Hanna, T., Hughes, B.B., Irfan, M.T., Bohl, D.K., Solórzano et al. (2024, April 16). Sustainable Development Goal Attainment in the Wake of COVID-19: Simulating an Ambitious Policy Push. Sustainability. 3309. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16083309

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was not on course to meet key Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including SDG 1 (No Poverty) and SDG 2 (Zero Hunger). Some significant degree of additional effort was needed before the pandemic, and the challenge is now greater. Analyzing the prospects for meeting these goals requires attention to the combined effects of the pandemic and such additional impetus. This article assesses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on progress toward the SDGs and explores strategies to recover and accelerate development. Utilizing the International Futures (IFs) forecasting system and recognizing the near impossibility of meeting the goals by 2030, three scenarios are examined through to 2050: A pre-COVID-19 trajectory (No COVID-19), the current path influenced by the pandemic (Current Path), and a transformative SDG-focused approach prioritizing key policy strategies to accelerate outcomes (SDG Push). The pandemic led to a rise in extreme poverty and hunger, with recovery projected to be slow. The SDG Push scenario effectively addresses this, surpassing the Current Pathand achieving significant global improvements in poverty, malnutrition, and human development by 2050 even relative to the No COVID-19 path. The findings emphasize the need for integrated, transformative actions to propel sustainable development.

Meisel, C. (2024, February 20). Accelerating Change But Not Necessarily an Inflection Point. Stimson. https://www.stimson.org/2024/accelerating-change-but-not-necessarily-an-inflection-point/

Today’s world is characterized by enormous change — but also tremendous continuity. By overemphasizing the former at the expense of the latter, policymakers risk underestimating the applicability of past lessons to today’s challenges. They also risk “inflection-point fatigue,” where assertions that “this time it is different” are ignored when “this time” it actually is different. For the term “inflection point” to meaningfully inform strategic planning efforts, decision-makers need to be clear about what does and does not qualify as such, and assess situations accordingly.

Moyer, J. D. (2024, February 16). A double-edged sword into a plowshare: Analyzing geopolitical implications of alternative socioeconomic development pathways. One Earth. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2024.01.002

The summary discusses global challenges to sustainable development, emphasizing the need to balance human development, climate change, and geopolitics. It focuses on the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs),which are scenarios used in climate research to address adaptation and mitigation challenges. Using the International Futures model, the study examines the implications of alternative socioeconomic development on the future distribution of national power and international relations. The findings suggest that a sustainable development pathway may lead to geopolitical destabilization, causing transitions in regional and global power. The paper highlights the importance of integrating international relations drivers into SSPs and urges policymakers to consider both promoting sustainable development and addressing implications for geopolitical development.

Global Outlook 2024: Prospects for children - Cooperation in a fragmented world. (2024, January). UNICEF Innocenti - Global Office of Research and Foresight.

Meisel, C., & Petry, C. (2024, January 8). Scanning the horizon: If the future is unknowable, why bother with forecasting? Modern War Institute. https://mwi.westpoint.edu/scanning-the-horizon-if-the-future-is-unknowable-why-bother-with-forecasting/

United Nations. 2024. Global Risk Report. New York: United Nations.

The Frederick S. Pardee Institute for International Futures conducted a detailed, risk-by-risk assessment to refine the initial list of over 100 risks identified for the report. This assessment involved defining each risk, reviewing existing literature, estimating the likelihood of each risk by 2050, and analyzing potential impacts. Furthermore, modeling data from the Pardee Institute's International Futures (IFs) integrated modeling framework was used to strengthen the robustness of the foresight scenarios presented in the report.

Moyer, J. D., Matthews, A. S., Evans, J., McPhee, J., & Kettlun, W. (2023, November 27). Do safety expectations affect the location strategies of large service delivery INGOs? International Interactions, 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050629.2023.2279616

Large service-delivery international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) help shape the lives of millions worldwide, contributing significantly to the betterment of global health, development, education, and more. However, these organizations operate on limited financial resources and must deliver services on-the-ground, requiring them to make calculated decisions about their location strategies for operations. Although these INGOs should aim to maximize their efforts by operating in countries with the greatest need, sometimes they may face challenges from political conditions in these environments. Do safety expectations in countries affect the assistance allocation decisions of large service delivery INGOs? We explore this question using new data on the location and operational-intensity of country-level projects across 90 of the largest service delivery INGOs worldwide between 1990 and 2015. We find that these INGOs do send greater operational resources to countries demonstrating need and that INGOs are not necessarily afraid to operate in countries with safety risks. However, large INGOs do send far fewer service operations to autocracies, suggesting that political factors affect their location strategies as well.

Annual Update for the Pardee Institute for International Futures, 2022-2023.

The International Futures (IFs) forecasting system is central to much of the Pardee Institute’s work, constantly helping us to understand, explore, and communicate the complex reality in which we live and the alternative futures that might be brought into being. Over the past year, main thrusts of model development included: (1) strengthening the model’s representation of global crises (in this case, the COVID-19 pandemic); (2) enhancing analysis of progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); (3) improving our ability to analyze the pursuit of food security; (4) supporting data initialization; and (5) continuing to improve its User Interface.

Hanna, T., Meisel, C., Moyer, J., Azcona, G., Bhatt, A., Duerto Valero, S., & Meagher, A. (2023). Forecasting Time Spent In Unpaid Care and Domestic Work. UN Women.

In collaboration with UN Women, this report examines the gender gap in unpaid care and domestic work. Using the Pardee Institute's IFs modeling platform, this report estimates and forecasts time spent on unpaid care and domestic work by both men and women.

Moyer, J. D., Pirzadeh, A., Irfan, M., Solórzano, J. R., Stone, B. A., Xiong, Y., Hanna, T., & Hughes, B. B. (2023, October 2). How many people will live in poverty because of climate change? A macro-level projection analysis to 2070. Climatic Change 176(13). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-023-03611-3.

Fossil fuel-based economic development both causes climate change and contributes to poverty alleviation, creating tensions across societal efforts to maintain growth, limit climate damage, and improve human development. While many studies explore key aspects of this dilemma, few direct attention to the pathways from climate change through socioeconomic development to the future of poverty. We build on projections of global temperature change (representative concentration pathways) and country-specific economic development (economic growth and income distribution across the shared socioeconomic pathways) to model how climate change may affect future poverty with the International Futures (IFs) model, projecting poverty across income thresholds for 175 countries through 2070. Central tendency scenarios with climate effects compared with scenarios that do not model climate change show that climate change-attributable extreme poverty will grow to 25 million people by 2030 (range: 18 to 30), 40 million by 2050 (range: 9 to 78), and 32 million by 2070 (range: 4 to 130) though overall levels of global poverty decline. If climatic tipping points are passed, the climate-attributable extreme poverty grows to 57 million people by 2030 (range: 40–72), 78 million by 2050 (range: 18–193), and 56 million by 2070 (range: 7–306). To mitigate baseline effects of climate change on extreme poverty, an improvement of global income inequality of 10% is required (range: 5–15%).