RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF EARTH SCIENCES VOL. 9, ES2003, doi:10.2205/2007ES000273, 2007

4. Systematic Regularity of World Conflicts Over the Course of Time (SRWCT) and the Data Analysis of Global Threats to Sustainability in the XXI Century

[26]  The analysis of the complete list of the world conflicts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars) that took place from 2500 B.C. till now has shown that until the beginning of VII century B.C. these conflicts occurred without any permanent regularity. It looks like a stochastic process of the "white noise" type. It confirms the historic facts of permanent occurrence of conflicts at the early stages of the human civilization evolution, as a natural form of its existence. Only with the advent of higher forms of the society's formation it is possible to notice a certain periodic regularity in a sequence of data on the world conflicts. This regularity is determined and studied in the article [Zgurovskij and Yasinsky, 2007]. By using the specified regularity there appeared the possibility to foresee the upcoming system conflict, to analyze a set of threats generating it, to determine the impact of these threats on its development and to build scenarios of possible evolution of the society during and after the specified conflict. Certainly, it would be good to be mistaken in pessimistic prognoses, but from the scientific point of view, they are necessary in order to prevent the undesirable outcomes.

4.1. Systematic Regularity of World Conflicts Over the Course of Time (SRWCT)

[27]  The succession of the world conflicts (which are taken place in the time interval - from 705 B.C. up to present time (List of wars, 2007; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars) was analyzed with the following quantizing on years:

DT = 50 years - 5 yearscdot n; n = 0, 1, 2,ldots.

[28]  The quantity of world conflicts for each sampling interval DT was defined as arithmetic mean of quantity of all conflicts on this time interval.

2007ES000273-fig03
Figure 3
[29]  At n = 9, DT = 5 years, we can see a six successive evolutional waves {Cn}, n=1, 2, 3, ldots, 6 (Figure 3, Table 6) of world conflicts ( Cn -waves) which were defined by following characteristics:

[30]  1. Life cycle of each wave Cn generates five sequential evolutionary phases (stages) {Cn, i}, i = 1, ldots , 5:

[31]  Cn, 1 (ORIGINS); Cn, 2 (GROWTH); Cn, 3 (CULMINATION); Cn, 4 (RECESSION); Cn, 5 (EXTINCTION);

[32]  2. Duration of lifetime T(Cn) of each following wave Cn is determined by the duration of lifetimes of two previous waves, namely:

eq001.gif(1)

[33]  3. Intensity of conflicts for Cn waves

eq002.gif(2)

increases (Figure 2): I(Cn+1) > I(Cn), due to the technological progress of the mankind, where N (Cn) - number of conflicts shaping the wave Cn.

[34]  The world conflicts that are uniquely determined by characteristics 1-3 we shall call Cn -waves of system world conflicts or in other words Cn -waves.

[35]  We see that from 705 B.C. up to now six Cn -waves have been identified. Their so-called "structural portraits" and basic performances are shown in Table 6 and in Figure 3. Ratios T(Cn)/T(Cn+1), n =1, 2, 3, ldots , 6 are shown in Table 7. As we see, they are varying around the "golden section" value - 1.618.

[36]  Therefore, we present the sequence {T (Cn)}, n = 1, ldots , 6, 7 in the following form:

T(C1)approx 13kc; T(C2)approx 8kc; T(C3)approx 5kc;

eq003.gif(3)

T(C6)approx 1kc; T(C7)approx 1kc,

where kcapprox 85 years - the greatest common divisor for all values of lifetime duration T(Cn) (invariant temporal quantum kc ), a row of numbers Fs={13, 8, 5, 3, 2, 1, 1, 0} represents an inverse sequence of Fibonacci numbers.

[37]  Meanwhile six terms of sequence T (C1), ldots, T(C6) respond to the law of overmatching of units of Fibonacci series, we come up with the hypothesis, that occurrence of system world conflicts is subordinate to this law. Therefore, according to (1), the seventh (forecast) element of the sequence {T(Cn)} should be:

eq004.gif(4)

2007ES000273-fig04
Figure 4
[38]  Intensity of conflicts I(Cn), which depends on a level of technological evolution of the society (Figure 4), increases in time according to the hyperbolic law. We approximate this dependence with a hyperbolic function:

eq005.gif(5)

[39]  According to (5) the intensity of the seventh (forecast) conflict is:

eq006.gif(6)

[40]  Thus, relationships (3)-(6) present the systematic regularity of world conflicts over the course of time in the values of these conflicts' lifetime duration T(Cn), their intensity I (Cn) and values of Fibonacci numbers sequence ( Fs ).

