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Have you ever wondered where you or your children may be living in 2050? Experts predict that by then three-quarters of the world's population will live in cities. For part of its Tomorrow's Cities season the BBC takes a look through the crystal ball to imagine what city life might be like in 40 years' time.

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Have you ever wondered where you or your children may be living in 2050? Experts predict that by then three quarters of the world's population will live in cities. The BBC takes a look through the crystal ball to imagine what city life might be like in 40 years' time.

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India predicted to be world's biggest population

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India predicted to be world's biggest population

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India looks set to overtake China as the world's most populous country from 2028, according to the United Nations.

At that point, both nations will number 1.45 billion people. Subsequently India's population will continue to grow until the middle of the century, while China's slowly declines.

The UN also estimates that the current global population of 7.2 billion will reach 9.6 billion by 2050.

That is a faster rate of growth than previously estimated.

The population growth will be mainly in developing countries, particularly in Africa, the UN says.

The world's 49 least developed countries are projected to double in size from around 900 million people in 2013 to 1.8 billion in 2050, whereas the population of developed regions will remain largely unchanged.

The UN said the reason for the increase in its projection is largely new information on fertility levels in certain high birth rate countries.

Nigerian growth

Large developing countries, such as China, India and Brazil, have seen a rapid fall in the average number of children per woman, but in other nations, such as Nigeria, Niger, Ethiopia and Uganda, fertility levels remain high.

Nigeria's population is expected to exceed that of the US by the middle of the century, and could start to rival China's by 2100.

China's population is expected to start decreasing after 2030.

"Although population growth has slowed for the world as a whole, this report reminds us that some developing countries, especially in Africa, are still growing rapidly," commented Wu Hongbo, the UN's Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs.

The United Nations publishes an assessment of past, current and future population trends every two years, in a recurrent series known as the World Population Prospects.

Researchers have used data for 233 countries and areas to produce Friday's report.

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India looks set to overtake China as the world's most populous country from 2028, according to the United Nations. At that point, both nations will number 1.45 billion people. Subsequently India's population will continue to grow until the middle of the century, while China's slowly declines.

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Communities Secretary Eric Pickles says the government "made a mistake" and should have dredged the flood-hit Somerset Levels.

He said it may have relied too much on Environment Agency advice.

There are now 16 severe flood warnings - meaning "danger to life" - in place, two in the Somerset Levels and 14 along the Thames in Berkshire and Surrey between Datchet and Shepperton Green.

Further rain is forecast across the UK this week.

The Environment Agency also has more than 70 lesser flood warnings in place across the South East.

At the scene

Dozens of residents in Chertsey have been coming down to see for themselves how badly the banks have burst on the Thames.

It is hard to see where the water's meant to stop and the land starts - there is a park bench that is submerged, with just the top poking out and that gives you an idea of how deep the water is here.

The swans are certainly having a good time - they're taking advantage of the extra area they can swim in.

Every local who has been down to the banks today says they used to think 2003 was a bad year for flooding - this year, though, is worse. They've never seen it so bad.

Issuing the severe flood warnings for the Thames in Berkshire, the agency said "river levels will continue to rise for at least 24 hours and are forecast to be higher than those experienced in 2003...

"Widespread property flooding is expected in the area and disruption to local infrastructure is possible."

In response to Mr Pickles' comments, it added: "The Environment Agency's immediate priority is to protect people and property in the face of this extreme period of weather.

"Until the danger to people and property has passed, we are putting all our energy and focus into this vital work which is recognised by government."

Soldiers called

The main rail route into Devon and Cornwall remains cut off by the problems caused by the flooding and the storm damage but a line from Somerset to Exeter closed by a landslip on Saturday has reopened.

Recent rainfall in the area has meant water levels have increased by about a quarter of an inch (0.6cm) an hour in the village of Burrowbridge.

In other developments:

About 20 residents are being rescued by firefighters from a caravan park next to the River Thames near Northmoor in Oxfordshire which has become flooded for the second time in five weeks

The body of a man found on the shoreline in the St Cyrus area of Aberdeenshire was that of a missing Fife man, police have confirmed

The prime minister is to hold an emergency Cobra meeting later over the flooding crisis

Road have been closed by flooding and fallen trees in Wales, where 64,000 properties were left without electricity after power cuts

Rail passengers between London and Kent are facing fresh disruption because of a landslip at Meopham in Kent

Reserve soldiers of 7 Battalion The Rifles were called in to dam a breach in the Kennet Canal which threatened an electrical sub-station near Burghfield, south of Reading

The Environment Agency has faced criticism that it has not done enough to help those affected.

Repeated calls for dredging - a process which removes silt from river channels so that water can flow through - were made to government departments by farmers and others in the region at least six months ago, but funding was declined.

The area has not been dredged since the late 1990s, according to Prime Minister David Cameron who visited the area on Friday.

Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Pickles, who has now been put in charge of the government's flood defence, said: "We made a mistake, there's no doubt about that.

"We perhaps relied too much on the Environment Agency's advice.

"I think we recognise now that we should have dredged and I think it's important now that we get on with the process of getting people back into their houses, and really do some serious pumping."

He added: "I apologise unreservedly and I'm really sorry that we took the advice, we thought we were dealing with experts."

But the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management say the government is to blame for failing to heed the agency's warning on investment in flood management.

Earlier this week the Environment Agency said it spent £45m in the last financial year on improving river flow across England, including dredging and weed clearance.

It says increased dredging would not have prevented the current flooding in the Somerset Levels - due to the sheer amount of water.

