The year ahead: Trump’s return, global conflicts, and climate woes.
Despite its fair share of highs, 2024 ended on a rather dismal note. It was a year replete with new and ongoing conflicts, worsening climate change, economic and political uncertainties, among many other pressing concerns.
With most—if not all—of these daunting issues spilling over into the new year, 2025 isn’t looking too promising. Things could make a turn for the better or could spiral even more out of control. Regardless, it always helps to be informed. The POST then rounds up some of the biggest challenges mankind is currently facing. The overall picture seems bleak, but there’s always hope for better days ahead.
Related story: 2024’s biggest newsmakers
Trump 2.0


There is no more consequential global issue than the return of Donald Trump in the White House. The 45th US President’s political comeback as the 47th POTUS is nothing short of stunning—but also unnerving. The imminent Trump 2.0 has kept the whole world on edge, given the 78-year-old’s volatility. There is no certainty in geopolitics, but Trump takes unpredictability to a whole different level.
If Joe Biden’s administration is marked by alliances and unilateral trade restrictions to safeguard economic interests and national security, Trump very much prefers a more confrontational approach and this could steer the US into a more isolationist position. Trump’s return also complicates the already distressed US-China ties that’s most evident in their trade war, which he himself ignited in 2018 during his first term in office.
Given America’s status as a superpower, a Trump return is set to bring profound changes to the economic and regulatory landscape of the US from tariffs (his favorite word) to climate change and migration, the ripples of which will be felt in all corners of the globe.
China’s increasing global influence


China knows its time has come. It is now an economic superpower that rivals the US in many ways, but it’s currently struggling with a sluggish economy and a demographic crisis which sees its population aging quickly, coupled with a low birth rate. Still, China has been steadily flexing its muscles and expanding its global influence by forging alliances with emerging nations.
From Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiatives around the world (especially in the Global South) to dominance in the BRICS bloc which serves to counter the G7, China’s growing influence and reach should not be underestimated and should be met with caution.
Flashpoints: South China Sea and Taiwan


With China’s increasing influence on the international sphere comes more aggression in territories it asserts as its own. In recent years, it has ramped up its assertive—at times dangerous—actions in the South China Sea, where its expansive claims encroach on the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. In recent years, China has figured in frequent clashes with the Philippines, with one incident leading to a navy officer losing a thumb. In 2016, an international tribunal ruled that China’s claims to large swathes of the disputed waterway had no basis, a decision Beijing continues to reject.
It has also ramped up its military activities in the Taiwan Strait. China considers democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control. But Taiwan’s government firmly rejects Beijing’s claims, saying China “ought to respect the choice of the Taiwanese people.” Still, this doesn’t discourage China from stepping up military pressure near Taiwan. Just two weeks ago, Reuters reported Xi as ominously saying in his New Year’s speech that no one can stop China’s “reunification” with Taiwan.
Aside from territorial disputes with several Southeast Asian nations and Taiwan, China also has completing claims against Japan, India, and Bhutan, which lead to ongoing diplomatic headaches, and in the West Philippine Sea in particular, more frequent skirmishes and catastrophic “ecological ruin.”
Ongoing conflicts


Per the Global Peace Index 2024, there are currently 56 conflicts involving 92 countries around the world, the most since World War II. Despite the fall of the nefarious Assad regime of Syria in December, most of the conflicts are ongoing—even worsening with each passing day.
Among the more publicized ones are the Russia-Ukraine war, and Israel’s genocide in Gaza and conflicts with neighboring countries such as Lebanon and Iran. Despite entering its third year, Russia’s war on Ukraine shows no signs of abating. To make matters worse, news outlets and South Korean intelligence have reported how North Korea has sent over 11,000 troops to support Moscow in its war against Ukraine since November 2024. On Monday, Jan. 13, The Korea Herald reported that at least 300 North Korean soldiers have already been killed fighting for Russia. Trump promised to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine soon, we’ll see if he stays true to his words.
Over in Gaza, meanwhile, ceasefire talks have resumed in Qatar with signs pointing to a deal. We can only hope for the deal to finally come through as the ill effects of the war have been cataclysmic for Palestinians in Gaza. According to a UK-led study covering the first nine months of the war, which began when Hamas gunmen attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, fatalities are at 64,260 until June 30, 2024. The numbers are staggering, but what’s even worse is that it is believed there is an underreporting of deaths by as much as 41%, with Gaza authorities reporting only about 45,000 deaths as of Dec. 16, 2024. Whatever the actual figures are, the situation in that part of the world can only be described as apocalyptic. Moreover, 90% percent of its 2.3 million people have been uprooted, making it the largest forced displacement in Palestinian history.
But there are other wars aside from those two high-profile ones—and they are no less deadly. The war in Sudan is widely considered the world’s most devastating. As of November 2024, more than 61,000 people have died in the Khartoum state alone, where the fighting began in 2023. There are also some 12 million Sudanese – more than a third of the pre-war population – who have been forced to flee their homes.
There are also ongoing deadly conflicts in Myanmar and Haiti, while the drug war in Mexico, which is now in its 18th year, has claimed about half a million Mexican lives and another 100,000 people have been disappeared.
Worsening climate change, environmental concerns


Copernicus, the EU’s climate agency, has officially declared 2024 as the hottest year in human history. Scientists say temperatures reached 1.6 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Also according to Copernicus, the global sea surface temperature in 2024 reached a record high of 20.87 degrees Celsius , making it the warmest year for ocean waters in modern observational history.
But a bit of good news, per a report in The Washington Post, projections suggest that 2025 might not be as hot as the past two years. This is partly because of many variables that make some years hotter than others. As of January 2025, for example, cool waters in the equatorial Pacific signals that La Niña has developed.
Still, this is not reason enough to celebrate as this year will probably rank in the top five warmest years on record. The La Niña phenomenon is also expected to be short-lived. This means that warmer-than-average seas are predicted to persist across most of the rest of the planet. If luck isn’t on our side, scorching temperatures could be exacerbated further if El Niño develops later in 2025.
Hotter-than-usual temperatures also partly explain why the ongoing California wildfires are burning “hotter and faster,” per The New York Times. According to the report, 2024 being the the hottest year in recorded history has caused many of the plants in the region to be parched, “making trees, grasses and bushes into kindling ready to explode.” That deadly combination of heat and dryness created ideal conditions for wildfires, even when they are supposed to be “highly unusual” in Southern California at this time of the year.


With temperatures rising around the globe and the oceans unusually warm, scientists are warning that the “world has entered a dangerous new era of chaotic floods, storms and fires made worse by human-caused climate change.”
With climate change, as well as deforestation and pollution of all kinds, also comes biodiversity loss. In Antarctica, for instance, climate change-triggered melting of sea ice is taking a heavy toll on emperor penguins and could wipe out entire populations by as early as 2100, a 2023 research revealed. A 2021 study, meanwhile, concluded that the sixth mass extinction of wildlife on Earth is accelerating, with over 500 species of land animals teetering on the brink of extinction. Worse, they are likely to be lost within 20 years—the same number lost over the whole of the last century.
As the world burns (quite literally at that), it’s so easy to give in to despair—but it also should compel us to keep the hope burning inside us. When all else fails, hope is one of the very few things that could keep us going and living for another day.