Libor Stejskal graduated from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Charles University in Prague. He now works at the Center for Social and Economic Strategies at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Charles University as a researcher and a project manager. He is currently finishing his thesis on “Security and Citizens in 21st Century”. For the past two years, he worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic as a security expert for the civilian reconstruction team in the Logar province in Afghanistan.

Can you envision major wild cards (positive or negative) that may occur in the next 20 years? What are the weak signals that (if detected) could hint at a growing likelihood (or imminent realisation) of the wild cards that you mentioned?

I think every wild card should follow from certain trends, or it should be possible to identify it with the help of weak signals – which is why I will turn this question around a little bit, and will go from trends and weak signals to wild cards.

One of the current trends is the rapid selective degradation of the natural environment. To be concrete, in the Czech Republic, for example, it is about the disturbance of hydrology conditions, which is a trend that threatens a number of other European countries as well. The amount of subsoil water reached 47 % of the usual level at one point during the past few years, and we came very close to a crisis. The resulting wild card can be the exceeding of a certain critical threshold after which the level of subsoil water decreases below a critical limit causing sources of drinking water to completely dry out. If paired with a disruption of surface water courses, it could mean an enormous problem for both the ecosystem and the society.

Another issue from the area of the natural environment is the extinction of species. This is often the case with common species not enjoying any special protection. It is made possible by reaching of a certain threshold which can be followed by a wild card discussing a zero-level pollination of plants. This may lead to a total disruption of the food chain in a matter of week or months, which would result in a disintegration of the entire ecosystem, including severe impacts on the society. On top of that, this may be followed by a wave of an invasive unregulated species that would become a significant pest due to the changed conditions. The impact of this species may lead to the loss of crops in a region which could take us to the brink of a real society crisis with food supply problems. As in the aforementioned problem with water, the issue is food security in this case, too.

Another weak signal is the break-up of public government in parts of European cities. This is linked to a wild card predicting a fast emergence of parallel power structures in the form of organised crime that would be able to quickly gain alternative (mafia) control over the society, but with much higher social costs and problems.

Yet another trend concerns energetics, especially our inability to modernise it centrally. Instead, there is an uneven development and incompatibility between the modern and obsolete elements of the production and distribution systems. This causes unbalanced loads of the system with the possibility of subsequent black-outs which would cause the disintegration of elementary structures of the society within a week.

The weakening of solidarity in the society is an obvious trend, along with growing social division and the weakening of the middle classes that bear the whole weight of social transfers. This situation may cause a wild card describing an outburst of hate towards unproductive groups of the population, with the threatened middle classes paradoxically becoming the bearers of the hate and violence. This is an issue that, in my opinion, strongly disrupts the stability of today's society.

The growing use of technologies in production is a significant trend, along with the related structural unemployment of a considerable part of the workforce. This can result in a wild card which could be characterised as a turn away from the official monetary economy towards commutation of production and consumption. Families can emancipate from sector of the official economy contributing to the creation of the GDP in certain socially segregated territories even today. All goods and services produced or consumed by such families can be realised on the basis of barter trade. Should such behaviour become more widespread in the future, and become a form of protest, it would endanger the existing economic system.

The largely related trend of ostracising certain social groups into ghettos and the destruction of public space concerns both the poorest and the richest parts of the society.

A pandemic of a new disease (a quickly mutating virus, bacteria) is also a wild card.

The last interesting wild card I can think of is the emergence of systems for a total surveillance of the population. Partial surveillance systems are numerous even today but there is no apparent integration of these systems going on. The possibility exists, however, and does not pose a major technical problem. Should this become a reality, the threat of an abuse of the integrated information would be very strong.

You mentioned many wild cards and weak signals. Could you identify causal relationships between them in more detail?

Another important signal that has not been mentioned yet is, for example, the gradual global warming. Major changes in the behaviour of ecosystems could be caused by the surface water warming by a few degrees. That could also cause an enormous burden for the power grid because water is used to cool practically the whole industry. This is a phenomenon that threatens both food and energy security. The connections are complicated and the system is not closed.

Which of the WI-WEs you mentioned should be given top priority in EU research? And what are the most pressing emerging issues/problems in the EU that are insufficiently (or not at all) addressed by current research?

There is an inherent lack of methodical research of unforeseeable topics (what happens beyond critical thresholds). There are, however, a number of needed topics of research in the area of social sciences. The radicalisation of some social groups has become an important topic for European research. However, today's research mostly focuses on marginal groups and the behaviour of the majority (the frustrated middle class) is not mapped. This is a topic that should appear in new calls.

There is also no satisfactory solution for the control of total surveillance, but this topic is now starting to open.

Another major problem is the fact that there is no investigation – or no sufficient subsequent communication – of the degradation of cultural landscape as a whole, i.e. not only selected biotops. Component processes (suburbanisation, occupation of areas around big cities) are described but complex impacts (in what ways do we lose cultural landscape, what are the changes in the land resources) are not sufficiently researched. It is this complex that diminishes the ability of the cultural landscape to fulfil social functions the society needs it to perform.

What is your opinion on the concept of wild cards and weak signals? What methods/processes for their identification do you consider the most suitable?

It is tempting to paint the wild cards, yet the question is up to what level it works. It is surely good as a way to become aware of the consequences of some critical situations. I am more interested watching weak signals and surmising their consequences. It is related to the fact that we live in a world of weak signals, not wild cards.