4.2. "The Conflict of XXI Century" and the Analysis of Its Nature

[41]  The element being forecast by means of (5) and (6) will correspond to the seventh wave of system world conflicts C7. We shall call it "the conflict of XXI century". This conflict has the time span from 2008 to 2092 with the following probable phases:

[42]  Let us study the nature of "the conflict of XXI century" on the basis of the analysis of a totality of threats generating this conflict. We will determine a degree of approach or removal of these threats for various groups of the countries.

[43]  We shall analyze each of these threats [Zgurovsky, 2007]:

2007ES000273-fig05
Figure 5
4.2.1. Global decrease of the earth energy resources.
[44]  In the first half of XXI century one of the most acute threats to the mankind is a sweeping decrease of organic fuels resources accompanied by an increase of their consumption, first of all, in India and China. According to (Alenka Burja, 2006; http://www.folkecenter.dk/en/articles/HScheer_aburja.htm) in the beginning of the 20s of the current century there will be the intersection of consumption and production curves of energy produced from oil. In other words, the "production-consumption" balance of the energy produced from oil will inverse from positive to negative (Figure 5). A similar phenomenon will be observed for the "production-consumption" balances of the energy produced from gas - in the beginning of 30's and for uranium - in the beginning of 50's, respectively (Figure 5).

[45]  To quantitatively estimate a decrease of organic fuels resources for different countries we will use the parameter: "Consumption of traditional fuels percentage wise of the general energy needs of the country" (Human Development Report, 2006; http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2006/).

4.2.2. The changes of demographic structure of the world.
[46]  By the end of 2007 our planet's population constitutes 6.63 billion people living in the territory of 510,072,000 square kilometers. The population annually increases by more than 74 million (Geo Hive database, maintained by Johan van der Heyden, 2007). If we proceed from the linear extrapolation method, the population of the Earth will reach 9.75 billion by 2050. Due to this the first of possible threats originates. It is connected with the fact that the population of the planet would become more than it could withstand. In opinion of Pentagon experts by 2020 the mankind shall face real problems connected with critical deficit of water and energy, which, in its turn, may lead to new conflicts on the Earth (http://www.membrana.ru/articles/misinterpretation/2004/03/03/182200.html).

[47]  Another threat is connected with changes in the population demographic structure. For example, the greatest increase in the population within the next fifty years is expected in the poorest regions of the world: in Africa it will double, in Latin America and the Caribbean basin the population will increase by 1.5 times, while in Europe it will decrease by 0.8 times. An uncontrollable growth of the urban population in developing countries also presents a considerable threat. By 2050 it will double, and will be reaching 7 billion. It shall result in aggravation of transport, ecological and social problems, increase in crime and other consequences of uncontrolled urbanization.

[48]  An important trend of the nearest decades will be impetuous changes in religious groups of the world population. Thus, within the period from 1980 to 2025 the number of Moslems will increase from 16.5% up to 30%, the number of Christians will reduce from 33% to 30%, that of Hindus will change from 13.3% to 10%, and Buddhists - from 6.3% to 5%. The total number of representatives of other religious groups will also decrease from 31.1% to 25% (Japan Vision 2050. Principles of Strategic Science and Technology Policy Toward 2020, 2005; http://www.scj.go.jp/en/vision2050.pdf). These changes will necessitate searching for new conditions of tolerant coexistence of the world population.

[49]  To estimate growing threats resulting from the imbalance of the world population and the planet resources we shall use the indicator representing the ratio of the gross national product per capita to the population density of the given country. We shall use the data from the sources (Human Development Report, 2006; http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2006/; and Geo Hive database, maintained by Johan van der Heyden, 2007).

