Deep transformation or shallow transition?

WE live in hugely uncertain times. For 2 years, Covid-19 has shocked the very systems on which we rely, overlaying and influencing a set of wide-ranging changes and transitions - both positive and negative - that were already shaping the 2020s.

As we look forward to 2030, the target year for the realisation of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals and a key milestone for rapid reductions in carbon emissions, will we find ourselves in a just, resilient and sustainable world - or one in which we witness ever more destabilising shocks on a pathway to a hot-house earth?

In order to answer this question, it's timely to take another look at the four different pathways or trajectories towards 2030 that Forum for the Future identified 15 months ago in our From System Shock to System Change - Time to Transform report.