Editor’s choice
Editor’s choice
What became of the trends that SEI presented a year ago? Was our foresight for 2024 accurate? How did the three Currents we highlighted then surface in climate and sustainable development agendas during the year?
In January last year, SEI cast a spotlight on three trends, the forces that were likely to be factors in climate and sustainable development agendas during the year. These were our “Currents 2024“.
Now, as we prepare for “Currents 2025” on 21 January, we are again assessing the trends that will be at work in the coming year.
It is also time to take stock. Did we detect the way the winds were blowing last year? Here we look back on the Currents we selected a year ago.
2024 was a record-breaking year: it was the warmest year ever documented, with both air and surface temperatures rising to new heights. It was also the first calendar year in which temperature rise exceeded the milestone mark of 1.5°C, which has served as the polestar of climate advocacy and politics. On 22 July 2024, the daily global average temperature reached a record high of 17.16°C, data from the EU’s Copernicus program show.
Though the Paris Agreement sets a goal to contain temperature rise to 1.5°C or well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the calculations that determine whether and when this occurs depend on temperatures that emerge over decades, rather than the temperature mark that surfaces in a single year. This means the the world will “know” whether and when this goal has been missed only in hindsight.
Nevertheless, events of 2024 make the 1.5°C goal even harder to achieve. In 2024 carbon emissions from fossil fuels reached another record high. Coal use also reached a new record high. Emissions of methane – the second human-made contributor to global warming – were characterized as alarming.
In a 2024 Guardian survey 6% of respondents from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change thought that the 1.5°C limit would be met, and nearly 80% thought temperature rise of at least 2.5°C would occur.
In 2024, UN Secretary-General António Guterres nonetheless insisted, “The 1.5°C limit is still possible.” However, his pronouncement contained a caveat: “But not for long.”
The 1.5°C mark remains the world’s yardstick – the standard for assessing progress or the lack of it. As the climate change essayist and journalist David Wallace-Wells has put it, the evident gap between talk and action in reaching something this specific target has served as “a kind of leash that, no matter how long, still tugs the reluctant dog forward“. As he has written, “…though nothing as complex as climate geopolitics can ever be reduced to a single cause, the target and the wave of global activism it unleashed is one reason so many countries have ratcheted up their climate promises in recent years — and one reason we know those pledges are still wanting”.
Perspective / How will will the prospect of reaching and breaching the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C target influence actions to contain global warming?
Multilateral events and processes carried on in 2024, but its limitations were increasingly evident to participants and observers. UN negotiations confronted severe headwinds at key events intended to increase global commitments, actions and funding to limit climate change; protect biodiversity; stop desertification of land; and reduce the proliferation of plastics:
These efforts to reach consensus and accelerate change to address climate, environment and sustainable development goals took place amid rising conflict, nationalism and populism. In November, the US elected Donald Trump, who has vowed to leave the Paris Agreement when he re-assumes the President’s office. Against this backdrop, activists increasingly turned to other potential avenues for change: levies and lawsuits.
Levies – The Global Solidarity Levies Task Force is mandated to explore the impact of a range of levies to finance development, nature and the fight against climate change. Subjects of interest include levies on carbon and fossil fuel damages, fossil fuel windfall profits, private air passengers, maritime fuel, and financial transactions; and the phase out of fossil fuel subsidies.
Lawsuits – Climate change litigation against companies is on the rise, as documented by a 2024 study by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
And in December, the International Court of Justice began hearing testimony in a landmark case, brought by Vanuatu and other vulnerable states. The testimony of James Hansen, who directs the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions at Columbia University, offered an indictment of the failures of multilateralism to avert “the greatest injustice in history”: climate change. As he said, “Climate change must be brought to the International Court of Justice because young people, developing nations, and Indigenous people have nowhere else to turn.”
His testimony included this withering observation of multilateral actions and processes:
“Nations of the world meet at annual COP meetings (Conferences of the Parties), where they promise to reduce emissions to ‘net zero’ at some distant date, an almost meaningless pledge. There is no plan to actually stabilize climate. Instead, there is dickering over potential payments to the most affected nations. Such illusory payments seem more immediate than long-term climate change, so they are dangled out front, like a carrot, as a bribe to continue business-as-usual. Meanwhile, real world emissions remain at a level driving climate inexorably toward conditions out of humanity’s control, leaving a global community increasingly unjust and ungovernable.”