4.2.3. The increasing inequality between people and countries.
[50]  According to the World Bank in 1973 the gap in profits between the richest and poorest countries was defined as 44:1, and now it is 72:1. The three richest people in the world now possess the wealth exceeding the wealth of 47 poor countries of the world, 475 richest people control over the wealth exceeding the property of a half of all mankind. The relationship between one fifth part of the world rich population and one fifth of the world poorest population is 1:75. Thirty years ago this relationship was 1:43. The assets of civilization remain unattainable for the poorest group. Its representatives earn less than 2 dollars a day. Seven hundred million of them live in Asia, four hundred million in Africa, hundred fifty million in Latin America. The gap between the richest and poorest groups in their living standards has increased almost ten times during the last twenty years. This threat is rather serious from the point of view of growing number of conflicts in the world, spreading of corruption, terrorism, crimes, worsening of education, ecology and health care.

[51]  To estimate the inequality in distribution of economic and social assets for each of the considered countries we shall use Gini index (Human Development Report, 2006; http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2006/) representing these characteristics.

4.2.4. Spreading of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), tuberculosis, malaria.
[52]  Among new threats to the mankind World Health Organization (WHO) points out such dangerous infectious diseases, as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, first of all, in connection with their dramatic consequences and also their global spreading.

[53]  According to the data of the international organization UNAIDS only during 2004-2006 the number of HIV-infected people in the world has increased from 36.9 to 39.5 million. This general tendency with minor variations is observed in all regions of the world.

[54]  Despite of the successes achieved in combating tuberculosis, annually in the world there are 8 million new morbid events causing 2 million of fatal outcomes. In countries with a high level of HIV/AIDS spreading, the number of those suffering from tuberculosis has 3-4 times increased for the last 15 years (http://www.who.int/gb). 80% of them have been registered in Africa, South East Asia and the Western part of coastwise of the Pacific Ocean.

[55]  Malaria is traditionally widespread in Africa and Latin America. For the last five years malaria incidence has 2-3 times increased in Afghanistan, Ghana, Papua New Guinea, Pakistan, Uganda; 30 times in Mozambique and Democratic Republic of Congo; threatening morbidity rates (70 times growth) are registered in Mali. In other countries where cases of malaria are recorded, the morbidity rates are varying within the limits of pm 50% for the last 5 years.

[56]  We used the data on the indicated diseases presented by the World Health Organization (http://www.who.int/healthinfo/statistics/programme/en/index.html).

4.2.5. Corruption growth.
[57]  Corruption poses a formidable obstacle to economic growth and social evolution. It undermines any positive transformations. Corruption has become not only the major reason for poverty, but also the main impediment of overcoming it. Although corruption is rooted in ancient times, its "explosion" occurred at the end of XX, the beginning of XXI centuries in the course of the sweeping globalization. Corruption in one country has begun negatively affect development of other countries. Moreover, countries with the highest level of corruption now are not confined by the so-called "third world": liberalization in the former socialist countries in 1990-s was accompanied by scandalous official abuses. In its issue of 31 December 1995 "Financial Times" called 1995 "the year of corruption". The following years were marked by this negative phenomenon penetrating almost into all countries of the world, and, thus, corruption has gained global, international character.

[58]  High living standards did not become the necessary precondition of successful eradication of corruption. The analysis of the long-term trends revealed by the international organization "Transparency International" shows that for the last twelve years the corruption level has decreased in some countries with low levels of income, such as Estonia, Colombia, and Bulgaria. In the same time, in rich countries, for example, in Canada and Ireland a noticeable growth of corruption level is observed. Such risk factors as the opacity of state institutions, excessive impact of some oligarchic groups, violations in financing political parties, etc. exist both in rich and in poor countries; and, unfortunately, in the majority of countries the tendencies towards the growth of corruption still remain.

[59]  To estimate effect of corruption on social, economic and spiritual evolution of the world we shall use "an index of corruption perception" which is defined by the international organization "Transparency International" (http://www.transparency.org.ru).

4.2.6. Limited access to clean potable water.
[60]  According to World Health Organization (WHO) and Children's fund of the United Nations (UNICEF), one more danger is connected with diminishing access of people to clean potable water and sanitary means. The fifth part of mankind (more than 1.1 billion people) has no access to potable water, and 2.4 billion are not provided with minimum sanitary conditions. In this connection 2003 was declared by the General Assembly of the United Nations the International year of fresh water, and the period from 2005 to 2015, starting from the International day of water resources, 22 March 2005, the International decade of "Water for life" actions.