Speaking in Burrowbridge, UKIP leader Nigel Farage called for a public inquiry into how the country deals with river management.

And Tessa Munt, MP for Wells, said: "I brought the flooding minister here to see the whole area back in April last year and we made very clear the need for dredging then, and I think it hasn't happened fast enough but now it's going to happen."

Landslip

A local council leader has also called for the government to do more to help flood victims.

Rachel Sutton, acting leader of Exeter City Council, said more money was needed to improve rail lines.

She said rail lines had been blocked near Exeter 12 months ago because of flooding, and government funding was needed to protect lines which were "vulnerable in a number of places".

"The local authorities can't do this on their own, particularly when we're having to cut back because of cuts to our grant from central government," she said.

Network Rail said the Yeovil-Exeter line which was closed because of a landslip at Crewkerne reopened and a limited service from Exeter to London Waterloo is running at a reduced speed through the area.

In Dawlish, where the main line between Devon and Cornwall was destroyed by waves on Tuesday, concrete has been sprayed on to the cliff behind the track to make the area safer in the face of continuing high winds and large waves.

Network Rail said work at the site was "progressing well" in six-hour shifts between high tides.

However, a First Great Western spokesman said the weather had been hampering efforts to repair the track and predicted it would take four to six weeks to sort out.

'No end in sight'

Peter Sloss, of the BBC Weather Centre, said the wind and rain would ease into Monday, though falling temperatures would mean some wintry showers.

But he said there was "no real end in sight", with another area of low pressure reaching the UK on Monday night and into Tuesday, bringing more heavy rain.

Tuesday could see as much as 30mm (1in) fall in Wales and the south-west of England with more heavy rain is expected on Wednesday and Thursday.

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Communities Secretary Eric Pickles says the government "made a mistake" and should have dredged the flood-hit Somerset Levels. He said it may have relied too much on Environment Agency advice. There are now 16 severe flood warnings - meaning "danger to life" - in place, two in the Somerset Levels and 14 along the Thames in Berkshire and Surrey between Datchet and Shepperton Green.

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We asked for your spare computing power to predict future climate. Developed for the BBC by climate scientists, led by Oxford University, using the Met Office climate model.

The results so far
UK temperatures to rise 4°C by 2080. View online video, interactive graphs and a thank you message from David Attenborough.

Shown: January 2007 on BBC One

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We asked for your spare computing power to predict future climate. Developed for the BBC by climate scientists, led by Oxford University, using the Met Office climate model. The results so far UK temperatures to rise 4°C by 2080. View online video, interactive graphs and a thank you message from David Attenborough.

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Poisonous tropical rainforest animals in the Amazon - BBC wildlife

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The Amazon jungle is home to poisonous tropical wildlife such as these caterpillars, scorpions and more. Watch them hide under an Amazonian leaf litter teaming with life. Giaat White-Kneed Tarantula flicks poisonous hairs though the air at any potential threat.

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Tropical forests in Africa may be more resilient to future climate change than the Amazon and other regions, a gathering of scientists has said.

An international conference agreed that the region's surviving tree species had endured a number of climatic catastrophes over the past 4,000 years.

As a result, they are better suited to cope with future shifts in the climate.

The event at the University of Oxford looked at the "fate of Africa's tropical forests in the 21st Century".

Conference organiser Yadvinder Malhi, professor of ecosystems at the university, said the main reason was that Africa's climate had been far more variable than, say, the Amazon or South-East Asia, even over the past 10,000 years.

"In some senses, African forests have gone through a number of catastrophes in the past 4,000 to 2,000 years," he told BBC News.

"They are already much lower in diversity, and have lost species that would have been potentially vulnerable. But the species that remain are relatively adaptable, have broad ranges and have adapted to quite rapid changes in rainfall.

"So, overall, the remaining system - although it may be poorer to some extent - may be much more resilient to the pressures from climate change in this century."
Data deficit

In terms of mammal diversity, it is extremely high
Simon Lewis, Leeds University

The three-day conference - entitled Climate Change, Deforestation and the Future of African Rainforests - focused on the tropical forests of West Africa, which helped highlight a key issue.

"One thing that really came out was how little we know about African climate compared to other regions of the world," Prof Malhi observed.

"There are large gaps [in the data]. If you look at a map of where weather stations are reporting, there is no data coming out of almost the entire Congo Basin."

It was an issue that was also highlighted by one of the speakers, Mark New from the University of Cape Town.

"A colleague of mine put it very nicely when he said that if you took a scale of what is known in various regions, and if you went into West Africa and the Sahel region, which has been extensively studied, and made that 100, if you then went down to the West African coast where the tropical forests are, it would probably be about 50 in terms of relative knowledge," he explained.

"But then if you carried on down to the Congo Basin, then you would probably get five or 10 out of 100."

Changes in rainfall patterns can affect the characteristics of tropical forests, research shows
Climate reshapes tropical forests
Prof New added: "One of the critical points that I made is that what we know and understand about what controls the climate and variability, in the Congo especially, is basically zero.

"This makes it very difficult to make any strong predictions of what the future might be."

As well as issues surrounding climate data, the conference also heard about research projects assessing characteristics of the region's tropical forests.

Simon Lewis from the University of Leeds, UK, outlined findings regarding long-term forest plots.

"One of the big findings has been that African forests have more biomass, and have much bigger trees, in comparison with the forests in the Amazon," he told BBC News.

"That is partly because the trees are longer lived so they are becoming bigger over time, and partly because the whole forests are more productive.

