Fourth Industrial Revolution For The Earth . - World Economic Forum

Humanity’s current challengeThe great acceleration in human activity, particularly duringthe 20th century, has delivered exponential economicgrowth. Real output grew five-fold in the four centuriesto 1900, before accelerating more than 20-fold in the20th century.3 The last 60 years, and the last 25 years inparticular, have witnessed a further acceleration in humaneconomic activity. Projections suggest that global economicgrowth will average approximately 3% per annum in comingdecades. Although some economic commentators view thisas a “slow growth world”, this would still create a 20-foldincrease in the human economic footprint by the end of the21st century, while a 4% growth rate would yield a 50-foldincrease.4Previous economic growth has delivered impressiveimprovements in human welfare. For example, since 1990the world has reduced the number of people living on lessthan 1.25 a day by one-half5, and witnessed approximately700 million more people move into the rapidly expandingglobal middle classes.6 The world is on track to meet the(Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)OECD’s 2010 forecast that the global middle class coulddouble by 2020 and triple by 2030.7Human success in reducing global poverty levels andexpanding the middle class since the early 1990s hasalso spurred a wider economic power shift in the globaleconomy.8 Emerging economies now account for morethan 40% of global GDP, doubling their share since 1990.Analysts forecast that the emerging middle-incomeeconomies and their rising middle classes could account forclose to 60% of global GDP by 20509; and more specifically,that almost one-half the world’s GDP growth to 2025 willcome from 440 cities in emerging markets – cities such asKumasi (Ghana), Porto Alegre (Brazil) and Tianjin (China).10A planet under stressFrom an anthropocentric perspective, the last century(particularly the last few decades) of human existencehas marked a very successful period for population andeconomic growth.15 The recent past in particular, is a historyof markets working, as technologies have driven progressand real commodity prices have fallen, despite a 20-foldincrease in demand of some resources.16 Based on thehuman experience to date, no one seems to seriously doubtthe ingenuity of humans to meet the growth challengesbeing forecast to 2030 and beyond. A world of continuedeconomic growth at levels of approximately 3% seemsachievable, if not a little lacking in ambition.Yet, from an Earth systems perspective, the human successstory is not so positive.Underpinning these extraordinary human advances hasbeen the consistently steady state of the Earth’s globalenvironmental systems provided by the so called “Holoceneequilibrium”. Global patterns of temperature, precipitation,seasonality, and the overall health of our atmosphere,cryosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere, have remainedpredictable for much of the last 10,000 years. During thisperiod, they have functioned within a “Goldilocks” zone– not too hot and not too cold – for humans.17 This hasprovided a bio-physical environment conducive for humanityto flourish. In the success story to date of human economichistory, the stability of global environmental systems hasbeen taken for granted, as if they will never, and can never,be changed.18Many argue that rapid urbanization has been the key tothis economic success story. The speed and scale ofthe shift in human existence from rural to urban living fortoday’s millennial generation is extraordinary.11 In 1990,approximately 2 billion people lived in an urban environment;by 2014 this figure had almost doubled. By 2030, thisfigure is forecast to be 5 billion.12 Today, there are 1,040cities worldwide with more than 500,000 inhabitants, and37 mega-cities with more than 10 million inhabitants.13 Theextraordinary difference in how most humans experiencetheir existence today, compared to even 1990 is profound,especially when we consider that more than 40% of theworld’s population is under 25.14Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Earth5

Yet, the footprint of human impact on the Earth’s globalsystems (particularly since the great acceleration of thelast 40 years) has generated much scientific concern.Advances in recent decades in scientific monitoring anddata collection, processing and modelling has enabledscientists to better assess and forecast the impact of humandevelopment on environmental systems.19The findings are worrying. As a result of the historical,cumulative human footprint, many scientists’ researchsuggests that the Earth could be entering a period ofunprecedented environmental systems change.20–––––––Greenhouse gases. Today’s greenhouse gas levelsmay not have been seen for at least 3 million years.21Biodiversity. The Earth is rapidly losing its biodiversityat “mass extinction” rates, such that 70% of its geneticbiodiversity has become extinct.22Deforestation. Current deforestation rates in theAmazon Basin could lead to an 8% drop in regionalrainfall by 2050, triggering a shift to a “savannah state”,with wider consequences for the Earth’s atmosphericcirculatory systems.23Oceans. The chemistry of the oceans is changingfaster than at any point in perhaps 300 million yearsbecause of the annual absorption of approximately33% of anthropocentric greenhouse gas pollution.24The resulting acidification