Moyer, Jonathan D., & Meisel, Collin J. (2026, March 16). “Climate change modelling and international relations: in pursuit of an integrated, long-term research agenda” in Handbook on the Geopolitics of Sustainability. (pgs. 368-378). Edward Elgar Publishing.

In this book chapter, Pardee Institute Director Jonathan Moyer and Director of Analysis Collin Meisel, identify a crucial disciplinary gap between international relations theory and climate change modelling. To help bridge this divide, Moyer and Meisel call for an integrated research agenda that aligns international relations with the long-term, large-scale quantitative forecasting models utilized by climate researchers. By incorporating a “systems map” approach, researchers can establish a baseline forecast of the international system to test the complex, interacting geopolitical impacts of direct climate effects, mitigation, and adaptation.

Explore the full chapter here.

Sweijs, T., & Michaels, J. (2024, July). "Forecasting the future of war" in Beyond Ukraine: Debating the future of war. (pp. 287–303). Oxford University Press.

Hughes, B. B. (2019). International Futures: Building and Using Global Models. London Academic Press, An Imprint Of Elsevier.

eBook ISBN: 9780128134221
Hardcover ISBN: 9780128042717
In March 2019, International Futures: Building and Using Global Models by Barry B. Hughes was published by Elsevier Academic Press. The volume has two purposes: (1) to explain (by no means fully document) the International Futures (IFs) model system and (2) to place it in the context of the larger environment of global modeling. It thereby is commentary on the state of the enterprise of building and using global models, its strengths and challenges.

Founding Director of the Pardee Center and developer of IFs, Dr. Hughes is a Distinguished University Professor at the Korbel School and now serves as Senior Scientist and Mentor to the Center. His principal interests are in global change, computer simulation models for economic, energy, food, population, environmental, and sociopolitical forecasting, and policy analysis. The fundamental concerns that synthesize these interests are developing effective response to long-term global change and improving the long-term human condition.

Hillebrand, Evan, and Stacy Closson. 2015. Energy, Economic Growth, and Geopolitical Futures: Eight Long-Range Scenarios. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

M.T., Hughes, B.B., Dale S. Rothman Margolese-Malin, E., Moyer, J.D. (2014). Building global infrastructure: Forecasting the next 50 years (Patterns of potential human progress volume 4). Routledge.

Volume 4 in the PPHP series tells a story of possible futures for basic infrastructure (access to all-season roads, electricity, improved water and sanitation, and information and communication technologies) across the globe. Questions addressed by Building Global Infrastructure are:

• How much basic infrastructure is likely to be in place over the next 50 years?
• What will infrastructure access rates be in countries around the world?
• Are there aggressive but reasonable ways to accelerate the provision of basic infrastructure, taking into account the currently-different levels of infrastructure across countries and other country-specific circumstances?

Additional Resources:

Base Case End Tables Using IFs 7.0.2
Base Case End Tables

Alternate Scenario 1 End Tables Using IFs 7.0.2
Infrastructure Good Performance 2050 Targets

Alternate Scenario 2 End Tables Using IFs 7.0.2
Infrastructure Universal 2050 Targets

Summary Scenario Annotations, All PPHP Volumes
PPHP Summary Scenario Annotations

Detailed Scenario Annotations, All PPHP Volumes
PPHP Detailed Scenario Annotations

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. UNDP

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.

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

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.

Hughes, B.B., Kuhn, R., Peterson, C.M., Rothman, D.S., Solorzano, J.R. (2011). Improving global health: Forecasting the next 50 years (Patterns of potential human progress volume 3). Routledge.

The questions addressed in Improving Global Health, the third volume in the PPHP series, are:

• What health outcomes might we expect over the next 50 years given current patterns of human development?
• What opportunities exist for intervention and the achievement of alternate health futures?
• How might improved health futures affect broader economic social, and political prospects of countries, regions, and the world?

Additional Resources:

Base Case End Tables Using IFs 7.0.2
Base Case End Tables

Alternate Scenario 1 End Tables Using IFs 7.0.2
Health All Drivers Good Adjusted Base

Alternate Scenario 2 End Tables Using IFs 7.0.2
Health Things Go Wrong

Summary Scenario Annotations, All PPHP Volumes
PPHP Summary Scenario Annotations

Detailed Scenario Annotations, All PPHP Volumes
PPHP Detailed Scenario Annotations