"But we are not entirely sure why the African forests are more productive than those in the Amazon."
More than trees
He said that although there was a smaller diversity of tree species in Africa - the second largest area of rainforest on the planet - compared with the Amazon, it did not mean the forests were not important biodiversity hotspots.

"We must not just consider the trees, because in terms of mammal diversity, it is extremely high," Dr Lewis added.

"There are many species of monkeys, and you then have things like pigmy hippos and forest giraffes.

"In terms of its animal diversity, it really is a remarkable place. And the majestic stature of the trees, it is again remarkable."

Prof Malhi explained that the results of the conference would soon be outlined in briefs and drafts for policymakers summarising "some of the key points of what we know and what we need to know".

"We will also make some scientific recommendations about what are the immediate gaps in the research areas, that with a focused effort, we could know in five years time," he added.

"We are also planning to have a smaller follow-up meeting in central Africa, where the region's key policymakers will be invited to attend."

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Tropical forests in Africa may be more resilient to future climate change than the Amazon and other regions, a gathering of scientists has said. An international conference agreed that the region's surviving tree species had endured a number of climatic catastrophes over the past 4,000 years.

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Could carbon credits stop the destruction?

The Indonesian rainforest is worth more standing than felled say researchers.
A new analysis has shown that payments to reduce carbon emissions from the forests could generate more income than palm oil production on deforested land.

Protecting the forests could become profitable under a proposed scheme called Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (Redd).

In the journal Conservation Letters, they say this scheme will help protect threatened forests.

Palm oil, an ingredient in products including food and soaps, has become an important feedstock for biodiesel.

This has created controversy because in Indonesia and Malaysia, which are its major producers, companies clear and often burn swathes of forest to grow their crops.

These ecologically-rich forests are home to a huge variety of species, including endangered orangutans, and to very carbon-rich peat swamps.

Oscar Venter from the University of Queensland led the study that focused on Kalimantan, in Indonesia - just one forested region where deforestation has stirred environmental concern.

The aim was to find out if protection of the forests could be as profitable as palm oil.
Forest custodians
Under Redd, oil palm companies could be called on to protect the forested areas they own, and sell "carbon credits" for the amount of carbon contained in that forest.

"Despite their rich biodiversity, we haven't been able to protect these forests with conservation funds," said Dr Venter. "So we looked at what Redd would be able to do and what that would mean for biodiversity."

He and his team looked at the financial reports of palm oil companies to see how much money they earned from oil production, and from selling timber.

They compared these earnings to the predicted carbon emissions from planned palm oil projects, and calculated that if carbon credits could be sold for $10 (£6) per tonne, conserving the forest could be more profitable than clearing land for oil palm.

"This is the break-even price if oil palm can only be grown in areas that are at least moderately suitable, or if some oil palm can be relocated to already [deforested] areas. Any price over [that] means Redd becomes more profitable than oil palm," explained Dr Venter.

"Carbon markets, while they fluctuate, are where the price of carbon is currently established. So we compared our prices to prices on major global markets, which at the time were selling carbon for around $30 per tonne of CO2."

Redd is a UN-led programme, introduced in 2005, to create a practical financial system to protect the rainforests.

Dr Venter hopes this research will strengthen the case to include it in the of the climate agreement that replaces the Kyoto accord, which is set to be decided upon at a meeting in Copenhagen later this year.

"If Redd does become part of the next international climate agreement, it will have the potential to fund forest protection in areas slated for oil palm conversion," said Dr Venter.

He said the findings showed that it was possible to create "financial incentives to ensure that the world's tropical forests last into the next century, instead of becoming a memory of the past".

Conservation funds have not been sufficient to save rainforests' inhabitants

"Tropical forests are disappearing at an incredible pace - the equivalent of 50 football fields a minute, imperiling biodiversity and creating massive carbon emissions that are degrading our global climate," said William Laurance, a scientist from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

But Dr Laurance told BBC News that palm oil production would be "very tough to stop" because it is so profitable.

"At present prices for carbon, we won't be able to stop rainforest destruction for oil palm," he told BBC News.

"Redd will only be competitive for slowing destruction of peat forests, which are jam-packed with carbon and become massive sources of greenhouse gases when cleared.

"But we can pressure the worst companies and fight to protect the highest-priority areas," he told BBC News.

"Redd is probably our best chance to invest billions of dollars into forest conservation, and to help developing nations make a reasonable profit from their forests."

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Could carbon credits stop the destruction? The Indonesian rainforest is worth more standing than felled say researchers. A new analysis has shown that payments to reduce carbon emissions from the forests could generate more income than palm oil production on deforested land.

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The world might not be as bad as you might believe!

"Don't Panic" is a one-hour long documentary produced by Wingspan Productions and broadcasted on BBC on the 7th of November 2013.

The visualizations are based on original graphics and stories by Gapminder and the underlaying data-sources are listed here. Hans presents some results from our UK Ignorance Survey described here.
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License

Please show this film in schools and other educational settings! By watching, downloading, showing or distributing this film, you agree to this license, which basically says: We really hope you will download the film and show it for educational purpose, with some minor restrictions.

Download

You can downloaded the film here
If you need a version with even higher resolution please contact info at gapminder.org.
Please notify us about your offline usage so that we can better count the number of users and potentially help you get new audiences to discover your great work!

DVD

A DVD version of this film is available to order from Wingspan Productions.

Credits

The film was produced by Wingspan Productions. http://www.wingspanproductions.co.uk/

About the film

This is a free documentary for a fact-based worldview. The visualizations & stories in this film were originally developed by Gapminder. The data-sources are listed here.
It was first broadcasted on BBC on 7th of November 2013.
Director & Producer: Dan Hillman. Executive Producer: Archie Baron. ©Wingspan Productions for BBC, 2013.

