I gave my regular predictions blog a miss last year. Given the wild and crazy ride that 2016 was,
I suppose any predictions would have been futile.
For example the night before the June Brexit vote I was in Berlin, and
in a brief exchange with a senior politician I asked their opinion about the
Brexit vote. “No worries” said the
experienced diplomat, the UK will stay in the EU!
So, despite the futility of making predictions (especially
about the future J),
here goes for 2017 (in no particular order).
1.
The truth will matter more than ever. Supposedly we are in a post truth, no fact,
fake news world. Now we know people make
decisions on the basis of lots of things.
Cicero said that people make decisions based on reasoning, experience,
necessity and instinct. How true. At
least reasoning and experience are based on research. Researchers throughout the world have a
greater than ever responsibility to speak truth to power and to do it actively
rather than passively.
2.
We will all have to come together to protect
women’s health. The forces being lined up against women’s health are
formidable. Most obviously in the sexual
and reproductive rights arena with some elements in the new US administration.
These rights have to continually be fought for throughout the world. Those of us in the nutrition community need
to continually stress to decision makers the importance of girls staying in school, girls and women marrying when they are ready, giving birth when they consent and to have access to quality health services. All of these are vital to
their own health and the health of their families—those that exist and those
yet to be born.
3.
The development and humanitarian worlds will
move towards each other. The new UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres,
will start on January 1, 2017. He
follows on from Ban Ki Moon. Given Mr
Guterres’ 10 year leadership of the UN High Commission for Refugees, he will
undoubtedly bring a fresh perspective to development. Can he begin to breakdown the barriers
between humanitarian action and development action? I hope so. We should give him all the help we
can.
4.
Overseas Development Assistance (aid) flows
will come under more stress. Donors
are under pressure from domestic constituencies who think their countries are
overrun by immigrants, feel that services are stretched and who live the reality that real wages of low
and middle income households have not yet risen to the 2007 levels. The temptation for donors will be to “process
strangle” the life out of those who compete to spend aid. Spending money on what you said you would is
important, but the most important thing is to have impact. This will also reassure the doubters. This means investing in “good enough”
evaluations, often with a lag (even a few years after the intervention). Donors
need to be more willing to do this.
5.
Human gene editing will lead to a reappraisal
of GMOs. If human gene editing begins to show positive impacts on human
health (in cancer, HIV, sickle cell disease), there will be a reappraisal of
GMOs, at least in plants. I’m not
saying GMOs will become any less controversial, but positions—which have seemed
ossified since 1999—could shift. The
reappraisal could lead to new possibilities for doing good things to reduce the
use of energy, water, fertiliser, pesticide and herbicide or it could lead
everyone to double down on entrenched positions. We shall see.
6.
Social mobilisation for health will be led, increasingly,
by those with the health condition.
As social media and internet penetration strengthens, the networks we already
see emerging for people with diseases like Crohn’s may well happen with
conditions more common in low and middle income countries. When will people
experiencing undernutrition become a powerful political force? Something may well surface this year.
7.
Big business will become emboldened by the
new US Administration. The talk of business
deregulation has got some fearing the worst. They may be right, but this is a
reason to intensify engagement with businesses rather than to shut them down. In the absence of strong governmental
regulation, civil society will need to fill the vacuum. Sometimes this will
mean blocking action, but most often it should be advising, guiding, nudging,
praising and, yes, shaming businesses when necessary.
8.
This could be a breakout year for vegetarian
diets. See Impossible
Burgers. Does it count if vegetarian
meat actually looks and tastes like real meat?
If it reduces land use, greenhouse gas emissions and boosts health,
then, er, yes. The main challenge will
be to make the products safe and affordable. In other words, the “ifs” really matter.
9.
Texting will catch on for work purposes. Anthony
Weiner jokes aside, I know of colleagues who use WhatsApp to communicate,
eschewing email. They feel it is more
personal, more exclusive, more immediate, and more, well, social. I’m not sure about this one, but I know that
for many people work email is beginning to feel like home mail – only adverts
and bills.
10.
2017 will defy predictions. It will defy
mine, yours, and even Nassim Taleb’s (wait, he doesn’t make predictions—very
smart). With Mr Trump as POTUS and key
elections coming up in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa, we are in for a
rollercoaster year (let’s hope so, at least rollercoasters have some
highs). Again, evidence is going to be
key—those of you who still believe in data (J) please remember to wield it. I leave you with this: the year-ending
edition of Time magazine asked populations in a number of countries “what
percentage of the people in your country are Muslim?” In the US the answer was
close to 20% (the real number is 1%) and in the UK the answer was 15% (the real
number is 5%). The pattern was the same for every country asked—even India. Good data still matter (although I wonder what
the Time poll’s margin of error was? Sigh.)
