SDGs and Climate Action

1. Clean Hydrogen will be a reality in three years. In India, Collaborations are likely to be forged to enable a zero emissions state. Hydrogen, Solar and wind will constitute a massive energy transition to clean power. As President Biden’s policies become visible, an energy coalition will emerge to pivot the human race to clean power at a democratised cost. 

2. The most deadly risk that emerged in 2020 was not Covid, but Climate change. Fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, eruptions, melts and slides are happening at an alarming rate. Nature is screaming for attention. We need to get onto a new path of rectitude.

3. Affordable energy and infrastructure are converging to create sustainable cities and communities. 

4. Responsible consumption and production with full deployment of e-commerce, 3-D printing, Robotics, IOT and AI-ML are accelerating growth. Entire new businesses are emerging to efficiently and affordably retrain the human race. New kinds of decent work and economic growth are resulting. 

5. Clean technology, clean air and clean water are emerging as the imperatives of 2021. Covid 19 has taught us that the world needs and has come to depend on an internet that is scalable and safe from cyber threats. More people want to see birds in the air, free migration, multiple sightings in game reserves, a rejuvenation of forests, planting of a trillion trees and many other such nature friendly outcomes. 

6. Health care and education have shown the most potential for disruption through innovation. No poverty, zero hunger, good health and well being, quality education in phygital formats,and the ubiquitous availability of clean water through taps and sanitation have all come within the reach of planet earth. 

Work from home and quick learning new jobs will be created at scale. Decent work and healthy economic growth will become the fulcrum around which most countries would like to budget their next year’s spends. 

Universal basic income and service that will be provided by governments will leave no one behind. Life below water and life on land will be enhanced by Human-Machine interface operated remotely and optimised. The result will be Gender equality, reduced inequalities, and peace, justice and strong institutions. 

All of us want to claim back our planet and want it to be passed on to our next generation in a better shape than we found it. The pandemic has unwittingly shown us the way. The entire world has been readied to become exponential! 

Five predictions that I make will take us by storm in 2021:

1. Streaming content will overwhelm data news and entertainment. The portable fire stick will become dexterous enough to display curated and indexed content to be displayed on a screen or on any surface, wherever and whenever. WI-FI and collaboration software driven meetings will be all pervasive as 11,000 new satellites are launched and 5-G becomes ubiquitous. 

2. Many services like tax, company law, governance, auditing, and analytics will be available off icons on your device. Each service provider will encourage you to download the framework or platform for single or multiple use. Many high quality and seamless services will be launched to integrate a lot of needs.

3. High intensity compute power will become available through quantum computers. Storage will be unlimited and the cloud will be the default setting. Snowflake, Google plus, MS Cloud and Amazon AWS will saturate choices. 

4. Genome and immunity testing for all will be posssible post COVID19 . Constant health monitoring will be the default norm. The Annual Checkup will become obsolete. Health, personal hygiene and tailor made diets for all will emerge. Availability of supplements and food in one mix tailor made to your genome and microbiome will change norms of nutrition and health. Longevity will take off. 

5. Education will be available anywhere, on any device, from any source. Old syllabuses will be dumped and fresh Ai-ML driven learning will emerge. Each one of us may have an AI mentor that will select courses, help us interact with appropriate groups of learners, give us forums for discussion and will coordinate our timetables! When AI and VR converge with wireless 5G networks, our global education problem moves from the nearly impossible challenge of finding teachers and funding schools for the hundreds of millions in need, to the much more manageable puzzle of building a fantastic digital education system that we can give away for free to anyone with a headset. It’s quality and quantity on demand.

As a framework, nothing will be more important than SDGs backed into Strategic plans and moved rapidly to action through measurable outcomes reported externally using IR! ESG will rule the roost!