The Foggy Crystal Ball: Global Development by 2050

It's hard to predict what will happen next week, let alone more than 25 years down the road. Nevertheless a new report has come out from the Centre for Global Development titled: Scenarios for Future Global Growth to 2050. In it, there are many positive calls made. Severe poverty may disappear as we currently know it and measure it. Military spending may well be exhausted, and rich country growth will slow down. What can we make of these global predictions and trends? What can be said about how the future will unfold at the local level? Countries will continue to submerge into the sea. The poles will get warmer, and urban centres may face punishing extremes from a changing climate. To help us navigate this foggy crystal ball, is Charles Kenny. Charles Kenny is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. His current work focuses on global economic prospects, gender and development, and development finance. He is the author of the books “The Plague Cycle: The Unending War Between Humanity and Infectious Disease,” "Getting Better: Why Global Development is Succeeding," “The Upside of Down: Why the Rise of the Rest is Good for the West,” and “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Utility: Happiness in Philosophical and Economic Thought.” He has been a contributing editor at Foreign Policy magazine and a regular contributor to Business Week magazine. Kenny was previously at the World Bank, where his assignments included coordinating work on governance and anticorruption in infrastructure and natural resources, and managing a number of investment and technical assistance projects covering telecommunications and the Internet. Follow Dr. Bob on Twitter: @ProfessorHuish