and rising temperatures of theocean is having an unprecedented impact on corals andfish stocks.25Ice fields. Polar and glacial ice fields are retreating atan alarming rate with potentially calamitous knock-oneffects for the wider water and climate systems.26 TheArctic is now the fastest-warming region on the planetand the resultant warmer air and water at the NorthPole is disturbing the predictability of the Gulf and theJet streams,27 which help to regulate the Earth’s climaticcirculatory system.Nitrogen cycle. We are suffering from arguably thelargest and most rapid impact on the nitrogen cyclefor some 2.5 billion years, as widespread nitrogen andphosphate pollution from poorly applied fertilizer haswashed into seas. This has affected fish stocks andcreated so-called “dead zones” in 10% of the world’soceans.28Water cycle. The global water cycle is facingsimilarly severe impacts through over abstraction anduncontrolled pollution, with related analysis suggestingthat the world may face a 40% shortfall in the freshwaterneeded to support the global economy by 2030.29These are wide-ranging and serious impacts on the Earth’ssystems resulting from human activity. Scientists are alsoconcerned that these impacts might even interconnect totrigger cascading “negative feedback loops”, which couldflip the Earth system into a wholly new state. This wouldlikely be a period of environmental disequilibrium, somethingfar from the Goldilocks conditions that the Holocene hasprovided for human activity to flourish over the last 10,000years. The Forum’s 2017 Global Risks Report reflects theseconcerns.306Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution for the EarthFacing the futureAgainst this disturbing environmental backdrop, today’spoliticians and decision-makers are facing very real socialand economic pressures. As the world rapidly urbanizes,more people than ever are demanding secure, safe andaffordable supplies of food and energy, personal mobilityand decent jobs.The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)has estimated that global demand for food will increase60% between 2006 and 2050.31 This will require the world’sfarmers to produce more food in the next 40 years thanthey have done in the last 10,000 years.32 The InternationalEnergy Agency (IEA) forecasts an increase in global energyconsumption of approximately 30% by 204033, with a 71%increase in non-OECD economies.34 This will lead to a34% rise in global energy-related CO2 emissions by 2040compared to 2012.35 Meanwhile, the OECD’s InternationalTransport Forum forecasts that there will be approximately2.5 billion cars on the road by 2050, up from just over 1billion today.36 Aircraft manufacturer, Boeing, estimates thatglobal demand for commercial airliners will reach almost40,000 in the next two decades,37 which is double today’stotal fleet.

In search of a new approachThe standard international model used in the past 40 yearsto address our environmental problems has focused onthe power of national governments to deliver outcomes,supported by international processes. For example, theuse of international conventions or frameworks either forprotection of areas on land and at sea, or to phase outdumping and pollution. These have been negotiated andagreed among the governments, while leeway has beengiven at the national level on how each nation might honourthe particular framework. Typically, specialized publicfunds and (often time-bound) protocols and targets, withcorresponding national voluntary plans, have augmentedthese global conventions. There have been some notablesuccesses with this model, e.g. the Montreal Protocolfor ozone depleting substances agreed in 1987, recentlyrevised to also include HFCs.38Arguably, however, and despite best efforts, in theaggregate the environmental indicators of planetary healthhave not improved. Things may be less bad than theywould have been without these various international effortssince the 1970s, but the situation has still deteriorated, andpotentially, there is worse to come.It could be argued that these models for fixing globalenvironmental challenges may have a few designweaknesses when considered in the context of the mid21st century. To date, it has generally been officials in theinternational environmental community who have designedand negotiated international environmental conventionsand agreements. They have attempted to reactively try toprotect different parts of the global environment against theeffects of economic activity (pollution, degradation etc).39As a result, they have tended towards the developmentof expert and technical protocols (e.g. tackling hazardouswaste, mercury pollution and soil degradation) rather thanpresenting themselves as “platforms for action”. Suchplatforms could encourage a broader base of stakeholders(private-sector, city leaders, investors, civil society etc)to proactively try to transform those industrial or urbansystems that are creating pressure on the environment inthe first place. By effectively “ghettoizing” approaches forenvironmental management within the official environmentalcommunity, there has been limited engagement opportunityfor a broader group of stakeholders to partner in problemsolving. This model has arguably had the unintendedconsequence of limiting innovation.40 This poses somedifficult questions, especially as the scale and complexity ofglobal environmental challenges seem to be