More videos

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Don't Panic - The Facts About Population

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"Don't Panic" is a one-hour long documentary produced by Wingspan Productions and broadcasted on BBC on the 7th of November 2013. The visualizations are based on original graphics and stories by Gapminder and the underlaying data-sources are listed here. Hans presents some results from our UK Ignorance Survey described here.

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I do love a big pile of data and frankly they don't get bigger than farmsubsidy.org.

It's a website run by the European Fund for Investigative Journalism that allows you to search for cash paid out from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

There are official tools to do the same thing (not least on the government's website) but funnily enough they're quite hard to use.

Farmsubsidies.org on the other hand is quick and simple and also much more forgiving when it comes to search terms and more general poking about.

So if you have a bit of a play you'll discover that the biggest single CAP payments in the Midlands haven't been for farming at all in the last few years.

Instead, they've been massive grants, about £3m ( 4 million euros) in 2012, for education and training.

A backwards step?

That's a sign of just how much farm subsidies have evolved.

In a post-war Europe the idea was to make sure people never went hungry again and farmers were paid for production.

We certainly never starved but we also had to deal with butter mountains and wine lakes - friends still remember massive blocks of EU butter being distributed to Asian families in Wolverhampton for turning into ghee.

These days farmers are no longer paid cash based on the amount they produce, that link has been broken. Instead, the CAP has been slowly moving towards a more market orientated approach with a thick layer of environmental concerns and training slapped on top.

Until the last round of reforms that is, which come into effect in May next year. I've heard them described by one expert from the NFU as a step sideways at best and perhaps even a step backwards.

Apart from the usual worries about switching to a new computer system (something that went very badly wrong last time), there are new blanket instructions farmers must obey to get the full amount.

These are aimed at making farming "greener" but will also have the potential to make life much harder, particularly for smaller farms.

Does it work?

I sat in on one National Farmers Union (NFU) CAP "roadshow" at Gloucester Farmers Club as the new rules were explained to an attentive audience.

Even though the latest version of the CAP is due to begin in a few months' time, the government is still issuing guidelines about what to do and farmers certainly don't have the full picture yet.

In the meantime of course, farming carries on. But it's hard to get on with your job without a clear idea of how the new CAP will work, or even if the way you currently farm might incur some as yet unclear financial penalty.

So given all this upheaval does the CAP work?

Well, food is plentiful and affordable. The English landscape here in the Midlands is still that patchwork of fields free of bracken and scrub that we find so pretty to look at and, at a time of plunging commodity prices it's CAP cash that will keep many of our dairy and even arable farmers going this year.

The CAP still allows farmers to innovate and respond to the market and consumer demands.

Family farms or mega-dairies?

Certainly more so than non-EU countries like Switzerland where government farming subsidies (they're not just a European invention) have preserved in aspic a certain approach to the land.

At Gloucester Farmers Club I asked for a show of hands of how many farms wouldn't survive without subsidy and almost all the hands went up. But, one farmer then made it very clear that while subsidy may be vital "it doesn't mean we like it."

So, if we leave the EU and the CAP with it how would our farmers cope? It would be a huge change so how would that be managed? Would a UK government introduce its own subsidy scheme?

Would such a scheme aim to preserve a particular way of farming and the look of the countryside or instead equip our farmers to compete with the really big agricultural boys like Brazil and America? Would the support small Midlands family dairy farms or push for more "mega-dairies"?

For those that want us to leave the EU and CAP behind, these are big questions that need detailed answers.

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I do love a big pile of data and frankly they don't get bigger than farmsubsidy.org. It's a website run by the European Fund for Investigative Journalism that allows you to search for cash paid out from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

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BBC Earth - Earthquake videos - The most deadly quakes and their causes

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Watch interesting BBC video clips full of facts about earthquakes. Find out about the deadliest quake in history.

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The ghost-like casts from the Roman city of Pompeii are a reminder of the lethal eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79, which killed thousands and preserved their bodies in the position of their death. But it wasn't red-hot lava or suffocating clouds of ash that killed them, it was something far more unusual. Lava flows, or the molten rock that oozes from shield volcanoes moves far too slowly to be truly deadly. The real killers are much more frightening.

Here are four ways a volcano can kill:

The Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were annihilated on 24 August AD79 when Mount Vesuvius erupted explosively, sending fast-moving waves of superheated gas down the sides of the volcano at hurricane speeds. These 'pyroclastic flows' contain gas, ash and rock and can travel up to 450mph (700km/h).

The first wave hit the nearby Herculaneum with temperatures as high as 500 degrees Celsius. The searing heat was enough to boil the brains and instantly vaporise the flesh of its victims so that only blackened skeletons remained.

But how the people of Pompeii died has remained a mystery for many centuries. Volcanologists have now discovered they were killed by a later wave of pyroclastic flow.

Pompeii's wave was significantly cooler than the one that swept through Herculaneum, so although the victims bodies remained intact, the heat 'cooked' their flesh instantly. They were preserved by the falling volcanic ash and some of these can still be seen in Pompeii today.

Pyroclastic flows are arguably the most deadly volcanic event because they can travel for miles and are impossible to outrun.

They are produced by explosive 'composite volcanoes', which are made up of alternating layers of lava, ash and rock. When a composite volcano erupts, the rock layer is smashed into tiny dust particles. These particles mix with the hot ash and gases to form a giant mushroom cloud.

