Outcomes Over the next 30 years, the resource-related challenges to global stability will be diverse, wide-ranging and significant. Climate change and a shifting environment; increasing demand for natural resources, particularly food, water and fossil fuels; a growing and rapidly globalizing economy; urbanization and the emergence of new health challenges will all have major impacts and unpredictable effects. While the global economy is likely to grow during the period, improving material conditions for many people, the combined, uneven effect of these impacts will be to increase uncertainty for many, creating new sources of insecurity, instability and tension.
Climate Change – Dry Reservoir Bed, Valencia, Spain – 8th September 2006 - Source: Empics.com
Climate change will occur, although, as a result of many variables and limitations in current computing power, assessments of its exact causes and course may remain unclear for some time. The identification of precise cause-and-effect mechanisms will be difficult to discern, together with the inter-relationship between various contributory factors, complex mechanisms and associated phenomena. As a result, climate change as a whole is likely to be variable and uneven in its impact, affecting different parts of the globe in different ways. Although some definite patterns and realignments are likely to emerge towards the middle of our period, climate change is likely to be difficult to predict at the regional level and some changes may be sudden and uneven in their impact.
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