The world faces serious challenges. Here we show where they stand – and the evidence that they can be overcome.
Global CO₂ emissions reached almost 39 billion tonnes in 2024 – still rising, and more than six times the level of 1950.
Clean power is scaling fast: solar and wind produced 17 % of the world’s electricity in 2025, up from 0.2 % in 2000. Installed solar capacity grew about 60-fold since 2010, to roughly 2,400 gigawatts, as module prices fell by 95 %.
In 2025, researchers recorded 65 armed conflicts involving states – the most since 1946 – and the highest death toll from organised violence since 1994.
Despite the recent rise, the death rate in wars remains less than a tenth of its 1950 peak – 1.9 per 100,000 people in 2025, compared with 22.
The share of people living in democracies has roughly halved since around 2000, to about a quarter of the world population (2025).
Democracies have become more representative: women now hold 27 % of seats in national parliaments worldwide, more than twice the share of 1997.
About 850 million people still lived on less than $3 a day in 2023, increasingly concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa and conflict-affected countries.
Whole regions have shown what is possible: in East Asia and the Pacific, extreme poverty fell from 67 % in 1990 to 2 % in 2023; in South Asia from 50 % to 4 %.