As the eruption weakens, this cloud can collapse under its own weight. It then cascades down the side of the volcano as a pyroclastic flow - destroying everything in its path. But that's not the only way they can cause big problems...
How devastating could the next Mount Vesuvius eruption be?
In Colombia, 1985, a volcano called Nevado del Ruiz erupted. As pyroclastic flows exploded from the volcano they melted the glaciers on the mountain.

The melted water mixed with the volcanic ash, mud and rock, causing four enormous hot 'lahars' to speed down the mountain at 40mph (60km/h).

Lahars are concrete-thick mixtures of mud and water that slide down mountains like avalanches. They can be extremely destructive because they travel with enough force to carry huge boulders at high speeds for up to 50 miles (80 km).

The lahars from Nevado del Ruiz flowed into the six major rivers at the base of the volcano before engulfing the town of Armero - killing more than 20,000 of the people that lived there.

Pyroclastic flows and lahars are dramatic events, yet volcanoes can also be silent killers.

When a volcano sits beneath a lake, gases from the magma can filter through cracks in the Earth and become trapped under the water as carbon dioxide.

Violent movement, from an earthquake or landslide for example, can cause the carbon dioxide to rise rapidly to the surface of the lake - a rare but deadly event called a 'limnic' eruption.

One of only two limnic eruptions ever recorded happened in Cameroon in 1986. A landslide disturbed a deep lake called Lake Nyos which sat within the crater of an inactive volcano.

More than 80 million cubic metres of carbon dioxide was released and surged into nearby villages; suffocating more than 1,700 people and thousands of animals and livestock.
Hear a survivor's account of the Lake Nyos disaster
Poisonous volcanic gases, lahars and pyroclastic flows are deadly to almost anyone who gets in their way. But the devastating effects of a volcanic eruption can be even more far reaching.

In the Philippines in 1991, Mount Pinatubo exploded in a cataclysmic eruption, blasting 22 million tonnes of ash particles and sulphur dioxide 12 miles (19 km) into the atmosphere. Fierce winds from a passing typhoon blew the ash in all directions before it fell like thick snow on nearby buildings. Many roofs collapsed under the sheer weight; killing 300 people in their homes.

Explosive eruptions like this are so powerful that lightweight ash particles can be lifted as high as the lower stratosphere by convection currents. When ash and volcanic gases spread across the globe after Mount Pinatubo's eruption, they reflected some of the Sun's radiation back into space.

This caused the global temperature to drop by 0.6 degrees Celsius. The cooling effect only lasted for two years. But some scientists think that volcanic activity like this may have caused a change in climate which contributed to the Permian mass extinction - an event which saw a staggering 96% of all the species on Earth perish.

Could a new giant volcanic eruption produce enough ash and gas to trigger extreme climate change that might threaten all life on Earth?
Did volcanoes wipe out 96% of life on Earth?

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The ghost-like casts from the Roman city of Pompeii are a reminder of the lethal eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79, which killed thousands and preserved their bodies in the position of their death. But it wasn't red-hot lava or suffocating clouds of ash that killed them, it was something far more unusual.

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China is on course to becoming a superpower - but not in the way many expect, writes economist Martin Jacques.

Beijing these days is positively throbbing with debate. It may not have the trappings of a western-style democracy, but it is now home to the most important and interesting discussions in the world.

When I addressed an audience of young Chinese diplomats at their foreign ministry a year ago, it was abundantly clear that a fascinating debate is under way about what kind of foreign policy might be appropriate for the global power China is in the process of becoming.

What will China be like as a superpower? You might think it is already - it is not.

Its military power is puny compared with that of the US. While America has 11 aircraft carriers, China only commissioned its first last month - based on, of all things, a Ukrainian hull.

Find out more

Martin Jacques is an economist and author of When China Rules the World

A Point of View broadcasts on BBC Radio 4 on Fridays at 20:50 GMT and repeated on Sunday at 08:50 GMT

Listen to A Point of View BBC Podcasts - A Point of View Explore the best of A Point of View
And its global political influence is still extremely limited.

The only sense in which China is a superpower is economic - that is, its economy is already over half the size of the US economy and projected to overtake it around 2018, notwithstanding its reduced growth rate of 7%. But this is overwhelmingly a function of China's huge population. In terms of technology and living standards it lags far behind the US.

So when we speak of China as a superpower, we are talking about the future.

A common reaction to the idea of China as a superpower is that it will be like the US - except worse. Worse because it is not a democracy, it has a communist government and because its people are not like us. I guess that gives some the jitters.

In fact we should not expect China to behave in the manner of the US. It will be very different. And nor should we assume that it will necessarily be worse.

Why will it be different? Because its history is so different. Articles about China's growing involvement with Africa - in terms of trade and investment - often talk of the "new colonialism".

Beware historical ignorance. China has never colonised any overseas territories. Overseas empires were a European speciality, with Japan getting in on the act for a short while too.

China could have colonised South East Asia, for example, in the early 15th century. It had the resources, it had enormous ships, many times bigger than anything Europe possessed at the time. But it didn't.

That is not to say China ignored its neighbours. On the contrary. For many, many centuries it dominated them - as a result of its sheer size and far more advanced level of development. China's relationship with them was based not on colonialism but what we now know as the tributary system. It neither ruled them nor occupied them. Rather, in return for access to the Chinese market and various forms of protection, the rulers of tribute states were required to give gifts - literally tribute - to the Emperor as a symbolic acknowledgement of China's superiority.

