The 21st century will overturn many of our basic assumptions about economic life. The 20th century saw the end of European dominance of global politics and economics. The 21st century will see the end of American dominance too, as new powers, including China, India and Brazil, continue to grow and make their voices heard on the world stage. Yet the century's changes will be even deeper than a rebalancing of economics and geopolitics. The challenges of sustainable development—protecting the environment, stabilizing the world's population, narrowing the gaps of rich and poor and ending extreme poverty—will render passé the very idea of competing nation-states that scramble for markets, power and resources.
我们对于经济生活的一些基本设想在21世纪将会被颠覆。在20世纪，我们见证了欧洲对全球政治和经济的霸主地位的结束，而在21世纪，伴随着一股全新力量的崛起，包括中国、印度和巴西等国家的持续成长，并在国际舞台上发表自己的声音，美国的帝国光辉也渐行暗淡。与经济学和地缘政治学的重新调整相比，这个世纪的变化将会更为深刻。持续发展所提出来的挑战——保护环境、稳定世界人口数量、缩小贫富差距并最终取消极度贫困——将取代各民族国家当前疯狂争夺市场、权力和资源的情况。
The defining challenge of the 21st century will be to face the reality that humanity shares a common fate on a crowded planet. We have reached the beginning of the century with 6.6 billion people living in an interconnected global economy producing an astounding $60 trillion of output each year. Human beings fill every ecological niche on the planet, from the icy tundra to the tropical rain forests to the deserts. In some locations, societies have outstripped the carrying capacity of the land, resulting in chronic hunger, environmental degradation and a large-scale exodus of desperate populations. We are, in short, in one another's faces as never before, crowded into an interconnected society of global trade, migration, ideas and, yes, risk of pandemic diseases, terrorism, refugee movements and conflict.
我们认定的21世纪的挑战是直面一个现实：在这个拥挤的星球上，我们人类有一个共同的命运。在本世纪初，全球66亿人通过这种全球化的经济体系每年产出60万亿美元的产值，这是令人极为震惊的。从冻土苔原地带到热带雨林，再到沙漠，人类已填满了这个星球的每一个生态位。在有些地方，人类活动量已超过当地土地的承载能力，从而使这些地方长年闹饥荒，环境退化，也造成了大量绝望的流民。简而言之，我们比过去任何时候都依赖彼此，共同挤在这个全球贸易、移民和思想观念纵横交错的社会里，还得共同面对大面积疫情、恐怖主义、难民潮和战争等危机。
We also face a momentous choice. Continue on our current course, and the world is likely to experience growing conflicts between haves and have-nots, intensifying environmental catastrophes and downturns in living standards caused by interlocking crises of energy, water, food and violent conflict. Yet for a small annual investment of world income, undertaken cooperatively across the world, our generation can harness new technologies for clean energy, reliable food supplies, disease control and the end of extreme poverty.
我们也面临一个重大选择。如果继续我们现在的做法，那么，这个世界可能会出现如下一些问题：不断上升的贫富冲突，不断深化的自然灾害以及因能源、水源、食物和暴力冲突等连锁反应而起的生活标准的下降。便，每年从世界收入中拨取一小部分用做全球合作基金，我们这一代或许可以开发出新技术来净化能源、提供可靠食物、控制疾病及消除极度赤贫。
That's why the idea that has the greatest potential to change the world is simply this: by overcoming cynicism, ending our misguided view of the world as an enduring struggle of "us" vs. "them" and instead seeking global solutions, we actually have the power to save the world for all, today and in the future. Whether we end up fighting one another or whether we work together to confront common threats—our fate, our common wealth, is in our hands.