getting worseand becoming more urgent to resolve.Albert Einstein said: “The definition of insanity is doing thesame thing over and over again and expecting differentresults.” History would suggest that there will be insufficientimprovement in the global environment system if theinternational environmental community only promotes moreof the same kinds of management models into the mid-21stcentury. In addition to current strategies, what new forcescan also be harnessed to accelerate innovation and increasethe scale of action under way? What new models can alsobe deployed to help fix environmental challenges? How canthese innovations be put-to-work in ways that complementand strengthen existing international environmentalprocesses, goals and targets to reinvigorate (rather thanignore or restart) the global environmental agenda as acurator and driver of innovation?41Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Earth7

The Fourth Industrial RevolutionThe shift in economic power and acceleration in middleclass growth, consumer demand and urbanization in recentdecades has coincided with extraordinary progress incommunications and technology. This has enabled societiesto become more connected and have more data availableto a degree impossible to conceive even just 25 yearsago at the time of the first Earth Summit. Sir Tim BernersLee created the first web server and browser in 1990 andemail barely existed in 1992.42 Now 46% of the world’spopulation uses the internet and approximately 269 billionemails are sent daily.43 In 2000, just 12% of the world’spopulation had a cell phone subscription;44 by 2015 it was63%.45 The rise of the smartphone means that mobileinternet traffic is accelerating at more than 60% per year;46an astonishing growth rate when one considers exponentialtrends. To this end, the smartphone has becomeessential; in 2016 approximately 3.8 billion people had asmartphone subscription, a figure that is projected to rise toapproximately 6 billion by 2021,47 with 90% of the growthcoming from emerging regions.48 A total of 87% of USmillennials say that the smartphone now never leaves theirside and 44% use their camera or video function daily.49As technologies like smartphones are also becomingincreasingly powerful, common and connected, the mergingof digital, physical and biological realms is accelerating. Forexample, wearable wellness technologies, which can helpmonitor vital health and fitness signs, connect the wearerwith their doctor 24/7, and provide clouds of valuablepublic health data for officials to monitor, process and runpredictive algorithms on, all at once.8Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution for the EarthThe Forum terms this explosion in access to a ubiquitousand mobile internet, by smaller and more powerful sensorsthat are becoming ever cheaper, and characterized byartificial intelligence and machine learning as the FourthIndustrial Revolution. Its potential to radically transform themanagement of our environmental surroundings appearsboundless. For example, what if wearable technologiescould also monitor the quality of the air the wearer breathes,or the quality of the water they are drinking, as well as therate of their heart?Over and above the expansion of such personal datagathering and – when scaled up – new networks andmovements that can leverage ever more powerful digitalplatforms for social connectivity and environmentalinformation sharing, the internet of things (IoT) also offersgreat potential for innovation in environmental management.There are already approximately 8.3 billion connectedindustrial devices covering products from cars, homes,appliances and industrial equipment. Analysts suggest thiswill reach more than 20 billion by 2020.50 When combinedwith rapid advances in data processing and technologyinnovation, IoT could help drive countless localizedinitiatives. These could include smart street lighting andenergy efficient buildings,51 or even real-time city-wide“urban dashboards” of interconnected environmentalinformation across buildings, transport systems and industryenabling optimized energy, emissions and environmentalfootprint management.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution also encompasses specificclusters of transformative technologies such as artificialintelligence (AI), robotics, additive manufacturing (or 3Dprinting), neurotechnologies, drones and autonomousvehicles, biotechnologies, virtual and augmented reality, andblockchain, along with technologies and capabilities thathaven’t yet been created. All of these could offer profoundimplications for innovative approaches to managingenvironmental footprints. (A list of current Fourth IndustrialRevolution technology clusters most applicable for theenvironment can be found in Annex I.)The Fourth Industrial Revolution is, however, about morethan just identifying technology game-changers. It alsoencapsulates the need for society to recognize and managethe “systems change” that these technologies create. Forexample, the arrival of the Spinning Jenny in 19th centuryBritain not only revolutionized cloth manufacturing, but alsodrove demand for child labour. Children were employedto climb underneath the machines to fix difficult-to-accessparts when the loom broke. This prompted a revolutionin child labour laws and child protection legislation andultimately the right to childhood education, exemplifying awider societal