For over a decade now, several books have claimed that one country or the other is on the verge of ‘collapse’. Most of these books are about China. Other favourites in this regard include Saudi Arabia, Russia and Pakistan. A large number of these tomes are written by American or European authors. However, so far none of their predictions have come true.

In 2015, two French academics, Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens, coined the term, ‘collapsology’, to define a trans-disciplinary field of study that explores environmental, economic, social and political factors that contribute to civilisational collapses. Collapsology as a term may have appeared in 2015, but its roots as a field of (speculative) study can be located in the 1970s.

In 1970, the American biologist Paul Ralph Ehrlich predicted global civilisational collapse due to severe food shortages. He wrote that, between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish.

In 1975, the highly respected science editor of Newsweek Peter Gwynne wrote an article warning of a ‘new ice age’ which, by the 1980s, would block sea routes, destroy agriculture, and create global famines and unprecedented civil unrest.

Western political scientists and academics are often quick to label nations such as China and Pakistan as being ‘on the verge of collapse.’ But such ill-informed ‘predictions’ only betray the West’s inability to fully grasp the underlying dynamics that drive these nations

Many scientists agreed with Gwynne. But what the world actually got was ‘global warming.’

Present-day scientists suggest that, when these predictions were made, the technology and knowledge available today (to study climate change and its social and economic impacts) was underdeveloped and not fully........

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