Russia (bbabo.net), - Year 2019 - digit. 2021st - ESG. 2023rd -? Longer and more productive life as the next global priority for growth. Replenishing its deficit and ensuring quality is one of the main tasks for sustainable economic growth in the long term.
There are several ways to replenish the world's workforce.
The first and most obvious way is to increase the birth rate. However, even if government measures to increase the birth rate are successful, their results will begin to manifest themselves in 20-30 years, and the losses from the projected reduction in the labor force by 2030 will not be able to be replenished in a short time.
The second way is migration. Encouraging the migration of qualified personnel using scoring systems could solve some of the problems and is likely to become a big trend in the coming decades. The migration of low-skilled personnel is also important to ensure the supply of labor in the agricultural and construction sectors. However, in the context of global de-globalization, labor migration is difficult and is increasingly regional in nature. The main observation is that the societies of most developed and developing countries are unfriendly in relation to mass migration, that is, at the moment, mass permanent migration is politically unacceptable.
The third way is to increase productivity and automate production processes. Automation and robotization (a special case of automation) are a practical solution to compensate for the losses caused by labor shortages. However, the implementation of such measures will take a long time and will not be able to completely close the gap.
What other alternative ways can there be? This is where the next big thing lies. Probably, it will be her world community that will soon discuss how ESG discussed in 2021. Imagine a situation when the average life expectancy increases significantly, and with it the time of active work increases. This may mean an increase in the labor force in the economy by 30-50% without migration and a sharp internal growth in the birth rate. A longer life and an intensive increase in the workforce will significantly lengthen a person's years of productive work.
How to make people live and work 20 more years? This is where bio and related technologies come to the rescue. Therefore, a breakthrough in biotechnology combined with robotics and new materials science is a direction that has every chance of becoming the basis of the world economy of the future.
A longer and more productive life is not only valuable in itself, but will also systematically solve the problem of labor resources, which now stands in full growth before the authorities of countries with high and middle incomes per capita.
There is fertile soil. 2020 was a breakthrough year for biotech IPOs. 77% more companies entered the open market than in 2019 (BDO data). The NASDAQ Biotech Index added 100 companies in 2020, compared to only 40 a year earlier. Naturally, one of the reasons for the rapid growth in 2020 was the need to develop vaccines against COVID-19. Investor interest in biotech companies has cooled slightly in 2021, but the upward trend in the NASDAQ Biotech Index continues. Different types of investors began to show interest in the sector. According to the Far East High-Tech Fund, in 2019 private equity funds, which were previously not ready to assess the prospects and cost of drug development, have become prominent players in biotech. KKR and Blackstone have made major investments to acquire biotech companies. Tech giants - Google and Samsung - also did not stand aside.
Now one of the main areas of biotechnology is the creation of drugs for the treatment of serious human diseases and diseases associated with aging. Genetic editing and patient therapy, and the development of biomedicine provide more effective approaches to improving a person's health and prolonging his life. According to UN calculations made in 2019, by 2050 the number of people aged 80 and over will triple, which increases the burden on the state in terms of pensions and health care. When properly applied, biotechnology can improve the quality of medicine and slow down the aging process of a person. Improving the quality of human capital, in turn, can extend the working period.The development of biotechnology is closely related to the development of materials science, robotics, nanotechnology and machine learning. New developments include technologies such as respiration sensors for diagnosing diseases, nanofluidics, identification of the molecular mechanisms of human aging through sequencing of cell DNA, and detection of effective antibiotics using machine learning methods. Already successful developments include, for example, the creation of artificial donor organs, nanobots that operate in the human body, and much more. Thanks to the expansion of biomedical, including genetic, research, it has now become possible to help patients with rare diseases, develop alternatives to antibiotic treatment, and more. However, it is not uncommon for promising innovations to face the ethical issues of “improving” people and increasing inequality. The question of who gains and loses from the advances in bioengineering is becoming more and more urgent. In addition, there are risks of leakage of confidential genetic information of people and their unfair use.
The transformation process will undoubtedly come with the accompanying shocks characteristic of emerging technologies. In addition to investment losses, unsuccessful clinical trials can lead to the creation of biological and chemical materials that are harmful to both humans and the environment. It is necessary to develop norms and rules of administrative regulation, which should find a balance between ethics, scientific and technological progress and safety. Thus, it should be assumed that - as in the case of digital and ESG - the development of biotech will be associated with significant changes in the regulatory environment, which will require decisions at the international level. There will be a need for global negotiations, like the recent ones in Glasgow on the climate agenda.
Every couple of years, the world goes crazy over a new topic. Each new wave is based on a major economic and social transformation
Every couple of years, the world goes crazy over a new topic. Each new wave is based on a major economic and social transformation. So, in 2019, the topic of digitalization "took off", and in 2021 - ESG and climate. Which megatrend is next? Maybe not in 2023, but certainly during the 2020s, it will be a complex of technological, economic and regulatory changes aimed at achieving a longer and more productive human life.
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