systems change prompted by technology.governments and the markets should have in place. Thesewill include policies to minimize the risks and maximize theopportunities to society of the technology transformation.This is particularly important for society’s poorestand weakest, who will require policies to support thetransformation in jobs or to ensure access to information.It is also pertinent for protecting and managing the healthof the environment, which is a public good upon whicheveryone depends. For example, if wearable technologiesstart to capture personal data on exposure to air and waterquality levels, then questions will arise as to who should ownthis aggregate personal information, who should be able toaccess it and how might society best use it?The challenge is to find the balance between exploringthe innovations that technology offers for improving theenvironment, while developing ways and means to ensurethat risks are minimized and opportunities are maximized.The next section looks at these issues in greater depth.The Fourth Industrial Revolution is also providing anopportunity – and a need – to pre-emptively rethinkgovernance structures and to innovate to ensure theyare updated and purpose-built for the 21st century,comprising the policies and protocols that societies feel theirHarnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Earth9

A revolution for the environmentThe potential to harness the Fourth Industrial Revolution tohelp transform how humanity manages its environmentalfootprint and, more fundamentally, to re-imagine howhuman and economic systems might interact with thenatural world (e.g. through cities, transport and energynetworks, production and consumption systems, financialmarkets and agricultural and industrial value chains) appearspotentially boundless. In exploring this transformation,however, the debate needs to focus not just ontechnological applications, but also on reshaping mindsets,incentives, policies and institutions. This will be critical tobuilding inclusive, sustainable, resilient and ethical systems.The following illustrations offer a glimpse of the breakthroughtransformations that are becoming available.roads each day. In 2016, it is estimated that this avoidedGreenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions of 1.4 million tonnesof CO2, along with providing the associated benefits ofreduced air and Hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) pollution fromvehicle air conditioners. Today, there are 200,000 electriccars in Didi’s fleet and this is set to rise to 1 million withinthe decade.54 New public-private platforms are underdevelopment to help cities in China share information locallyand globally about: how to enable car sharing to reducepollution; how to redesign city streets to enable theseinnovations; and how to work with the car and truck industryto accelerate production of electric vehicles designed forpassenger sharing/optimal logistics delivery and ready forautonomous driving.In transportIn product traceabilityAdvanced materials are close to enabling breakthroughsin battery design and production, which could createinexpensive, quick-charging and energy dense batteries thatwould outperform internal combustion engines. The growingmarket for electric cars is forecast to displace oil demandby approximately 2 million barrels per day by 2025, risingto 16 million by 2040. An oversupply of 2 million barrelsper day was attributed as triggering the major oil industrydownturn experienced during the last three years, which hasbeen described as the biggest in a generation.52 Meanwhile,commentators have described moves to produceautonomous vehicles as the new arms race.53 There is arisk that technology, data, expertise and decision-makingwill become concentrated in the hands of a relatively smallset of market leaders. Technology companies have becomedirect competitors of traditional automotive companies, andit’s the mobility services software, not the hardware, wherecompetition is most fierce. This creates a new governancechallenge, which spans multiple industry sectors andtechnology sets and requires cooperation between thepublic and private sectors.Geospatial data monitoring platforms such as the GlobalForest Watch, Global Fishing Watch and Eyes on the Seautilize advanced sensors and satellite imagery, combinedwith big data analytics, to enable anyone with a smartphoneto track and monitor activity within important environmentalsystems. These are just the first releases – future iterationscould leverage AI, such as machine learning to forecastwhere illegal fishing or logging is likely to occur. Whencomplemented by other Fourth Industrial Revolutioninnovations, such as the ability to rapidly undertake DNAsequencing of seafood products and bilge water from ships,there is the potential to create greater transparency andaccountability from “ocean to plate”, giving consumers andregulators confidence in the sustainability and legality ofproducts.Through connected products andservicesThe rapidly growing IoT network and capabilities holdgreat

was created in 2009, sends 55 billion messages a day.2 News about everything from celebrity gossip to bad air quality now travels fast, and globally. The Forum has termed this period of accelerating innovation in science and technology - the transformative change in data and technology capabilities combined with a merging of digital, physical