New city-states: power, growth, inequality
According to UN estimates, 65% of the world’s population will be living in urban settings by 2050, resulting in an increase in consumer and energy needs and development opportunities. Major metropolises already cover approximately 3% of the planet’s total land surface: The “city” of 103 million inhabitants now forming around Beijing is struggling with serious logistic problems, beginning with those related to transportation.
Making the most of Italy’s energy resources
Discussions at this roundtable kicked off with the observation that global economic growth, which has been particularly strong over the past year, has brought with it well-known benefits in terms of development (helping to combat extreme poverty, for instance), yet it has also marked a reversal in the trend of CO2 atmospheric emissions, which, after having stabilized for a three-year period, are rising again at a rate of around 1.5%. This once again poses the question of what measures are needed to decouple growth from emissions.
Climate Change = Economic Change
The problem of global warming can no longer be deferred if its catastrophic planet-wide consequences are to be avoided. That was the message of a special report issued in October by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the most authoritative scientific body dedicated to the study of climate change. According to the report, at the current rate, by 2030 the global temperature increase will surpass 1.5°C, which is considered the upper safety limit for containing and managing the fall-out, albeit at the cost of massive investments in financial, material and human resources.
Shifting to sustainable transportation in Italy: social and economic consequences
The participants at this roundtable noted that there is practically unanimous consensus on the need to rise to the challenge of achieving eco-sustainable mobility, a necessary objective in order to meet the Paris Agreement’s target of keeping the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C. The issue was viewed as one primarily concerning the health of both the present generation and the next.
Innovation to boost competitiveness in agriculture
The participants at this national roundtable described Italian agriculture as a sector which, although growing, is still replete with shortcomings. The industry has shown that it can shift exports of over 41 billion euro, but this is still not in the league of Germany’s 80 billion euro figure. It was felt that the sector continues to suffer from insufficient competitiveness, due mainly to a lack of investment and innovation.
The future of energy: innovation, technology and geopolitics
The vast energy transition under way goes well beyond ratcheting up the use of renewables, as much as that is essential for obvious environmental reasons. The shift in that direction is currently a gradual one that, however, in the coming years is going to reach a watershed point at which, once the cost of new sources drops considerably below that of hydrocarbon products, the changes already ongoing will speed up.
Efficiency and sustainability: key challenges for modern cities
The starting premise of debate at this National Interest event was that cities are the place where the future of humanity is set to play out, not just because – for the first time in history – the majority of the world’s population lives in urban areas, but also because the latter will become increasingly pivotal to ensuring the sustainability of development models.