The Future is Now

Efficient transportation services more means better, richer countries. Economic development and most of the world’s merchandise trade goods are transported by sea. Some are wondering how much more transport systems using the oceans, seas and rivers can handle.

In 2018, global manufacturing slowed down. Its thought that this was because of changes to trade rules between more developed countries. Despite this slowdown, manufacturing goods has been increasing since 2008, especially in more developed countries. There hasn’t been much of a change in  the least developed countries, which makes the target of doubling industry’s share of GDP by 2030 unlikely.

While there is more money for developing economic infrastructure in developing countries and impressive progress has been made in mobile connectivity, countries that are lagging behind, face serious challenges in doubling the manufacturing industry’s share of GDP by 2030, and investment in scientific research and innovation remains below the global average. 

The intensity of global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from manufacturing industries declined by more than 20 per cent between 2000 and 2016, to 0.30 kg CO₂ per United States dollar. This shows a general decoupling of CO2 emissions and GDP growth, which is a good thing. It means that we can grow economies without destroying the planet.

The proportion of global GDP invested in research and development increased, with Europe and Northern America standing at 2.21 per cent of GDP spent on research and development. Most developing regions fell short of the world average in 2016. While there has been an increase in the number of researchers per million inhabitants from 804 in 2000 to 1,163 in 2016, that number reached only 91 in sub-Saharan Africa.

In 2016, medium-high and high-tech sectors accounted for 44.7 per cent of the global manufacturing value added. Medium-high and high-tech products continued to dominate manufacturing production in Northern America and Europe, reaching 47.4 per cent in 2016 compared with 10.4 per cent in least developed countries.

Almost all people around the world now live within range of a mobile-cellular network signal, with 90 per cent living within range of a 3G-quality or higher network. This evolution of the mobile network, however, is growing more rapidly than the percentage of the population using the Internet.

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