By: Wara Irfan

While many experts forecast Russia’s long-term decline amid economic stagnation and isolation from the West, a new collaboration between the Frederick S. Pardee Institute for International Futures and the Stimson Center suggests a more complex and contingent future. In a recent commentary titled “Why Russia Isn’t Doomed” for The National Interest, Collin Meisel, director of analysis at the Pardee Institute, and Mathew Burrows, counselor at the Stimson Center, reveal that strategic realignment towards Asia, investment in Arctic infrastructure, and potential climate-related gains may sustain the Russia’s geopolitical relevance in the decades ahead. 

This commentary previews a few key insights from the Russia Futures 2035 project, a collaborative research effort between the Pardee Institute and the Stimson Center. Both organizations bring deep geopolitical expertise to forecast Russia’s future under various scenarios. In addition to contributing scenario modeling through the International Futures (IFs) platform, Pardee draws on its broader expertise in forecasting. By translating qualitative scenarios into modeled outcomes, this project aims to inform strategic planning for the U.S. administration and its allies as they navigate the evolving geopolitical landscape surrounding Russia. The full report will be published this summer. 

Among the preliminary findings revealed in their recent commentary for The National Interest, the authors note several structural advantages that may bolster Russia’s future standing despite its current isolation. Russia has created an alternative economic lifeline through its long-standing pivot to the East, deepened by infrastructure links and energy trade with China. Favorable public opinion in countries like India, ongoing diplomatic efforts within BRICS (a growing intergovernmental organization originally comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), and a recent treaty with North Korea are all contributing to the expansion of Russia’s influence in a shifting global order. Climate change may further benefit Russia by expanding arable land, increasing agricultural yields, particularly in the country’s northwest. 

However, Burrows and Meisel also point to vulnerabilities. Sustained conflict in Ukraine, declining technological capacity, and the emigration of educated and skilled youth may constrain Russia’s long-term development. Despite having immense renewable energy potential, structural barriers, such as the absence of a countrywide carbon pricing system, could hinder Russia’s ability to capitalize on its clean energy potential. While trade with China is booming, growing dependence on Beijing creates strategic vulnerabilities. Rising defense spending may further constrain social and economic development. Without meaningful reform or resolution of conflict, Russia may be unable to convert its latent strengths into lasting geopolitical gains. 

With novel and specific insights into how Russia’s future could unfold under different global conditions, stakeholders of this project, like the U.S. and its allies, can adjust their positioning to better neutralize these potential gains and even leverage them for economic and security gains of their own. 

 

By: Sylvia Morna Freitas

International Studies Quarterly published a new article authored by Institute Director Jonathan D. Moyer, Acting Director of Analysis Collin J. Meisel, COLT Project Manager Kylie X. McKee, and a larger team of researchers, making the Country and Organizational Leader Travel (COLT) dataset public for the first time. The COLT dataset is a research project at the Frederick S. Pardee Institute for International Futures that documents the travel of heads of government and state (HOGS) from 212 different countries from 1990 through 2024. The COLT dataset is the first of its kind. Accounting for 78,641 foreign trips as of 2023, the article delves into how the comprehensive and global nature of the dataset allows for “the first generalizable findings on the causes and effects of global leader travel.”  

In their ground-breaking article on the COLT dataset, the authors demonstrate the utility of the data through a series of statistical tests. First, they provide descriptive statistics about trends in HOGS travel over time. Second, they test the drivers and correlates of travel and use the analyses to evaluate causal relationships between leader travel and a variety of other factors. And third, they conduct a special exploration of the relationship between travel and trade with the first global dataset.    

Digging into the richness of the data, the authors highlight several interesting trends for the 1990-2023 period. For example, leaders averaged 10.9 international trips per year, and despite a significant decline in travel due to COVID-19, by 2023, leader travel reached a post-1990 high with 3,188 total trips occurring that year. The United States and European countries received the most visits, while countries like Palestine visited the most countries, and the African region had the fastest annual growth rate for visits at 4.5 percent. From the data, the authors found that democracies tend to travel more than autocracies, although there is significant variation at the country level. Additionally, countries with higher diplomatic influence, such as those in the European Union or North Atlantic Treaty Organization, received a disproportionate share of visits. 

The authors were then able to test theories about drivers of leader travel from previous research with a global dataset for the first time. “Our findings reinforce many explanations of what drives leader travel, showing that levels of development, material capabilities, economic and institutional interdependencies, conflict, distance, and homophily all matter,” the authors say in the article.  

