Pardee Center for International Futures (Barry B. Hughes, ed.). 2013.

“Development-Oriented Policies and Alternative Human Development Paths: Aggressive but Reasonable Interventions.” In Khalid Malik and Maurice Kugler, eds., Human Progress and the Rising South. New York: United Nations Development Programme Human Development Report Office, 140−185.

United States National Intelligence Council (US NIC). 2012. Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds. Washington, DC: United States National Intelligence Council.

Hedden, S. (2016). "Parched Prospects II: A Revised Long-Term Water Supply and Demand Forecast for South Africa." African Futures Paper No. 16. Institute for Security Studies and Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures, Josef Korbel School o

It is likely that South Africa is overexploiting its water resources at the national level, as water withdrawals currently exceed reliable supply. Using the International Futures forecasting system, this paper forecasts that withdrawals in all three sectors (municipal, industrial and agricultural) will increase over the next 20 years. Proposed interventions for increasing supply and reducing demand are not enough to reconcile the gap between withdrawals and supply. More must be done to bring the South African water sector into balance and reconcile future national water withdrawals with future national supply.​​

Hedden, S. and Cilliers, J. (2014). “Parched Prospects: The Emerging Water Crisis in South Africa.”

African Futures Paper No. 11. Institute for Security Studies and Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures, Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs, University of Denver. Pretoria, South Africa, and Denver, CO, USA.

South Africa is over-exploiting its freshwater resources, and water could be a large constraint on the implementation of the country's National Development Plan. Using the International Futures forecasting system, this paper models and forecasts water demand and supply until 2035, the period covered by the National Water Resource Strategy 2013. The authors’ research finds that the gap between demand and supply increases over this period, and that the solutions proposed by the Department of Water Affairs and Sanitation will not close the gap without additional, aggressive measures. The authors propose such measures for each sector of demand and each source of water supply.

Go, A., Moyer, J.D., Rafa, M. and Schünemann, J. (2013). “Population Futures: Revisiting South Africa’s National Development Plan 2030.”

African Futures Paper No. 7. Institute for Security Studies and Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures, Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs, University of Denver. Pretoria, South Africa, and Denver, CO, USA.

This analysis explores South Africa’s fertility, mortality and migration outlooks, with a particular emphasis on the uncertainty surrounding migration. Using the International Futures (IFs) model and data from the South African 2011 National Census, three potential population futures are simulated and then compared to the projections in South Africa's National Development Plan 2030. According to our mid-range forecasts, by 2030 South Africa’s population is projected to increase to between 64.4 and 68.8 million depending on declining, stable, or increasing rates of in-migration.

Moyer, J. D., Neill, C. and Rafa, M. (2013). “Potential Paths of Human Development in the Western Cape to 2040.”

FuturesCape Policy Brief 1 of 2013. Western Cape Government Policy and Strategy Chief Directorate and Strategic Initiatives Chief Directorate in collaboration with the African Futures Project. Western Cape Government, Cape Town, South Africa.

This paper uses the International Futures forecasting system to explore potential paths of human development in South Africa's Western Cape to the year 2040. The Human Development Index (HDI), with its tripartite use of life expectancy, education level, and per capita income, is used as the measure of human development. The authors note that human development has recently increased in the Western Cape Province, following an earlier modest decline due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. A Base Case analysis projects further significant gains over the course of the forecast period, and an alternate scenario with aggressive but reasonable interventions suggests how those gains might be even larger.

Barry B. Hughes, Mohammod T. Irfan, Jonathan D. Moyer, Dale S. Rothman, and José R. Solórzano. 2012. “Exploring Future Impacts of Environmental Constraints on Human Development.” Sustainability 4 (5): 958−994. doi:10.3390/su4050958.

Irfan, Mohammod T., and Eli S. Margolese-Malin. 2012.

Cali, Massimiliano, and Nicola Cantore. 2011. “The Impact of Circular Migration on Source Countries: A Simulation Exercise.” International Economic Development Group Research Report. Overseas Development Institute, London.

Hillebrand, E. (2011). “Poverty, Growth, and Inequality over the Next 50 Years.” In Conforti, P. ed., Looking Ahead in World Agriculture: Perspectives to 2050. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 159-190.

Global poverty has fallen dramatically over the last two centuries, and the fall has intensified in recent decades, raising hopes that it could be eliminated within the next 50 years. As industrialization, specialization, and trade raised economic growth and living standards in Western Europe and the European offshoots in the 19th century, much of the rest of the world also started growing rapidly after 1950.

Poverty reduction, however, has been very uneven across countries. Since 1980, China alone accounted for most of the world’s decline in extreme poverty. Even though there has been a huge rise in income inequality within China, economic growth has been so strong that hundreds of millions of people have risen out of extreme poverty and the poverty ratio has plummeted. Sub-Saharan Africa, at the other extreme, has seen its poverty headcount continue to rise; the negative impact of low economic growth has far outweighed modest improvements in within-country income inequality.

Strong economic growth is the key to future poverty reduction. If the lagging non-OECD2 (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries are able to transition to a sustainable higher growth path, the global poverty ratio will fall from about 21 percent in 2005 to less than 2.5 percent in 2050 and the number of people living in absolute poverty will decline another billion people. While the historical record is clear that market-friendly policies and competent governance are critical to growth, few economists are bold enough to claim they know the precise combination of policies, and how to implement and sustain those policies, to achieve this economic transition. Forecasts of future economic growth rates and poverty rates are necessarily speculative and depend on a large number of assumptions about human behavior and policy decisions that are impossible to know in advance.

In a less optimistic scenario, I assume that the regions that have been lagging, especially sub-Saharan Africa, do not improve upon their growth rates of the last 25 years. This results in much higher poverty levels— almost 900 million more people living in absolute poverty in 2050 than in the optimistic scenario. I have also considered, but not explored empirically, even more depressing scenarios. Resource constraints, if not met by technological solutions, will surely make the poverty estimates shown here worse. A breakdown of the world capitalist system or even a gradual turning away from the system that has done so much to reduce global poverty over the last two centuries would be disastrous.