[61]  Especially critical is the situation in urban regions of poor countries where due to the rapid growth of population this problem quickly becomes aggravated. The indicated negative factors especially affect the children's health. As estimated by WHO, in 2005 1.6 million children under 5 years of age (on the average, 4500 children daily) died of aftereffects of the usage of unsafe water and because of inadequate hygiene. In the course of the world population growth and especially that in less developed regions of the world, the struggle for control over fresh water resources will become bitter, which represents one more global threat to the mankind.

[62]  Limited access to clean potable water will be estimated by the inverse magnitude to the indicator of access to the clean potable water presented in the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program for Water Supply and Sanitation, 2005 (http://www.wssinfo.org/en/welcome.html).

4.2.7. Isolation or "inverse globalization".
[63]  Considering globalization as an objective phenomenon that has its economic basis and is associated with growing interdependency of people on the Earth with the purpose of common use and sharing the best achievements of mankind, we assume that its opposite - "isolation" being an artificial process and having political basis presents one more global threat.

[64]  Isolation or "inverse globalization" - is a sign of the "other side of a medal" of globalization, being an evidence of insufficient development of democratic institutes of the country, its deviation from methods of competitive struggle in the global markets. In that case the power and wealth in this country are concentrated within a small group of people, separating the remaining society from democratic norms of using the public rights and resources. The opacity which is characteristic for the isolated societies generates the highest level of political corruption, suppression of healthy competition mechanisms, leads to a decrease of competences of people, financial and public institutes. Such status of a society is unbalanced and sooner or later comes to the ended with a collapse for those political and financial circles, who are striving to maintain this order.

[65]  We shall estimate the isolation by means of inverse magnitude to an index of globalization [Dreher, 2006]. In this connection we shall also call isolation "inverse globalization".

4.2.8. Global warming.
[66]  Global warming is the process of gradual rise of average annual temperature of the Earth atmosphere and the World Ocean. As stated by the United Nations Interstate commission of experts on climate changing (ICECC), and national academies of sciences of G-8 countries, the average temperature on the Earth has risen by 1o C from the end of XIX century, and "major part of the warming observed in the last 50 years is caused by human activity", first of all, it is due to emissions of the gases causing greenhouse effect, such as carbon dioxide (CO2 ) and methane (CH4 ) (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/).

[67]  The estimations obtained on climatic models referred to by ICECC, show that the average temperature of the Earth may raise from 1 up to 15o C between 1990 and 2080 (in different regions, or on the average on the Earth). Predictably, warming will lead to other climatic changes, including a rise of the World Ocean level by 0.1-5 meters (it is probable in 30-40 years), and to changes in the quantity and distribution of atmospheric precipitation. As a result, natural cataclysms, such as flooding, droughts, hurricanes, etc., would become more frequent, the harvests would become poorer and many biological species may disappear. The struggle for control over diminished natural resources, both between the countries, and between separate groups of the population may become aggravated, which also would provoke new global conflicts.

[68]  Taking into consideration, that emissions of carbon dioxide considerably exceed those of methane, we shall estimate the threat of global warming by the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) emission (Human Development Report, 2006; http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2006/).

4.3. The Impact Analysis of the Totality of Global Threats on the Sustainability in the XXI Century

[69]  We shall define the summarized impact of the totality of global threats (1-8) on different countries of the world. Being grounded on data on specified threats we shall use the method of cluster analysis with the purpose of selecting groups of the countries with "close" characteristics of summarized threats. We shall perform this procedure on the basis of application of Vard clusterization agglomerative hierarchical algorithm. For each country j we shall put the corresponding vector Trj, with the elements describing the degree of corresponding threats (Table 8).

Trj = (HIV, TB, WI, CINI, CP, CO2, TFC)

where HIV - number HIV -infected people (percentage of the population in the age of 15-49 years); TB - degree of tuberculosis spreading (number of patients per 100000 population); GI - an index of inverse globalization (it is calculated as 1/index KOF); WI - index of limited access to clean potable water (percentage of the population in the country not having access to potable water); CP - corruption perception index (varies from 0 up to 10, where 0 is maximum level of corruption, 10 - minimum); GINI - index of inequality in distribution of allocation of material and social assets (varies in the range of 0-65, where 0 is minimum inequality, 65 is maximum inequality); DI - demographic status (it is estimated by the ratio of gross national product per capita in the country to the population density in the country); CO2 - carbon dioxide emission (it is measured in metric tons); TFC - consumption of traditional fuels (it is measured in percentage of the total power consumption in the country).