Their analysis came to these conclusions by examining both monadic (country-year) and dyadic (country-pair-year) models. The findings show that material interests are a key factor influencing leader travel, with countries involved in economic exchanges—such as fossil fuel exports, foreign aid, and arms trade—experiencing more visits. Additionally, states involved in conflict are more likely to engage in diplomatic travel, possibly as part of efforts to manage or resolve conflicts. Another significant factor is the logic of homophily, where leaders tend to visit countries with similar political values or regime types, with shared voting behavior in the UN also correlating with more frequent bilateral visits. Geographical distance also plays a crucial role with greater distance between countries leading to fewer trips due to the increased costs of travel. In addition, the routine and reciprocal nature of visits is important, with regular diplomatic exchanges leading to more frequent travel.  

Overall, the authors findings demonstrate that diplomatic travel is driven by a combination of economic, political, and geographical factors that have been explored in past literature but can now be interrogated and probed more deeply with the COLT data. For example, prior literature claims “an increase in diplomatic travel is a leading indicator of increased trade.” The authors were able to test the robustness of this claim by testing the relationship between travel and trade across COLT’s global dataset, instead of just the two countries, China and the U.S., that the original study was based on. The authors find that while leader travel is a leading indicator of increased trade, increased trade is also a leading indicator of increased travel. In other words, the causal relationship is complex and bidirectional. 

The authors of the COLT project were motivated to create this dataset because of the under-investigation this topic has received in the past. Despite literature that highlighted the importance of HOGS visits vis-a-vis a variety of diplomatic factors, earlier studies were often limited to western or powerful countries, overlooking smaller, non-western states and limiting the reach of conclusions drawn on the causes and effects of leader travel. This previously unaddressed gap is where the COLT dataset is making a unique contribution. As the first public-access resource of its kind, the COLT dataset will further future research on “issues such as national prestige, public diplomacy, weaponized interdependence, and interstate conflict.” 

The COLT dataset is the product of several years of dedicated work from the authors of the new article and hundreds of undergraduate and graduate research aides at the Pardee Institute. A large part of what makes it possible for the COLT dataset to be so extensive is the large team of student employees that actively track and code new leader trips. Participation in the project also gives students at the University of Denver a unique opportunity to expand their professional and data management skills. The cross-sectional nature of COLT’s team, from the Pardee Institute’s director to undergraduate research aides, is indicative of the Institute’s wider innovative approach to generate useful research and help develop a new generation of experienced professionals in the field. 

The COLT dataset and codebook are freely available to the public and are included with the replication materials accompanying the article in the International Studies Quarterly. To access the dataset, click here. To read the full article, click here. 

COLT is part of the Institute’s Diplometrics Program. Diplometrics is funded by the U.S. government to better understand and measure relationships in the international system by gathering data, building tools, and conducting analysis. The project identifies international interactions that measure the depth and breadth of political, diplomatic, economic, security, and cultural ties between countries. The results and views expressed are those of the authors alone and do not represent the views of the U.S. Government. 

UNICEF and the Pardee Institute have released a report, Navigating the future: Four scenarios assessing child well-being in the twenty-first century. Authors Jonathan Moyer, director of the Pardee Institute, and Deva Sahadevan, research associate at Pardee, found that increased global cooperation, in tandem with high technological advancements and resource availability, promise the most sustainable future for younger generations worldwide.

These findings are useful, if not surprising. The authors arrived at this conclusion through simulating different future pathways along various points of intersection among those key domains of technology and cooperation. This methodology offers a proactive framework that can help policymakers promotes current and future well-being while mitigating the perverse effects of economic growth.

The authors apply a 2x2 scenario framework featuring scenarios grounded in combinations of high or low levels of technological innovation, resource availability, and international cooperation. These factors determine how future challenges such as climate change, resource distribution, and geopolitical tensions might affect children’s well-being. The scenarios are designed to evaluate long-term trends and their implications for children, with particular emphasis on regions most vulnerable to changes in development.

The resulting scenarios include possible futures of:

• Divided prosperity (our current path: high technology/resource availability; low cooperation);

• Global synergy (a better world: high technology/resource availability; high cooperation);

• Struggling together (not the best/not the worst scenario; low technology/resource availability; high cooperation); and

• Fragmented world (least ideal future: low technology/resource availability; low cooperation).

Using the Pardee Institute’s International Futures platform (IFs), the authors apply quantitative data from various sources, including economic indicators, health statistics, and environmental data, to define these scenarios and to project future well-being outcomes that are measured by economic output, extreme poverty, malnutrition, hunger, carbon emissions.

