This is the editorial for the upcoming decade from the Age, a major Australian newspaper of record.

The clock is ticking after a decade of lost opportunities.

IN A WORLD of nearly 7 billion, people's view of that world depends very much on their vantage point. For the privileged minority of 22 million Australians, the outlook after the worst global recession since the Great Depression remains remarkably sunny. Australia's worst fears about economic contagion and a swine flu pandemic were not realised. The nation recorded only a single quarter of economic contraction a year ago and growth is again being driven by the resource demands of the emerging powerhouses of Asia.

As the world reflects on a decade book-marked by the terrorist shock of 2001 and economic shock of 2009, the outlook in other developed nations remains much more clouded. Prospects for the new year and new decade are uncertain, the challenges — a decade's worth of hangovers — daunting. Nobel economics laureate Paul Krugman observes that we got through the decade "without ever agreeing what to call it. The aughts? The naughties?" He suggests "the Big Zero — the decade in which we achieved nothing and learnt nothing".

Writing as an American economist, his view is understandable, and the emptiness of pledges to restructure global finances and rein in rampant greed and corruption lends weight to that view. It is not, however, reflective of developments in all parts of the world and in developing nations in particular. The US view cannot be discounted, of course, since it is still the dominant global power despite the accelerating shift of influence from West to East. It remains to be seen whether the American century is succeeded by the Chinese century as some crystal-ball gazers predict. (Should that happen, Australia is again fortuitously well positioned, assuming it makes the economic, educational and diplomatic investments needed to capitalise on the opportunity.) A year into his first term, President Barack Obama is locked into confronting problems that festered under his predecessor, George W. Bush: the playing out in Iraq and Afghanistan of a "war on terror" that, as the past week showed, has not produced security; crippling deficits; paralysis on a Middle East settlement in a year that began with the brutal Gaza bombardment; climate change; and nuclear proliferation (the threat from North Korea and Iran is greater than ever).

These problems are the world's problems and were complicated by a political dynamic of increasing polarisation. The giddy hope that Mr Obama's election inspired worldwide was a measure of the damage that had been done to America's standing. The awarding of this year's Nobel Peace Prize to a president who had yet to achieve any concrete goals spoke volumes about the expectations of him. Mr Obama has since seen the US economy begin a tentative recovery, and the passage of his universal health-care plan — a feat that eluded all his predecessors — is an answer to Hillary Clinton's question whether the man who campaigned in poetry was capable of meeting the more pragmatic demands of governing in prose. Mid-term elections are still likely to loosen the Democrats' grip on Congress, adding to Mr Obama's challenges. Over in Britain, the last G20 nation still in recession, Tony Blair's hapless successor, Gordon Brown, seems unable to master either poetry or prose and faces an end to 12 years of Labour government this year. Iraq also holds elections in March, the second since the fall of Saddam Hussein, but is hardly an advertisement for the "enduring freedom" touted by the architects of the 2003 invasion.

The Obama Administration may have reversed US resistance to a global pact on climate change, but last month's Copenhagen conference was a dispiriting demonstration of nations' inability to put global interest ahead of self-interest. Having borne the costs of avoiding global depression — the International Monetary Fund estimates the advanced economies ran up budget deficits totalling $A4 trillion in 2009 — governments baulked at the costs of tackling climate change, even if the long-term costs of inaction are far greater. The coordinated response to economic crisis showed, however, what is possible when the will to act exists. Mr Obama sees the development of clean energy as a priority and, if nothing else, a decade of startling advances in digital communications shows the revolutions that technology can deliver.

The past year also set back efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals agreed in 2000, with the target date only five years away. Yet, as with climate change, the world cannot afford to indulge in despair, the natural partner of defeat. Nor is despair entirely justified. Until last year, the Millennium Goals' hope of a better world was being realised, albeit incrementally and patchily. Fewer people are dying of AIDS and many countries have successful programs to combat malaria and measles. Almost half of the developing world's people lived in extreme poverty in 1990; by 2005, this was cut to just over a quarter. Enrolments in primary education hit 88 per cent in 2007, up from 83 per cent in 2000. Deaths of children under five fell from around 12.6 million in 1990 to 9 million in 2007.

Compared with such life-or-death problems, it seems almost indulgent for Australians to fret about such things as higher interest rates, a function of economic growth, or a rise in the still modest numbers of asylum seekers from war-torn Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. As to what we call this decade, that is a trivial diversion from what matters. If 2009 taught Australians anything in a year of fires, drought and floods, fears of a financial meltdown and a deadly epidemic, it is that none of us can afford to ignore the global challenges of climate change, poverty, disease and development, free and fair trade, financial stability and environmental sustainability. This year and this decade will be defined by how we tackle all this unfinished business.