The tributary system comprised what we know today as East Asia, home to one-third of the world's population. It stretched from Japan and Korea to the Malay Peninsula and parts of Indonesia.

It proved remarkably stable, lasting for at least 2,000 years and only coming to an end around 1900.

The West and China share an important characteristic - they both believe they are universal, a model for all others. But the way they have interpreted this in practice has been entirely different. For Europe, and latterly the US, it meant projecting their power around the world, most spectacularly during the heyday of colonialism in the 19th and first half of the 20th Century, when a large part of the world found itself under European rule.

We governed from afar, exported our ways of doing things, imposed our languages, our education, our religion and much else besides.

The Chinese, in contrast, preferred to stay at home. They believed the Middle Kingdom, the old name for China, literally meaning the centre of the world, was the highest form of civilisation. So why step outside into ever darkening shades of barbarianism?

The seven great voyages of Zheng He between 1405 and 1433 around the East and South China Seas and across the Indian Ocean as far as East Africa left no permanent mark - they were about demonstrating the glory of the Middle Kingdom rather than a desire to conquer. Those who left China to settle in South East Asia were seen as leaving civilisation and deserving of no support or protection by the Emperor.

Compare that with the way in which Britain and France celebrated the heroes of their colonial expansion. Our cities are littered with statues and street names in their memory.

There is another reason why the Chinese have tended to stay at home. The country is huge, diverse - and extremely difficult to govern. The overwhelming preoccupation of its rulers down the ages has been how to maintain order and stability and thereby retain power. It remains just as true today.

Rather than look outwards, China's leaders look inwards. The exception was China's own continental land mass. Its expansion, rather than to the four corners of the world, was confined to its own continent.

The most dramatic example was the westward march of the Qing dynasty from the mid-17th Century which, in a series of bloody and brutal wars, doubled the physical size of China.

So what, you might ask, does all this history tell us about how China might behave as a great global power? A great deal.

Europe, I would argue, has historically been an extremely aggressive and expansionist continent. Its own history has been characterised by seemingly endless wars which were then transplanted onto a global stage during the era of colonial expansion and world war. Military might, the projection of power around the world, and the desire if necessary by force to impose our way of life on others, have been fundamental to the European story.

And it is not difficult to see how the US - itself the product of European overseas expansion and settlement - inherited these characteristics from us.

China won't be like this. It is not in its DNA. Its rulers will be far less interested in seeking to dominate the rest of the world and far more concerned with keeping themselves in power. That is what ruling a country containing a fifth of the world's population obliges. When Xi Jinping becomes Chinese leader next month, his in-tray, as with Hu Jintao before him, will be overwhelmingly filled with domestic rather than foreign issues.

In time China will certainly come to enjoy huge global power. It will be exercised, however, in a rather different way.

The iconic form of western power has been military. Extraordinarily, the US today accounts for around half of global defence expenditure. Before, European colonial expansion was only possible because its fighting capacity was massively superior to that of the rest of the world.

See also in the Magazine

"Chinese history can be read as a series of peasant rebellions. One in the 19th Century, led by a man who thought he was Christ's brother, lasted 15 years and caused at least 10 million deaths."

Read more about Hong Xiuquan from Carrie Gracie and about great Chinese figures by following the links below
The emperor: Qin Shi Huang The bureaucrat: Wang Anshi The warlord: Liu Bei
That kind of overweening military power has never really been a Chinese characteristic.

Instead the quintessential forms of Chinese power will be economic and cultural. Over time, China's economic strength - given the size of its population - will be gigantic, far greater than that of the US at its zenith. Already, even at its present low level of development, China is the main trading partner of a multitude of countries around the world. And with economic power will come commensurate political power and influence. China will, if it wishes, be able to bend many other countries to its will.

Cultural power will also be important to the Chinese. Theirs is a remarkable civilisation - having enjoyed a place in the sun not once but several times. During the Tang dynasty, for instance, from the 7th to the 10th Century, and most remarkably during the Song dynasty from the 10th to the 13th Century, with major advances in a host of fields from biology and hydraulic engineering to architecture, medicine, mathematics and cartography.

The Chinese are enormously proud of their historical achievements. They believe that theirs is the greatest civilisation there has ever been.

They have a strong sense of their own superiority rooted in history. They have long had a hierarchical view of the world, with China at the top. And the rise of China is likely to accentuate these views.

But don't expect the Chinese to be impatient about their rise. In 1972 Henry Kissinger is reputed to have asked Zhou En Lai, the former Chinese premier, what he thought of the French Revolution. Zhou En Lai's response: "It's too early to know".

The Chinese have a completely different conception of time to Westerners. Whereas Americans think very short, the Chinese think very long.

For them a century is nothing.

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China is on course to becoming a superpower - but not in the way many expect, writes economist Martin Jacques. Beijing these days is positively throbbing with debate. It may not have the trappings of a western-style democracy, but it is now home to the most important and interesting discussions in the world.

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The MINT countries - next economic giants?

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The MINT countries - next economic giants?

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In 2001 the world began talking about the Bric countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - as potential powerhouses of the world economy. The term was coined by economist Jim O'Neill, who has now identified the "Mint" countries - Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey - as emerging economic giants. Here he explains why.

So what is it about the so-called Mint countries that makes them so special? Why these four countries?

A friend who has followed the Bric story noted sardonically that they are probably "fresher" than the Brics. What they really share beyond having a lot of people, is that at least for the next 20 years, they have really good "inner" demographics - they are all going to see a rise in the number of people eligible to work relative to those not working.