The global synergy scenario, the most ideal scenario, envisions a future where technological progress aligns with robust international cooperation, unlocking advancements in health, education, and environmental sustainability. Under this scenario, global GDP increases by 10.7%, while per capita GDP rises by 9.8%, accompanied by a dramatic reduction in global poverty—from 8.7% to just 0.4% by 2050. The scenario highlights clean energy infrastructure and lower carbon emissions, demonstrating how unified global efforts can foster a sustainable and prosperous world. However, its feasibility is questioned, given the current concentration of political power and the suspected depletion of Earth's resources.

The other three scenarios present fewer promising paths. The divided prosperity scenario, reflecting current trends, demonstrates significant GDP growth and reduced poverty, with 265 million fewer people living in extreme conditions and malnutrition halving by 2050. Yet, these gains come at the cost of escalating carbon emissions, worsened pollution, and rising global temperatures. The fragmented world scenario predicts slow technological and economic growth, with persistently high poverty levels and unaddressed critical issues like child malnutrition and mortality. Meanwhile, the struggling together scenario highlights the potential benefits of enhanced global collaboration, which lowers poverty and malnutrition rates. However, the lack of technological progress limits its ability to effectively address broader developmental challenges, like child development and technology.

The report concludes with broad policy suggestions based on the results of the 2x2 framework. The authors encourage the strengthening of international institutions to address global environmental issues while promoting economic equality, investing in children’s health and education, and fostering greater cooperation among governments and international communities. Read more about the scenarios, their results, and the authors’ recommendations here.

IFs is the only open-source integrated assessment platform and forecasting tool that employs a hybrid approach, combining systems dynamics, econometrics, and other quantitative techniques to forecast a range of interconnected, macro-level variables across human, social, and natural systems for 188 countries in one-year time steps, extending as far as the year 2100. These multifaceted dimensions of modeling are integral to forecasting potential outcomes for future generations on a global scale, considering both actual and hypothetical drivers of change. 

UNICEF - an international organization dedicated to advancing children’s well-being around the globe - and Pardee’s collaboration bridges the gap between global decision-makers and academic researchers, using data tools and policy knowledge to encourage and assist in creating a more sustainable and equitable world for children.  

 

By: Wara Irfan

A recent article published by the Modern War Institute at West Point analyzes how longstanding foreign actors will navigate Syria’s geopolitical landscape following the fall of Assad. It cites the Pardee Institute’s Formal Bilateral Influence Capacity (FBIC) Index data to identify major foreign actors and track the trajectory of their influence in Syria since the 1960s.   

Written shortly after Assad’s fall, Assad’s Downfall in Syria: Who Wins and Who Loses? highlights, using FBIC data, the regional uncertainties and forecast potential winners and losers of Syrian regime change by examining the last 80 years of foreign influence exerted on Syria by major actors like Russia, Turkey, China, Iran, the United States, Europe (particularly through the activities of France), and Israel.  

The FBIC Index measures formal relational power between countries across economic, political, and security dimensions, focusing on state-sanctioned interactions like diplomatic exchange and trade. Developed by the Diplometrics Program, it helps quantify global power dynamics and informs the International Futures (IFs) model, aids researchers and U.S. policymakers in assessing global power shifts.

Credit: Modern War Institute at West Point

The authors’ analysis of FBIC data suggests that Iran and Russia’s influence in Syria will likely continue to decline in a post-Assad era. Meanwhile, Turkey, which supports the Syrian National Army against both Assad and the Kurds, views this as an opportunity to expand its influence. FBIC data shows that Turkey’s capacity has grown over the past two decades and can see the regime change as an opportunity to continue countering perceived threats from the Syrian Kurds. 

Furthermore, FBIC data reveals that U.S. influence in Syria began declining around the mid-2010s. While the U.S. still maintains approximately 900 troops at the al-Tanf garrison near the Iraqi and Jordanian borders to counter ISIS and Iran-backed militias, the future of this key outpost remains uncertain, as President Trump may choose to shut it down.  

Modern War Institute at West Point—a leading research hub dedicated to the study of contemporary warfare—highlights the significance of the Pardee Institute’s FBIC data in analyzing global dynamics. This index not only informs strategic analysis but also shapes discourse surrounding bilateral relationships between nation-states. 

December 11th, 2024

The United Nations Development Programme, in collaboration with the Pardee Institute, has released a new report titled Land Degradation and Human Development in Yemen.

The report hones in on a region extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change and explores the links of environmental issues to the current humanitarian crisis and lack of human development in that region. The report culminates with recommendations for several policy strategies intended to mitigate the effects of land degradation and desertification in Yemen and support vulnerable communities across the region.

