2026-10-08T03:34:41Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/34037796 2026-10-01T02:16:09Z category_27517 category_27526 category_27619 category_26875 category_26878 category_28864 item_type_12 month_year_10_2026

Three Billion Lives Protected Through the Polycrisis Century: How technological diffusion and sustainable development can reduce human suffering by 2100 Hunter Hughes (25092079) Political economy and social change Socio-economic development Economic development policy Human impacts of climate change and human adaptation Climate change impacts and adaptation not elsewhere classified Artificial intelligence not elsewhere classified polycrisis technological diffusion sustainable development absorptive capacity Compound Convergence Multiplier climate vulnerability solar PV cost decline mobile money renewable energy diffusion scenario pathways Accelerated convergence The report argues that by 2100, about three billion people—roughly 29% of the projected global population—could be durably protected from major deprivations if technological diffusion and sustainable development are treated as a single, compounding programme rather than separate agendas. This estimate is produced through the Protection Ledger, an accounting model that combines sourced global exposure pools with explicit assumptions about how much of each pool can be closed by 2100 and how much overlap exists between domains.The report identifies five domains where protection is technologically and institutionally feasible: energy and clean air, water and sanitation, food and nutrition, income/finance/connectivity, and climate hazard protection. Together these generate 7.1 billion gross protections, which net to ~3.0 billion unique people after adjusting for overlap. As the document states: “Because the same person is protected in 2.4 domains on average, that nets to about 3.0 billion unique people.”Field evidence—from Bangladesh’s cyclone programme, Kenya’s mobile money, India’s LPG rollout, Gavi’s immunisation system, and Africa’s solar uptake—demonstrates that diffusion works when paired with institutions, finance, and maintenance. The report formalises this through the LIFE Framework (Leapfrog, Institutionalize, Finance, Endure), emphasising that protection is a stock that depreciates unless maintained through shocks.The analysis is set against rising climate hazards, demographic concentration in vulnerable regions, and slowing progress in key SDGs. It warns that the binding constraint is not technology, but absorptive capacity, financial flows, and institutional durability. Scenario pathways range from 1.5 billion protected in a fractured world to 4.2 billion under accelerated convergence.The core claim is deliberately narrow: with existing technologies, paired with stronger institutions and sustained finance, protecting roughly three in ten people alive in 2100 is plausible—not utopian. 2026-10-01T02:16:09Z Text Preprint 10.6084/m9.figshare.34037796.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/preprint/Three_Billion_Lives_Protected_Through_the_Polycrisis_Century_How_technological_diffusion_and_sustainable_development_can_reduce_human_suffering_by_2100/34037796 CC BY 4.0