Perspective / At this time of growing geopolitical fragmentation and conflict, how can the world foster the multilateral cooperation needed to address global problems?
Competition to control resources intensified in 2024, with such competition taking place in outer space, under the sea, and on land:
In outer space – What has been characterized as a “third space age” has dawned. More than 80 countries are said to have a presence in space – all vying for prestige, power and competitive advantage. “Astropreneurs” and commercial interests are competing to stake their claims, including for mining of the moon’s minerals. A 2024 report by the World Economic Forum and McKinsey & Company declared that the global space economy will be worth $1.8 trillion by 2035.
Employees of SpaceX were said to have begun working on designs for a Martian city, and analysing whether humans can procreate in space. (Musk is said to have volunteered his sperm.) Public-private partnerships, such as those with the pioneering US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, are now the norm. Indeed, public and private interests are often intertwined tightly. Musk himself has a new title: incoming co-chair of a new advisory commission, the US Department of Government Efficiency, in the next Trump administration.
As space travel costs came down, space exploration went up. Geopolitics now buffets the heavens. The advance of the space race is already raising new questions about international threats and security risks – including the use of nuclear weapons – launched from the heavens.
In the oceans – In 2024, the debate over mining the oceans continues. Conflicts about undersea mining governance by the International Seabed Authority also continued in 2024. The authority, which elected a new Secretary-General to take the helm in 2025, continues to wrestle with controversy over whether to authorize seabed mining proposals, how to regulate any seabed mining, and how to share any revenues that emerge.
In November, Nauri Ocean Resources Inc., announced that it intended to submit an application to the International Seabed Authority to explore and mine the seafloor for battery minerals in the eastern Clarion Clipperton Zone of the Pacific Ocean, between Hawaii and Mexico.
And in December 2024, Norway postponed its previous plans to undertake commercial-scale deep-seabed mining off its shores.
On land – The “Race for Hectares” among both governments and private investors is receiving growing attention. As the 2024 Soil Atlas put it, “Land has been heralded as a crisis-proof investment around the world. However, these deals often make money for the wealthy few, while pushing local people off their land and into poverty.” It noted that wealthy countries such as Germany, Singapore and the US are complicit in such grabs.
In 2024, the Agricultural and Rural Convention 2020 (ARC2020), a platform for agricultural policy reform in the EU, also expressed concerns about a rise in the concentration of land ownership and the proliferation of “green-grabbing” – designating land for carbon offsets that fail to deliver.
As but one example of the tensions that emerged in 2024, thousands of people in Serbia have protested plans to mine one of Europe’s largest deposits of lithium – a key mineral for electric car batteries.
Perspective / Unprecedented pressure on the planet’s finite resources fuels a new race for space of all kinds. How will we manage the trade-offs and resulting conflicts?
These issues continue to reverberate in climate, environment and sustainability agendas in the new year, even as other trends emerge. What issues will have an impact on key decisions and actions in 2025?
SEI’s Currents 2025 will take a look at the issues we see influencing the year ahead.
How do we identify our Currents?
To develop our 2024 Currents, we carried out dozens of interviews with SEI experts in our centres across the globe, conducted an institute-wide survey, and sought insights from members of the Institute’s Science Advisory Council. From interviews and focus group sessions, we identified candidate trends. These were then whittled down to three Currents.
There are more thorough foresight processes, using large amounts of data or interviews with influential thinkers. But two features make SEI’s “crystal ball”, such as it is, unique. The first is perspective. Our foresight is based on insights from the institute’s eight centres, situated on five continents. When thinking about trends, we start with the local and regional realities of environment and development, communities and decision-makers. The second is expertise. SEI has leading experts in a wide range of scientific fields. For more than three decades, we have sought to combine this breadth of expertise to provide relevant and practical knowledge.
Perspective / How will will the prospect of reaching and breaching the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C target influence actions to contain global warming?
Perspective / At this time of growing geopolitical fragmentation and conflict, how can the world foster the multilateral cooperation needed to address global problems?
Perspective / Unprecedented pressure on the planet’s finite resources fuels a new race for space of all kinds. How will we manage the trade-offs and resulting conflicts?