The Institute’s Associate Director of Development Analysis, Taylor Hanna, co-authored the report alongside independent researchers Andrew Kruczkiewicz and Michael Owen. Pardee Institute Director Jonathan D. Moyer, Senior Scientist Barry B. Hughes, Senior Systems Developer José Solórzano, Lead Operations Manager Yutang Xiong, and Pardee Fellow Researcher Victoria Pepera also contributed to the report.

The report is intended to explore, and to help policymakers understand, the connections between land degradation and human development; it also offers key interventions aimed at mitigating the effects of land degradation and supporting improvement in human development. Notably, the report uses the International Futures (IFs) integrated assessment model to explore scenarios that analyze how land degradation may affect human development in Yemen. In addition, the authors present pathways for further development in the region under differing IFs scenarios.

This report begins with a literature review exploring both the main drivers of desertification and land degradation and the links between precipitation and net primary land productivity and then moves into a detailed analysis of climate data within Yemen, including historical and projected data on temperature and precipitation. The authors note that the relationship between precipitation and land productivity is not especially strong. While land degradation may be driven in some of the regions by climate change, the larger problem lies in unsustainable agricultural practices and water use, in addition to conflict and governance challenges. Hence, reforms of these practices and policies in the region can, and should be, made to mitigate land degradation in Yemen.

Despite the weak linkage between precipitation and net land productivity, the authors note that the future evolution of precipitation patterns in Yemen could shift land degradation levels.

Many regions within Yemen are likely to see increased precipitation in the future, but exactly how is uncertain. If that increase is gradual and steady, this may provide an opportunity to strengthen “ecosystem resilience” by improving water management infrastructure and thus supporting agricultural productivity. But this increase could also come in the form of increased sporadic rainfall events which could exacerbate land degradation due to extreme flooding and interruptions in consistent agriculture yields. The authors propose new methods for analyzing precipitation in Yemen to improve accuracy in forecasting and encourage further data enhancement in the region.

The second part of the report delves into the socioeconomic impacts of land degradation in Yemen. This section uses scenario analysis with the IFs tool to demonstrate the effects of continued land degradation in the region on the Yemeni economy, agricultural yields, hunger, and poverty.

The first scenario created in the IFs tool is the Baseline scenario. This scenario is one that simulates a world without future effects of land degradation on economic and human development. This serves as a counterfactual against which we can compare the Land Degradation scenario.

In contrast, a continued Land Degradation scenario, which models the effects of land degradation on water and agricultural resources, results in lower economic and agricultural production. By 2050, this model leads to five million more people experiencing  poverty and four million more experiencing hunger than the Baseline scenario forecasts. This scenario yields lower agricultural production and leads to a reduction in gross domestic product (GDP) of 5.6 percent compared against the Baseline scenario.

The Land Restoration scenario demonstrates an effort to focus directly on preventing further land degradation, rehabilitating agricultural yields, and implementing policies to aid in environmental improvement. This scenario forecasts an increase in economic output by 15 percent by 2050 when compared against the Land Degradation scenario. It also prevents further increases in hunger and significantly decreases the undernourished population by 9 million.

The Integrated Restoration scenario builds on the previous Land Restoration scenario by adding to it an end to the current conflict, improving governance and inclusion, and addressing other key human development deficits. This scenario forecasts that GDP per capita can reach pre-conflict levels by 2055. Twenty-two million fewer Yemenis experience poverty and 13 million fewer are undernourished in this scenario’s forecast compared to the Land Degradation scenario for the same year

(Refer to the report appendices for detailed information about how each scenario was created.)

The report concludes with several targeted, restorative recommendationsfor policymakers and key regional constituents to consider. These efforts include reaching a peaceful end to the current conflict; continuing to develop and understand quality data and research regarding desertification in Yemen; enhancing water resources and agriculture practices that prevent environmental degradation; and investing in extreme-weather infrastructure. A concerted and determined effort to follow these recommendations may lead Yemen into a peaceful and sustainable future, economically and environmentally.

The Pardee Institute’s ongoing partnership with UNDP reflects the Institute’s commitment to using quantitative modeling tools to identify strategic policy interventions to advance human development and sustainability. Similarly, this research highlights our efforts to understand the linkages between environmental challenges and conflict, governance, and peace.  This project is notable as the first time IFs was used to forecast the effects of land degradation.

