Anthony Clayton | Jamaica in 2050 – Part 8: How Jamaica can build a better future

This is the eighth and last in a series of articles looking at the ways that the world will change between now and 2050 and analysing the implications for Jamaica’s future.

It will be a much hotter and more crowded world in 2050. There will be nearly 10 billion people, and about 80 per cent of the world’s population will live in vast megacities in Asia and Africa. With 2.5 degrees of warming, the climate will be less stable and more erratic, with unbearable heat waves and acute water shortages. Climate-change disasters, such as the mega-fires in California, Canada, Siberia, and Australia and the floods in Europe and China, will become increasingly frequent and severe. Eventually, large parts of the Earth’s surface will become uninhabitable, either flooded or else too hot and arid to support life, forcing humanity into the remaining temperate zones in the largest forced migration in history. Countries that had been spared the worst effects of rising temperatures will try to close their borders to the millions being driven out of their own countries, and the risk of war, civil unrest and terrorism will rise sharply.

We are not yet at the point of no return. There is still time to avert the worst of these disasters, but this will require restructuring much of the world economy, with the largest and most extensive set of reforms in history. This would include rebuilding much of the world’s energy infrastructure, automating transport, redesigning cities and investing in new technologies for producing food and managing water. The need to slow the rate of climate change will become a major driver of social, economic, and technological transformation.

The countries that anticipate and prepare for these changes will not only give themselves some measure of protection, they will also be able to strengthen their position and standing in the world. This is not a contest that will necessarily be won by today’s large and powerful nations, but by the best-led and most agile countries. Here are some of the key areas for action:

SUSTAINABLE BUILDINGS

First, new developments in Jamaica’s cities should be designed to support the models of urban living required to deliver energy, water and resource efficiency, minimise environmental impacts and footprints, generate employment opportunities, encourage social integration and cohesion, and use better design to make cities pandemic-resistant, with the remodelling of homes, offices, and public spaces to allow distributed working and social distancing. City ordinances and building codes can be revised to ensure that buildings are highly energy-efficient and have built-in recovery loops for water and other materials. The move to fabricator-based manufacturing would allow cities to develop an internal industrial base, reducing the volume of freight, while autonomous vehicles, telecommuting and distributed modes of working would significantly reduce both the need to commute and the number of vehicles on the roads. Cities can be redesigned to support a transition to a circular economy, with resources continuously recovered and returned into productive use, in contrast to the current model, which is based on a linear flow of resources and a single pass through the economy before disposal.

An important part of the new approach to urban development is to specify that new buildings should be energy-plus, i.e., generate more power than they consume. The first energy-plus building in the Caribbean is here already, on The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, and this approach should be taken up across the nation. If this approach was widely adopted, countries could shut down their old inefficient power stations and stop importing oil and gas because energy-plus buildings would eventually make cities net exporters of power.

Jamaica must also prepare for the revolution in transport and the replacement of the internal combustion engine with autonomous, electric-powered vehicles. An autonomous transport system requires far fewer vehicles, so this would have a vital role in reducing the rate of climate change. In order to prepare for this future, Jamaica should upgrade the roads; build the charging stations and put the electronic infrastructure in place; and update the legislation on traffic laws, liability, and insurance. Ships will also become autonomous, which will greatly reduce the cost of shipping and logistics and make it easier for manufacturers in small island nations to compete, so Jamaica can start planning for the next generation of manufactures and exports.

Resilience

Jamaica must also take steps to ensure its food and water security and maintain supplies during the accelerating disruptions of climate change, including rising temperatures, changing rainfall, fires, floods, and droughts. With investments in new areas of agriculture, food, and biotechnology, such as cellular agriculture, Jamaica could greatly reduce the amount of water and land needed to produce food, reduce the need for imports, and guarantee its own food security while allowing more land to be used for development, environmental restoration, and carbon sequestration.

Finally, Jamaica will have to make a stronger commitment to human-capital development as the next wave of automation could replace most existing jobs within just one or two decades. Skilled jobs are less susceptible to automation, but this requires a coherent strategy for change. There is no point in investing in skills in an area that is about to become redundant. The key, therefore, is to identify new growth areas; to develop the research, education, and training programmes needed to prepare a generation for new modes and models of work, and to create environments that will attract an increasingly mobile, skills-based, networked workforce.

The educational system itself will have to undergo extensive reform in order to deliver the education needed for the years ahead, and universities, in particular, will have to adapt quickly if they are to survive the competition from private and non-profit education companies offering excellent educational and training products free or at a minimal cost. For the first time in history, cheap, efficient and high quality education is becoming universally available. One immediate priority is to build out broadband networks to give access to all, which will assist Jamaica to develop a well-educated workforce at a reduced cost to the taxpayer. The next few years will present unprecedented opportunities and challenges to educational systems to adjust to this very different world. Artificial intelligence will change the way that we think about education and work, and the move to an immersive, all-digital environment will rewrite the rules for the way that society works and culture evolves.

Success is not guaranteed in navigating such complex challenges, but good governance and planning will give Jamaica the best chance of surviving the turbulent years ahead and emerging in a stronger position than before.

Anthony Clayton is professor of Caribbean Sustainable Development. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.