It seems that human beings, despite all the incredible skills they bring along, lack one capability: Anticipating the future. No matter how significant and obvious the upcoming change is, we seem to have a tendency to either ignore it, or find short-term solutions to avoid it. And then, we are surprised.

One such example is what the media calls the "migrant crisis" in Europe. I can't help but wonder why we call this a crisis. In my understanding a crisis is something unexpected and short-term, that requires immediate attention before one can get back to daily business. The migrant flow to Europe is everything but that.

Is it unexpected? When the world accepted and/or supported the US-led campaign against terrorism after the 9/11 attacks, what did we expect to happen? At best one could have expected the middle east to stay a challenged region. The rise of "IS" is a direct consequence of the failures of interventions in Iraq and not a surprising phenomenon that happened to emerge in 2014. The region was unstable before and gets messier by the day. It should therefore not come as a surprise to us in 2016 to have millions of migrants fleeing to safer places - which inevitably means Europe. That’s just one example of a "crisis" that was long announced.

Is it short-term? Many academics researching in the area of migration flows distinguish between push and pull factors. Push factors are those forcing people to leave their home and seek shelter abroad. Those can be wars, but also long-term droughts and other catastrophes. Pull factors on the other hand are expectations to have a better life in another place that draw people towards another country/region. The challenges in the middle east are nowhere close to being resolved. Even if governments are able to form, it will take a decade and more to build up governance structures and functioning civil societies in those countries.

Going back to daily business? In the next 20 years climate change will lead to significant changes in global water flows and weather patterns. Just because we have finally come to a new climate agreement in Paris, does not mean that there will not be any consequences of past and current behaviour. Climate researchers expect the climate in subtropical regions to become much drier than today. Those are regions that are home to a vast number of people, who already are amongst the poorest in the world. The only way for them to go if their place does not provide them with basic resources anymore, is north (as the southern hemisphere does not have much landmass). I can't imagine how Europe (and other countries in geographically similar regions) wants stop hundreds of millions of people at its borders, when additional push factors come into play.

This current example is just one of many. The lesson overall really is that we should not be surprised. Not now, because our actions in the past led to much of the challenges we face today. And not in the future, because the writing is on the wall. When we think about solutions to our current challenges, it won't help to just look at the problem today. We need to account for the developments that are already initiated.

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Please share your comments and inputs (via comment function, twitter, e-mail, etc.). In my short write-ups I address topics that I am particularly interested in because they align with my values and beliefs. As such, they are always a reflection of my ideas, thoughts, and opinions. The only thing I am positive in that regard is that I do not have all the perspectives, all the knowledge, or all the facts - help me be better tomorrow.