Imagining a Prosperous Periphery for the Rural in 2050 and Beyond

Most sustainability analyses of the future privilege the urban in future scenarios of climate change at the expense of providing scenarios about the future of the rural, in part because rural regions provide the urban with most of its resources. It is also expected that urban regions will potentially account for up to 70% of the global population by 2050 so most future scenarios of sustainability focus on such regions. Given this over privileging of the urban in sustainability studies, this chapter instead presents a condensed overview of three possible future scenarios of rural areas beginning in 2050 and beyond. Each scenario correlates with a different level of possible human-caused global warming and the correlated implications of possible sustainability in rural areas depending on how hot the earth will become by the end of the century. A variety of social, environmental, and economic metrics are briefly analyzed, with their implications for sustainable futures in rural areas analyzed and discussed.