I would like to share with you one way of thinking about the 21st century, in terms of the tensions that are likely to occur because we're going to have many changes in the world. Many transformations and also several kinds of powers, vying for influence, this way of looking at tensions in the 21st century essentially involves analyzing four kinds of dynamics in the world that may produce systemic disruptions. They have to do with four different kinds of variables, that we have already analyzed in this class, the socio-demographic realm, the economic realm, the political realm, and finally the geopolitical stage. The chart that I'm showing you right now may at first come across as being very complex. But in fact, we have already analyzed each of the little boxes that you see in the chart, in this class. All I'm doing here is classifying them into one of the four areas or realms, that I just defined for you. And I am showing the interconnections among them, that is to say, if one increases, which others also increase or decrease. And at the end of the day, which ones enhance the potential for systemic disruption in the world. Let's just start with the socio-demographic realm. We've seen in this class, that what's driving change from this point of view includes population ageing. The shift in the demographic centers of gravity in the world, remember away from Europe and East Asia and towards South Asia, the Middle East and Southern Africa. The growth of cities at the expense of the country side. And income inequality which, remember it's growing within countries, in most countries around the world. Now think about the implications. The implications are the fiscal crisis of the state, because more and more countries have more and more people above the age of 60 and they're finding it difficult to fund their pension systems. The sociopolitical unrest, as a result of these demographic change, but your political balance of power is shifting. All sorts of restyled population trends. And of course, there's a race for natural resources including energy, water, and food. Let's take a look now at the economic realm. Here, change in the world is being driven by the growth of emerging markets which all ready represent more than half of the global economy. And the other very important phenomenon to watch is the imbalances in terms of global trade and global finance, that we have examined in this class. Now what are the implications of these changes? Well, we also find here competition for natural resources as being a very important implication of the growth of emerging economies. But there is also geopolitical frictions as countries invest in each others economies, and surpluses occur in some parts of the world while we have deficit in others. We have a skills gap accentuated by technological change, which is essentially contributing to economic inequality both in terms of income and wealth around the world. Now the political realm is another area which is are going to produce many tension and frictions in the world. Change in the world from a political point of view is being driven by the crisis of a state, both in terms of its fiscal position and in terms of its legitimacy. And also by the feeling that many people in the world have increasingly, that democracy is not delivering good results for them. And lastly, we have the issue of the proliferation of anocracies. Those countries in which, in theory, there is a democracy but in practice there is a dictatorship or something that approaches a dictatorship. So the implications of these changes within the political realm have to do with the diminished capacity of the state to act, to provide solutions, which is something that is very problematic precisely at the time when we have so many problems in the world. Another very important implication is social unrest and lastly political protests. And so we come to the geopolitical realm, the fourth that I've defined for you. The changes here are being driven by the shift in the geoeconomic balance of power. The fact that we no longer, I don't think are going to have one single super power in the world, but rather that the stages can be shared by at least three or four influential countries. We also have the East Shore failed states, which is costing a lot of trouble because we have an increased number of refugees. And we also have problems with global trade and with access to natural resources, as a result of state failure in various parts of the world. And finally of course, we have new forms of violent conflict especially terrorism. The implications of these frictions in the geopolitical realm essentially involve our difficulties or increasing difficulties to find structures that will help us govern the world, that will help us identify the real problems and provide solutions to those problems. So, with this we've come to the end of this class. We started by counting people, by looking at the structure of human populations on Earth, by looking at the geographical distribution of population growth and don't forget about also the growth of cities. Then we started to multiply those numbers of people by how much money they have and we examines the middle class. The tremendous growth of the middle class, especially in American markets. And we should take a look at income inequality, and wealth inequality and at the development of the market at the top of the pyramid, with the millionaires of the world. We also examined, very carefully, the implications of the fact that more and more women in the world are working outside their household and they are accumulating their own wealth. And then we took a look at truly global problems these days, such as the trade and the financial imbalances that are afflicting the global economy. I want you to look at the Geopolitical sources of tension and fiction in the world. I've offer you also some ideas as through the ways in which we can get or organize in new ways to tackle some of those problems. >> I'm in Saint Petersburg, Russia. We've come a long way since the beginning of this class on analyzing global trend. Russia actually epitomizes many of the trends that we discussed in this class. For instance, it's one of the countries in the world with the most rapidly aging population. Russia is also an economy that is generating large current account surpluses and it's accumulating a lot of research. Although in the last couple of years, since the year 2012 the current account surplus has been shrinking in size. Russia also exemplifies the case of the anocracy, that type of political regime that combines features from democracy and from autocracy. And finally, Russia is of course home to many natural resources, energy and water, and so stands to play a very big role in the 21st century. So let's think for a second about all of the different topics that we've covered in this class. We have analyzed population aging, and also the growth of populations in Africa, in South Asia, and in the Middle East. Those demographic shifts will produce a rebalancing of the global economy and society. We've also discussed the problem of failed states and of the rising middle class in emerging economies. Such stability was also a very important trend. Finally, we discussed the global powers of the 21st century. And I think we concluded, that it is not clear that one single country will dominate the global landscape. So thank you for taking this class, I hope you enjoyed it. See you soon. >> I hope that after taking this class, you will share with me a fascination with global trends. These global trends are going to be transforming our lives in the near future. I hope that this class has offered you a new way of looking at the world and especially a new way of thinking about the future.