Solórzano, J., Hughes, B., Irfan, M., Xiong, Y., Kwasi, S., Ibrahim, A., Makhamatova, S., Hanna, T., Moyer, J. (2024). Protocol for making forecasts exogenous in the International Futures model. One Earth. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xpro.2024.103414

Understanding future dynamics and trends in human and natural development is foundational for creating appropriate policy strategies to address planetary and development challenges. Here, we present a protocol for adding exogenous series for key variables, such as the shared socioeconomic pathways, to the database of the International Futures (IFs) integrated model. We describe steps for installing IFs and the SQLiteStudio software, understanding the IFs database, importing series, running the model, and extracting results.
For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Moyer.

November 4-6, 2024

Jonathan Moyer, the director of the Pardee Institute, recently traveled to Seoul, South Korea, to present a paper at the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium (IAMC) conference. The paper, titled “Quantifying the roads ahead broadly: forecasts of the SSPs across demographics, conflict, economics, education, health, infrastructure, and governance for 188 countries to 2200,” introduces new Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios developed using the International Futures (IFs) model.

The IAMC is an international consortium of research institutions developing and using integrated assessment models to study global environmental change and socioeconomic development. Its annual meeting is a major forum for exchanging ideas and research on integrated assessment modeling.

The SSPs are a scenario framework used in various sustainability-related research efforts, including as inputs into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment. The scenarios show five standard pathways of human and social development in the absence of climate policy or climate change impacts to frame worlds with different challenges to climate mitigation and adaptation.

This new SSP series introduced by Moyer and colleagues at the Pardee Institute represents a broader set of issue areas than the current SSP framework, including dynamically interconnected forecasts of economics, demographics, education, health, infrastructure, and governance. This series is also projected to reach 2150, allowing climate models to forecast granular change in development further into the future compared with existing SSPs that end in 2100.

"The new SSP elements provide a more comprehensive and integrated view of the future," said Moyer. "This will be valuable for researchers studying the impacts of climate change and other global challenges." Future plans include submitting this work for peer review and publication and making the new scenario results available via the IIASA website.

Moyer, J., Sahadevan, D. (2024). Navigating the future: Four scenarios assessing child well-being in the twenty-first century. UNICEF. https://www.unicef.org/innocenti/media/10201/file/UNICEF-Innocenti-Navigate-Future-Report-2024.pdf

As we move through the twenty-first century, humanity faces a complex array of challenges. These mutually reinforcing issues include climate change and geopolitical instability, as well as persistent socioeconomic disparities that have profound implications for children’s well-being.1 At such a critical crossroads, policy choices we make today will determine the welfare of future generations. In their interest, addressing this complex web of collective action problems demands a broad-based, integrated analysis focussed on comprehensive and equitable solutions.

Mohammod Irfan, a senior scientist at the Pardee Institute, has co-authored a new research paper published in Water Security. The paper explores the current state of Ghana’s water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector. Using Pardee’s signature International Futures (IFs) tool, the paper examines various scenarios to determine the viability and implications of achieving targets of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and identifies a promising approach toward improvement of the WASH sector.

Titled The Past, Present, and Future of Ghana’s WASH Sector: An Explorative Analysis, the study finds that Ghana needs to invest an additional 1.3% to 1.5% of its GDP annually in water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) infrastructure to reach its SDG 6 target by 2030. While achieving 95% coverage by 2030 is feasible, the study projects that universal access to safe water and sanitation may not be achieved until mid-century.

IFs’ long-range global model provides country-specific representations of demographic, economic, and infrastructure systems, which allows researchers to examine the feasibility and impacts of achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6). SDG 6 calls for universal access to clean water and sanitation. To forecast Ghana’s ability to meet this target, the authors simulated various policy and development scenarios relating to “potential long-range WASH expansion pathways for Ghana.”

According to the study, Ghana must quadruple the annual increase in access to safe water services to meet SDG 6.1 by 2030. Ghana's path to achieving SDG 6.2 is even steeper, requiring an expansion of safe sanitation access to an additional 9-10% of the population each year. A more feasible path to achieving SDG 6 involves prioritizing the eradication of open defecation and the use of unsafe drinking water, particularly in rural communities and urban slums.

According to the authors, improving WASH access can lead to significant health benefits, including an 8-10% annual decrease in infant mortality and a 12-15% annual reduction in deaths from diarrheal diseases.  The economic benefits of improved WASH access are substantial, with long-term GDP gains outweighing the costs of infrastructure investments.

This study highlights the importance of targeted policies and investments that address the most pressing needs while fostering sustainable progress. By simulating the long-term effects of different strategies, the IFs model provides data-driven insights into the potential outcomes of various approaches.

Other named authors include Thelma Z. Abu, Meshack Achore, Ibrahim Musah, and Tanko Yussif Azzika.

The full article can be accessed on ScienceDirect.