This is the envy of many developed countries but also two of the Bric countries, China and Russia. So, if Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey get their act together, some of them could match Chinese-style double-digit rates between 2003 and 2008.

Something else three of them share, which Mexican Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Meade Kuribrena pointed out to me, is that they all have geographical positions that should be an advantage as patterns of world trade change.

Find out more

Listen to the first episode of MINT: The Next Economic Giants on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 6 January from 09:00 GMT
MINT: The next economic giants
For example, Mexico is next door to the US, but also Latin America. Indonesia is in the heart of South-east Asia but also has deep connections with China.

And as we all know, Turkey is in both the West and East. Nigeria is not really similar in this regard for now, partly because of Africa's lack of development, but it could be in the future if African countries stop fighting and trade with each other.

This might in fact be the basis for the Mint countries developing their own economic-political club just as the Bric countries did - one of the biggest surprises of the whole Bric thing for me. I can smell the possibility of a Mint club already.

What I also realised after talking to Meade Kuribrena, is that the creation of the Mint acronym could spur pressure for Nigeria to become a member of the G20, as the other Mints already are.

This was something the charismatic Nigerian finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was keen to talk about: "We know our time will come," she said. "We think they are missing something by not having us."

Meade Kuribrena went so far as to suggest that, as a group of four countries, the Mints have more in common than the Brics. I am not sure about that, but it is an interesting idea.

Economically three of them - Mexico, Indonesia and Nigeria - are commodity producers and only Turkey isn't. This contrasts with the Bric countries where two - Brazil and Russia - are commodity producers and the other two - China and India - aren't.

In terms of wealth, Mexico and Turkey are at about the same level, earning annually about $10,000 (£6,100) per head. This compares with $3,500 (£2,100) per head in Indonesia and $1,500 (£900) per head in Nigeria, which is on a par with India. They are a bit behind Russia - $14,000 (£8,500) per head - and Brazil on $11,300 (£6,800), but still a bit ahead of China - $6,000 (£3,600).

A big question that guided my thinking on visits to these countries for the BBC was - "How do these countries actually feel on the ground, compared to my own expectations and the general consensus of opinion?"

When expectations are low - as one might generally say about Nigeria for example (although not in recent years among specialist investors in Africa) - it is easier to be positively surprised.

But the opposite is also true - and this could be a problem for Mexico, which financial investors are really quite excited about.

I returned from my travels thinking it won't be so difficult for Nigeria and Turkey to positively surprise people, as many put far too much weight on the negative issues that are well-known - crime and corruption in Nigeria, for example, or heavy-handed government in Turkey.

Indonesia, I am less sure about. The country's challenges are as big as I thought and I didn't hear too many things that made me go "Wow" in terms of trying to deal with them. The country needs more of a sense of commercial purpose beyond commodities, and has to improve its infrastructure.

In Turkey, visits to white goods manufacturer Beko and Turkish Airlines, the world's fastest growing airline, definitely made me go "Wow", and in Nigeria, I was saying it all the time.

The creativity in that place is so easy to get enthused about, at least it was for me, and I returned full of excitement about different personal investments I might follow up on.

In Mexico I was all set to be disappointed, as expectations are so high, but the young president and his equally young colleagues are full of determination to change the place.

If you thought Maggie Thatcher stood for serious reforms, these guys make her seem like a kitten. They are reforming everything from education, energy and fiscal policy to the institution of government itself.

What about all the challenges and things that usually scare people? Well corruption is obviously one topic that all four would seem to share, and I had many interesting discussions about it in each country.

In Nigeria, Central Bank Governor Lamido Sanusi argued that corruption rarely prevents economic development - and that the growth of the economy, accompanied by improvements in education, will lead to better governance and greater transparency.

Such views are important to listen to, as an alternative to our often simplistic Western way of thinking. For many credible people in the Mint countries, corruption is a consequence of their weak past, not a cause of a weak future, and certainly not the number one challenge. It falls way down a list compared with the costs of energy and the breadth of its availability and, of course, infrastructure.

Sorting out energy policy was seen in both Mexico and Nigeria as a top priority and each country has launched a major initiatives this year, which if implemented, will accelerate growth rates significantly.

Here is an amazing statistic. About 170 million people in Nigeria share about the same amount of power that is used by about 1.5 million people in the UK. Almost every business has to generate its own power. The costs are enormous.

"Can you imagine, can you believe, that this country has been growing at 7% with no power, with zero power? It's a joke." says Africa's richest man, Aliko Dangote.

He's right. I reckon Nigeria could grow at 10-12% by sorting out this problem alone. That would double the size of its economy in six or seven years.

In Indonesia, the fourth largest country in the world, I would say leadership and infrastructure are the major challenges, though there are many more too. But challenges and opportunities sit side by side.

In one of Jakarta's slum areas, Pluit, the land is sinking by 20cm per year because of over-extraction of water, but property prices elsewhere in the city are rocketing.

I talked to a man building the country's first Ikea store, who reckons a third of greater Jakarta's population of 28 million (the third biggest conurbation in the world) would have sufficient disposable income to shop at his store. As he said: "We just know it's going to work."

In Turkey of course, its politics and the combination of a Muslim faith with some kind of desire to do things the Western way is a unique sort of challenge. Some might argue the same challenge exists for Indonesia but I returned thinking this was not the case. In Jakarta at least, the Western way of doing things seems to be generally accepted - in striking contrast with Turkey.

So can the Mints join the top 10 largest economies in the world, after the US, China, the rest of the Brics and maybe Japan?

I think so, though it may take 30 years.