克服犬儒主义，在面对这个世界的时候不再错误地将其看成是“我们”与“他们”之间的战争，并共同去寻找全球解决方案。这种想法很简单，但，它却也是最有可能改变这个世界的方法。其实，我们有能力去拯救全世界，拯救今天及未来。是要停止继续你争我夺还是团结起来对抗我们共同的威胁——我们的命运，我们共同的财富，完全取决于我们自己。
To make the right choice, we must understand four earth-changing trends unprecedented in human history:
为了做出正确的选择，我们必须要明白人类历史上最前所未有的四种变化趋势：
First, the spread of modern economic growth means that the world on average is rapidly getting richer in terms of incomes per person. Moreover, the gap in average income per person between the rich world, centered in the North Atlantic (that is, Europe and the U.S.), and much of the developing world, especially Asia, is narrowing fast. With well over half the world's population, fast-growing Asia will also become the center of gravity of the world economy.
第一，现代经济的广泛增长意味着就个人收入来说，世界的平均富裕水平正在快速的提高。另外，就个人平均收入来说，富裕的国家（主要集中于北大西洋，即欧洲和美国）和发展中国家（特别是亚洲）之间的差距正在快速缩短。拥有世界一半以上人口的亚洲正在快速的发展，他们也将成为世界经济的重心。
Second, the world's population will continue to rise, thereby amplifying the overall growth of the global economy. Not only are we each producing more output on average, but there will be many more of us by midcentury. The scale of the world's economic production by midcentury is therefore likely to be several times that of today.
第二，世界人口仍会持续增长，这会进一步扩大世界经济的全面发展。到本世纪中叶，我们不仅会有更大的平均产值，而且，也会有更多的人口。那时世界经济的规模可能会是今天的数倍之多。
Third, our bulging population and voracious use of the earth's resources are leading to unprecedented multiple environmental crises. Never before has the magnitude of human economic activity been large enough to change fundamental natural processes at the global scale, including the climate itself. Humanity has also filled the world's ecological niches; there is no place to run.
第三，我们不断膨胀的人口和对地球资源的不断蚕食正在引发前所未有的多重环境危机。以前，人类的经济活动不会大到足以引起全球范围的基本自然进程（包括气候）的变化。在全球各生态带上都有人类的存在，我们，已经无处可进。
Fourth, while many of the poor are making progress, many of the very poorest are stuck at the bottom. Nearly 10 million children die each year because their families, communities and nations are too poor to sustain them. The instability of impoverished and water-stressed countries has ignited a swath of violence across the Horn of Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. What we call violent fundamentalism should be seen for what it really is: poverty, hunger, water scarcity and despair.
第四，虽然很多穷人都在努力改善自己的生活，但是，总是有一些人是最穷的。每年有近1千万儿童会因为他们的家庭、社区和国家无力抚养他们而死去。在非洲的合恩、中东和中亚，因为贫穷和水源紧缺这些问题无法彻底解决，这些国家已经开始出现了一连串的暴力事件。我们称呼的暴力原教旨主义的本质是：贫穷、饥饿、缺水和绝望。
These great challenges have not entirely escaped worldwide notice. In the past 20 years, world leaders on occasion have groped for ways to cope with them. In fact, they've achieved some important successes, and with considerable public support, which can provide a foothold for a sustainable future. We have adopted a global treaty for climate change; we have pledged to protect biodiversity; we are committed globally to fighting the encroachment of deserts in today's conflict-ridden dry lands of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. And the world has adopted the Millennium Development Goals to cut extreme poverty, hunger and disease by 2015. The challenge is to turn those fragile and unfulfilled global commitments into real solutions.
这些重大的挑战并没有完全被世人忽视。在过去的20年时在，各国家领导人偶尔也会寻找方法来解决这些问题。事实上，他们已经取得了一些重大的成功，如果有来自公众的大量支持，这些成功会为将来提供一个可持续发展的基石。我们已采取行动并且制定了应对全球气候变化的方案；我们发誓保护生物多样性；我们全体被委以重任，投入到冲突四起的非洲、中东和亚洲那些受沙化侵袭的地域的防沙治沙战斗中。今天世界已经确立了《千年发展目标》（the Millennium Development Goals ），计划在2015年前消灭赤贫、饥荒和疫病。我们现在所面临的挑战是如何将这些脆弱且尚未实现的全球性的保证付诸实践。
