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The world after 2020 - What
next?
Chris Patten
Every once in a while one or other of
my family members, loyal fans that they are, will
suggest that I take all my past newsletter
editorials and turn them into a book on where the
world is going, only from an African perspective. In
a way they're dead right, because when you scan the
bookstore shelves, they are crammed with offerings
from economists and academics from the USA and
Britain with nary a peep from the rest of the world,
let alone the developing world.
That said, I recently read Chris Patten's What Next?
Surviving the Twenty First Century and, in my
estimation, it stands head and shoulders above the
offerings from the rest of the pundits. Mind you,
Chris Patten is uniquely qualified to write such a
book having been a UK cabinet minister, the last
colonial governor of Hong Kong, an EU commissioner
and, most recently, President of Oxford University
with access to the research riches of that
establishment.
He covers all the normal subjects - global warming,
peak oil, the environment, globalisation, terrorism,
disease and the growing world population -
succinctly yet comprehensively. Not surprisingly,
his perceptive comments on the rise of China come
from first hand knowledge of the country and its
leaders. However, what I liked most is that he also
devoted chapters to other key topics which are
hinted at in our daily press but rarely covered in
any depth or with any attempt to integrate them with
the other key issues of the day.
Back in the 1960s, for instance, there was huge
resistance to the development of nuclear bombs;
today, apart from a hypocritical campaign against
Iran, no one seems to care too much about the number
of nations that have their finger on the nuclear
trigger. Each hour, on the hour, our TV news
broadcasts carry new pictures of the fight against
the Taliban in Afghanistan, a campaign which is
slowly losing the support of Nato citizens; in his
chapter on the drug trade, Patten paints a scary
picture of the global drug trade, with Afghanistan's
heroin and Colombia's cocaine the starting point,
which adds to the urgency for a settlement in
Afghanistan and more attention on Mexico's slide to
becoming a lawless state. From an African
perspective, trade in drugs is overshadowed by arms
and human smuggling and he pulls together facts and
figures that rarely see the light of day to paint a
picture of these and the related subjects of
corruption, money laundering and the sheer cynicism
on the part of political leaders everywhere.
The one missing link in his synopsis is the role of
technology, but I'm not surprised at that omission
as he describes in his introduction how he wrote the
whole book with pen and ink on pages scattered all
around his dining room. Though he is very empathetic
about the developing world, you can see he writes
from the perspective of a first worlder comfortable
with the security of his own civilisation.
Nonetheless he provides ample food for thought on a
range of topics that really should engage our
attention - and which I need to mull on from an
African perspective before ever putting fingers to
keyboard to write my book.
Now, much as I would like to meet Chris Patten to
discuss some of his ideas, I must confess that we
have no links with him or his publisher and we don't
have an online bookshop where you can buy What
Next?. So, if you want to take advantage of this
stimulating read, you'll need to search the shelves
of your local on or offline bookstore.
Chris Patten:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/what-next-surviving-the-21st-century-by-chris-patten-942647.html
Source: MBendi Newsletter: 19.Mar.2010 |