I look forward to going back to each of them more regularly now I am helping to put them on the map, just as happened with the Bric countries 12 years ago.
Listen to the first episode of MINT: The Next Economic Giants on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 6 January from 09:00 GMT, or Follow On a tablet? Read 10 of the best Magazine stories from 2013 here @BBCNewsMagazine on Twitter and on Facebook afterwards on iPlayer.

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A four-part series on Radio Four focuses on the Mint countries - Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey - tipped as the next to assume their places at the high table of economic success. Jim O'Neill explains what they have in common.

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Read up on these suggested further readings organised by topic

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Read up on these suggested further readings organised by topic

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You can then choose from any of the following tasks.

1) Write a paragraph to explain your personal view on this issue, using facts and statistics to support your points

2) Write a paragraph to explain why this topic could change the world

3) Write your own article opposing what you have read

4) Make a few notes to teach others about this issue

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Fossil fuels should be phased out by 2100

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The unrestricted use of fossil fuels should be phased out by 2100 if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change, a UN-backed expert panel says.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says in a stark report that most of the world's electricity can - and must - be produced from low-carbon sources by 2050.

If not, the world faces "severe, pervasive and irreversible" damage.

The UN said inaction would cost "much more" than taking the necessary action.

The IPCC's Synthesis Report was published on Sunday in Copenhagen, after a week of intense debate between scientists and government officials.

It is intended to inform politicians engaged in attempts to deliver a new global treaty on climate by the end of 2015.

The report says that reducing emissions is crucial if global warming is to be limited to 2C - a target acknowledged in 2009 as the threshold of dangerous climate change.

The report suggests renewables will have to grow from their current 30% share to 80% of the power sector by 2050.

In the longer term, the report states that fossil fuel power generation without carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology would need to be "phased out almost entirely by 2100".

'Science has spoken'

The Synthesis Report summarises three previous reports from the IPCC, which outlined the causes, the impacts and the potential solutions to climate change.

It re-states many familiar positions:

Warming is "unequivocal" and the human influence on climate is clear

The period from 1983 to 2012, it says, was likely the warmest 30 year period of the last 1,400 years

Warming impacts are already being seen around the globe, in the acidification of the oceans, the melting of arctic ice and poorer crop yields in many parts

Without concerted action on carbon, temperatures will increase over the coming decades and could be almost 5C above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century

"Science has spoken," UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. "There is no ambiguity in their message. Leaders must act. Time is not on our side."

"There is a myth that climate action will cost heavily," said Mr Ban, "but inaction will cost much more."

The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, described the report as "another canary in the coal mine".

"Those who choose to ignore or dispute the science so clearly laid out in this report do so at great risk for all of us and for our kids and grandkids," Mr Kerry said in a statement.

The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Davey described the report as the "most comprehensive, thorough and robust assessment of climate change ever produced".

"It sends a clear message that should be heard across the world - we must act on climate change now. It's now up to the politicians - we must safeguard the world for future generations by striking a new climate deal in Paris next year," he said.

"The UK has been leading the world and bringing the world with us. The historic agreement to cut carbon emissions in Europe by at least 40 per cent by 2030 effectively means our Climate Change Act is being replicated across Europe, just as it's being copied in countries across the world as they seek to cap and cut their own emissions."

Blunt language

Prof Myles Allen from Oxford University, a member of the IPCC core writing team, said: "We can't afford to burn all the fossil fuels we have without dealing with the waste product which is CO2 and without dumping it in the atmosphere."

"If we can't develop carbon capture we will have to stop using fossil fuels if we want to stop dangerous climate change."
Analysis: David Shukman, BBC science editor
The language in the UN's climate reports has been steadily ratcheted up over the years, but this publication lays out the options more bluntly than before.

The conclusion that fossil fuels cannot continue to be burned in the usual way - and must be phased out by the end of the century - presents governments with an unusually stark choice.

The IPCC has tried to make it more palatable by saying that fossil fuel use can continue if the carbon emissions are captured and stored.

But so far the world only has one commercially-operating plant of that type, in Canada, and progress developing the technology is far slower than many had hoped.

So this raises the difficult question of how key governments are likely to respond.

Events in Copenhagen back in 2009, when a disastrous and dysfunctional summit failed to agree anything substantial, showed how easily rhetoric crumbles in the face of economic pressures or domestic realities.

The report's clarity of language over the future of coal, oil, and gas was welcomed by campaigners.

"What they have said is that we must get to zero emissions, and that's new," said Samantha Smith from World Wildlife Fund.

"The second thing is they said that it is affordable, it is not going to cripple economies."

Fierce standoff

In the IPCC's discussions on fossil fuels, there was a fierce battle over a chart that showed how much the electricity sector needed to curb its carbon, the BBC's environment correspondent Matt McGrath reports from Copenhagen.

According to one observer, "the Saudis went ballistic" over the chart's inclusion.

Another significant fight was over the inclusion of text about Article 2 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

It quickly became a standoff between those who want the focus to be on cutting emissions against those who think the right to develop economies must come first.

An unlikely alliance between Bolivia and Saudi Arabia ultimately saw the section dropped entirely from the underlying report.

Some of those attending the talks said that tackling climate change and sustainable development went hand in hand.

"Different countries come to different perspectives" said Prof Jim Skea from Imperial College and a review editor of the report.

"But from the science perspective, we need them both. We need to walk and chew gum at the same time."

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The unrestricted use of fossil fuels should be phased out by 2100 if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change, a UN-backed expert panel says. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says in a stark report that most of the world's electricity can - and must - be produced from low-carbon sources by 2050.