The World in 2022
The World in 2022: Ten issues that will shape the international agenda
Text finalised on December 14th 2021. This document is the result of the collective reflection of the CIDOB research team in collaboration with EsadeGeo. Coordinated and edited by Eduard Soler i Lecha, it has benefited from contributions by members from both organisations (Hannah Abdullah, Inés Arco, Anna Ayuso, Jordi Bacaria, Ana Ballesteros, Pol Bargués, Moussa Bourekba, Anna Busquets, Carmen Claudín, Carme Colomina, Emmanuel Comte, Carlota Cumella, Anna Estrada, Francesc Fàbregues, Oriol Farrés, Agustí Fernández de Losada, Blanca Garcés, Eva Garcia, Andrea G. Rodríguez, Juan Garrigues, Francis Ghilès, Seán Golden, Berta Güell, Juan Ramón Jiménez-García, Francesca Leso, Josep Mª Lloveras, Rafael Martínez, Esther Masclans, Óscar Mateos, Sergio Maydeu, Elisa Menéndez, Pol Morillas, Yolanda Onghena, Umut Özkirimli, Francesco Pasetti, Cristina Sala, Héctor Sánchez, Ángel Saz, Reinhard Schweitzer, Antoni Segura, Cristina Serrano, Eloi Serrano, Marie Vandendriessche, Pere Vilanova and Eckart Woertz) as well as several individual partners of CIDOB.
In 2022 the world is more certain about the challenges it faces and more aware of its vulnerability and interdependence. The future is always uncertain, but today’s doubts are less about what and more about how, who and until when. The problem is not one of diagnosis. Data and conclusions abound about the importance of the present moment and the major transitions underway in the digital, green and labour fields. But the failure to carry them out collectively and inclusively leaves us in a fractured landscape. Key to the debate are the questions around where the point of no return lies, what kind of leadership is best equipped or has most legitimacy to pilot these transformations and how the process should be handled to ensure the social costs are as low as possible.
What will be special about 2022? The advancing vaccination programmes should ensure that at some point this year – perhaps later than initially hoped – the damage can be counted and we can begin to look forward. One of the year’s major themes will therefore be the long-awaited recovery and everything that might frustrate it (prices, geopolitical tensions, bad news in the health sphere). In this process of post-pandemic restart, it will be clear that the world is not only advancing at different speeds, but that some groups will end up worse off than before, for example, in terms of mobility and humanitarian crises. One of the most frequently asked questions this year will be whether we have learned from the pandemic to face global challenges with greater anticipation, ambition and solidarity.