Opinion – Martin Wolf: The optimists were right, and they might be again

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Is our world improving and likely to continue improving, or is it on the brink of catastrophe? People who think about these questions tend to divide sharply between the cheerful optimists, who believe the former, and the gloomy pessimists, who insist on the latter. I’m in the first field. But I would also make an important caveat. Continuing progress depends on managing the dangers we ourselves create. Among them are the destruction of the planetary environment and thermonuclear war. To succeed, we must overcome the divisive forces within and between countries that threaten social stability, global cooperation and peace. In short, the world can be a better place. But we cannot assume that it will be.

An optimistic view of the past is contained in the Human Development Report 2021/2002 of the United Nations Development Program and in Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022 of the World Bank. The latter shows, for example, that the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty (now measured as an income of less than US$2.15 a day) has fallen from almost 60% in 1950 to 8.4% in 2019. it’s impressive. Similarly, the UN human development index –an amalgamation of per capita national income, years of schooling and life expectancy at birth– also shows a substantial and steady increase from 1990 to 2019. Again, the Report on Human Development World Happiness 2022 shows that the happiest countries are prosperous –and interestingly, small–, with Finland and Denmark at the top of the list. Average prosperity may not be a sufficient condition for greater happiness. But prosperity helps.

Not surprisingly, the pandemic has reversed progress. The number of people in extreme poverty jumped from 648 million in 2019 to 719 million in 2020. Worse still, it could mean that extreme poverty numbers will be permanently higher than they would otherwise be. Again, the human development index is estimated to have declined in 2020 and 2021, erasing the gains of the previous five years. The energy and food crises provoked by Russia’s war in Ukraine will certainly prolong the losses. The human consequences of these twin shocks are unquestionably enormous.

It can be assumed that normal economic service will eventually resume. However, the Human Development Report suggests that this hope may not be realized. It points to the current “uncertainty complex” as crises pile on top of one another. Covid-19 is not, the study suggests, a “long deviation from normal; it is a window into a new reality”.

However, it is also true, as the report shows, that the response to Covid has included the rapid discovery and development of effective vaccines. Thus, “in 2021 alone, vaccination programs against Covid-19 prevented almost 20 million deaths”. The distribution of these vaccines has been wildly uneven, and the response is often one of ignorant hostility. But they worked. So why be so pessimistic?

This “uncertainty complex”, the report suggests, consists of three elements: the planetary changes of the “Anthropocene” – the period of human-induced changes in the biosphere; profound social and technological changes; and political polarization, within and between societies. The first one is really new. Both the second and third have been characteristic of our world since the 19th century. What is new today is how planetary forces interact with domestic ones. We cannot now solve our domestic problems without solving global ones. But we may also find it impossible to solve our global problems without first solving our domestic problems.

The report provides fascinating evidence on three aspects of these domestic difficulties, rooted, it says, in uncertainty. First, there are increasing levels of mental suffering. Surprisingly, the data “paint an intriguing picture in which people’s perceptions of their lives and their societies contrast sharply with historically high measures of aggregate well-being.” Second, insecure people may be attracted to “social identities that become an ‘antidote’ to uncertainty, social identities that are in part asserted as being different –at the limit completely opposite– from others”. Finally, this process can lead to political polarization and, to take a worrying example, the rejection of democratic norms.

These domestic phenomena, compounded by inequality, interact with shifts in global power and influence to destabilize international relations. Thus, the interaction of domestic and global conflicts makes it even more difficult to sustain world peace and planetary stability.

This emphasis on the interaction between social, technological, economic and political developments can add a dimension to discussions of the “polycrisis”. But that doesn’t make it any easier to face the challenges themselves.

The report itself suggests three items: investment, insurance and innovation. All three make sense. If we are to improve the performance of our economies and address planetary challenges, we need to increase investment across the world, not just in historically successful economies. Second, social insurance against uninsurable risks such as job loss, industry decline or ill health will help to reduce insecurity. Third, we need innovation. But the most important ones today may be social and political. The last period of this renewal was in the mid-20th century. We cannot wait for a second period of catastrophe before attempting renewal once more.

We have made real progress, even though it has been unevenly distributed within and across countries. But, as has always been true, progress creates new problems. We also stumble, often badly, on our way to the answers. If the optimistic view I still hold is true, we have to stumble faster.

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves

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