Researchers have asked the Norwegian population to share their thoughts about the future. Some narratives stand out.
Project leader Nina Heidenstrøm was interviewed about the stories collected in WP2 when Norwegians were asked what they think the world will look like in 30 years.
One respondent writes:
I think the world in 30 years will be severely marked by climate and nature destruction and that it is characterised by hundreds of millions of people fleeing towards the northern part of the world, primarily because of draught and failed crops, along with lacking ground water. But I also think many ecosystems will collapse, resulting in extreme ripple effects, for example bees, corals and fish. This will cause famines.
There will surely be large fires in the whole of southern Europe every summer, very long draught periods and no functioning food production systems. This will lead to enormous refugee camps in central Europe composed of southern Europeans as well as Africans and people from other continents. I can imagine that the northern European countries will construct border fences towards the south. The EU will be history due to internal disagreements on how to handle all these problems. Large increase in right-wing populism. Extreme inequality, where the rich have become richer and the poor more numerous and poorer.
This type is a good example of the type of story that the researchers have called a crisis ladder, where one event leads to another, more serious event.
Read the full article in Norewegian here (forskning.no).
Or dive into all the findings in the report from WP2 here.