[70]  Initial data on each threat are normalized, so that its values vary over the range (0-1). Thus, 0 will correspond to maximum threat, 1 - to minimum. In other words, after such normalization any of threats becomes "closer" for the concrete country to the extent its numerical value is closer to zero, and "more distant" for the country, if its value is closer to 1.

[71]  For example, normalization for HIV and TB is fulfilled by using relationships:

eq007.gif

eq008.gif

[72]  Similarly the normalization for all other threats is fulfilled. As a result, we have a vector of the normalized threats:

Trj0 =

eq009.gif(7)

[73]  Let us correlate with each j -th country some number | Trj|, which is the Minkovsky norm of the vector Trj consisting of normalized threats at p=3:

eq010.gif(8)

where | Trj| is the threats vector norm for j -th country. Let us identify the norm of vector | Trj| as a degree of remoteness from the totality of threats.

[74]  On the basis of the computed norms of the vector of threats | Trj| for each country j let us introduce relationship of order between countries' clusters (Table 8).

eq011.gif(9)

[75]  From Table 8 it follows that cluster 1 includes a group of "the most satisfactory countries", from the point of view of safety, for which the degree of remoteness from the totality of threats is highest. Moreover the world leaders in terms of sustainable development index for 2006 (Finland, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, United Kingdom, Australia, United States, Canada, Austria, Table 4) also belong to cluster 1 (Table 8) as the most satisfactory countries, from the safety point of view.

[76]  And, on the contrary, cluster 5 includes the countries most vulnerable in this respect. For them the remoteness degree from the totality of threats is minimal. The comparison of cluster 5 of Table 3 and cluster 5 of Table 8 shows that the countries with the lowest values of sustainable development index (like Cameroon, Madagascar, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe) at the same time are most vulnerable in respect of safety.

[77]  Ukraine, China, Russia, India, Romania, Egypt, Mexico, Argentina and a number of other countries belongs to cluster 3 with the average remoteness from the totality of global threats. The most dangerous global threats for Ukraine are the level of spreading HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis which is one of the highest in the world and a very high level of corruption.

4.4. Possible Scenarios Generated by "The Conflict of XXI Century"

[78]  Since from relationship (3) and Table 6 it follows that at n>6 for Cn - waves the inverse Fibonacci series {Fs} is degenerated, there is a natural question what should happen with the world civilization in the course of "the conflict of XXI century" and after 2092, in particular, in XXII century? Maybe, there is a closing cycle of some evolutionary chain:

C7 to C6 to C5 to C4 to C3 to C2 to C1 ?

[79]  The answer to this question can be found in the works of two outstanding scientists of the past century - V. I. Vernadsky: "In the geological history of biosphere human beings will have great future, if they realize it and do not use their mind and labor for self-destruction" [Vernadsky, 1944] and N. N. Moiseyev: "If the mankind is not going to radically change its behavior on the Planetary scale, then in the middle of XXI century there may appear conditions under which people cannot exist" [Moiseyev, 2000]. Taking into consideration that the statistical data on the world conflicts (presented in (List of wars, 2007; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars) for the time span from 2500 B.C. up to now) corresponded to the constant paradigm of the mankind existence "to meet people's own interests", then according to [Vernadsky, 1944] and [Moiseyev, 2000] with the persistence of this paradigm on the Planetary scale, already in the middle of XXI, it would not be possible for people to exist.

[80]  If we assume that the mankind will change the paradigm of its existence on the Planetary scale for another, for example, for the paradigm of "harmonious coexistence", then the systemic regularity of world conflicts over the course of time determined for the previous paradigm corresponding to the Fibonacci series, obviously, will lose its validity. Thus, the mankind will find new prospects for prolongation of its mission on the Planet.


RJES

Citation: Zgurovsky, M. Z. (2007), Sustainable development global simulation: Opportunities and treats to the planet, Russ. J. Earth Sci., 9, ES2003, doi:10.2205/2007ES000273.

Copyright 2007 by the Russian Journal of Earth Sciences

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