crisis in China that ends its 30-year, double-digit growth streak. The decline of the US consumer-of-last-resort is not matched by the rise of Chinese consumption. China becomes “Japanized.”

6- India Becomes Global Growth Engine:
A large, young Gen Y population, a vast middle class consumer base, an innovative corporate elite, a large, educated, English-speaking IT industry, a stable government and an ever-closer military alliance with the US push India’s growth rate to double digits, making it the biggest importer of investment and goods from the US and Europe by the end of the decade. Problems remain—corruption, Maoist rebels, inequality.

7- Europe Fades Further:
Benefits from a successful shift to a green economy by many countries are countered by the burdens of paying for a huge aging population. Turkey is invited to join the EU by the end of the decade—and turns it down. Working population continues to shrink.

Of course 3-7 are all part of the same issue (US and Europe decline, China stall, India rises; big power conflict results.)