From Blockchain to Space Travel to Virtual Worlds:
For the last few years, the German Environment Agency (UBA) has been doing regular horizon scanning processes to identify upcoming changes that may have decisive impacts in the areas of environment and sustainability and lie outside mainstream debates in science and media. The goal of this project was to find future opportunities and risks as early as possible, derive environmental policy options and identify new needs for environmental research.
This German-language report publishes the results of the horizon scanning. The ten topics with the highest relevance range from distributed ledger technologies and virtual and augmented reality to government-funded and private space travel to bio-inspired architecture and settlement development, also touching on alternative lifestyles and social divisions.