Global megatrends assessment
EEA Technical Report | No 11/2015
In March 2015, the European Environment Agency (EEA) published its five-yearly flagship report, The European environment - state and outlook 2015 (SOER 2015). The report provides a comprehensive assessment of the European environment's state, trends and prospects, and places it in a global context. The purpose of this technical report is to complement the SOER 2015's Assessment of global megatrends by providing substantially more in-depth information and data on each megatrend.
Why are global megatrends important for Europe and its environment?
Europe is bound to the rest of the world through multiple systems, enabling two-way flows of materials, financial resources, innovations and ideas. As a
result, Europe's ecological and societal resilience is significantly affected by a variety of global megatrends - large-scale and high-impact social, economic, political, environmental or technological long-term change processes with decisive and critical implications. As the boundaries between developments in Europe and other parts of the world grow more blurred, Europeans are increasingly likely to be affected by developments in distant regions - some very sudden, others unfolding over decades.
Global megatrends: Structure of the report
The report contents 11 chapters to 11 different global megatrends. Each chapter starts with a short overview about the specific megatrend, then follows a description of the drivers of each megatrend, the trends and the implications.
Examples for the megatrends are:
- Diverging global population trends
- Living in an urban world
- Changing disease burdens and risks of pandemics
- Accelerating technological change
- Intensified global competition for resources
- Growing pressures on ecosystems
- Increasingly severe consequences of climate change
The full report can be found at www.eea.europa.eu/publications/global-megatrends
Source: EEA (2015): Global megatrends assessment. Extended background analysis complementing the SOER 2015 'Assessment of global megatrends' EEA Technical Report | No 11/2015. European Environment Agency http://www.eea.europa.eu/ [1]