Agency in an Age of Uncertainty: Megatrends, Foresight, and Navigating New Frontiers

Agency in an Age of Uncertainty: Megatrends, Foresight, and Navigating New Frontiers

Photo: Harvey Tsoi/Getty Images

Embracing A Foresight Framework

As mindfulness guru Jon Kabat-Zinn once said, "You can't control the waves, but you can learn how to surf." In chaotic systems, leaders face an uncomfortable reality: Control is an illusion. There are no actuarial tables or datasets for risk managers attempting to measure what former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld coined as the "unknown unknowns" that every decisionmaker must face when they look far enough into the future. Where forecasting fails, strategic foresight prevails by offering a disciplined framework to look beyond the probable and explore the plausible. In "Learning from the Future," Peter Scoblic artfully defines foresight as the deliberative use of imagined alternative futures in order to better "sense, shape, and adapt" to the emerging future. Through strategic foresight, decisionmakers can scan the range of uncertainties on the horizon, take proactive steps to shape preferred outcomes wherever possible, and adapt strategies to be more resilient when forces are beyond our control.

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Why Megatrends?

Unlike a trend, which reflects a near-to-mid-term shift in behavior or conditions often observed in isolation (e.g., my kid's current obsession with the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack), a megatrend is a long-term, sustained force reshaping the global landscape (though she insists KPop Demon Hunters will change the world). Megatrends are a useful tool for foresight practitioners and scenario planners operating under conditions of uncertainty because they offer anchor points that can withstand the vacillations of the day-to-day. They are mostly impervious to the market swings, clickbait, and frenetic social media newsfeeds that dominate our attention. They also provide a backdrop against which deviations and weak signals can be detected, a jumping-off point for exploring a range of plausible futures, and data-driven projections that can help organizations explore the larger contextual factors that might impact their operating environment. Despite their utility, on their own, megatrends are insufficient predictors of the future. They can sketch out the broad contours of change but miss the disruptions and driving forces that can redraw trajectories in real time. Rafael Ramirez of the Oxford Scenarios Program calls trends the "leftovers of yesterday's future." It is a poetic reminder that trends, even megatrends, are not deterministic and the future is not necessarily linear. We have the agency to bend trends and forge new futures with each investment, technological breakthrough, and policy decision we make today.

More (Older) People

When it comes to megatrends, the most significant and consequential one is us; specifically, the collective 8.2 billion of us going about our daily lives around the world. Demographic change, often measured in years, decades, and even generations, can seem like a slow-moving phenomenon, but much like Hemingway's description of a man going bankrupt, "gradually, then suddenly," its impacts can manifest abruptly and pose significant disruption. Societal aging is one such megatrend with major implications for consumer markets and the future global workforce. Since the 1960s, falling total fertility rates and rising life expectancy have increased the median age of societies around the world. What societal aging looks like depends very much on where you live. Advanced economies are further along in this demographic transition. As more older adults enter retirement age, falling fertility rates mean there are fewer young people to fill the ranks. The 38 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development are poised to see their working-age populations shrink by 20 percent by the end of the century, creating fiscal pressures that can only be alleviated through expanded immigration. As my colleague Phil Luck argues, "The dependency ratio is rising just as Baby Boomers enter retirement, requiring more working-age immigrants to sustain Social Security and Medicare." Like advanced economies, middle-income economies are aging, but at a more rapid pace than the former. The extreme example is China, which is on course to see its working-age population shrink nearly 70 percent by the end of the century. Developing economies, particularly those in Africa and parts of the Middle East, on the other hand, will see their working-age population grow significantly. By 2050, it is anticipated that 24 percent of the global workforce will be in Africa. These demographic trends signal that the consumer markets and workforces of the future will look very different from what they do today.

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Less Water

Water is a resource we often take for granted. The challenge goes well beyond what comes out of our taps. Water forms a critical nexus with our food supply, ecosystems, communities, and energy systems. It also plays a major economic role for industries ranging from mining, textiles, and farming to technology, oil and gas, advanced manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals. Up to 62 percent of jobs in advanced economies are critically reliant on healthy water systems, and the number grows to an astounding 80 percent in low and middle-income economies. Yet in the next 15 years, the UN projects that global demand for freshwater will exceed supply by 40 percent. Urbanization and changing diets are amplifying this supply and demand imbalance known as water stress-where water is withdrawn faster than it can be naturally recharged. By 2050, two-thirds of humanity will live in an urban metro area. In the same period, global food demand is expected to increase by 56 percent, placing significant additional pressure on water resources required for agricultural production. As exposure to water risk grows, so do incidents of water-related conflict, which have seen a tenfold increase since 2000. Looking ahead, former UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore points out that today's leaders must recognize, "Access to freshwater is an increasingly critical factor in human development, economic growth, and political stability."

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Energy Upheaval

We face a dual challenge: how do we meet growing energy demand while mitigating the worst impacts of pollution and climate change? In only the next 25 years, emerging and developing economies will be home to as many people as there are on Earth today. Ensuring that these communities have access to the reliable, secure, and affordable energy they deserve by 2050 will require an estimated 505,132 petajoules (PJ) of energy supply. Data from the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook reports the current energy supply for these regions at approximately 20 percent below this level. Similarly, accelerating demand for energy-intensive AI and data center infrastructure is driving major capital expenditures towards energy projects in the world's most advanced economies. The International Energy Agency projects that to meet these growing demand signals while keeping to the 2050 net-zero goals that the world set for itself in the Paris Climate Accords, 70 percent of the global energy supply will need to come from clean, renewable energy sources. Achieving this ambitious goal requires scaling critical mineral supply and green technology production at a time when geopolitical risks and heavy reliance on a single dominant supplier-China-is creating major bottlenecks. Such a concentrated renewable energy supply chain presents challenges regarding both energy security as well as competitiveness.

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Solving Problems Without Borders, Across Borders

Megatrends are reshaping politics at every level-driving agendas within states and nations while simultaneously transforming the international landscape in real time. The effectiveness of governments in addressing these challenges will define how well each country-but more importantly, we as a global community-navigate the future. Yet these converging forces are arriving at a moment when global order seems more prone to fragmentation than collective action.

Global trade is an example of where some of the earliest signs of fragmentation are beginning to appear. While the international trading system remains interconnected, the once-dominant post-Cold War model of centralized, global consensus-based free trade is beginning to dissolve into constellations of smaller, traditional yet strategic alliance-based agreements. Accelerated by a cascade of global shocks like the 2008 financial crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, today, a total of 620 regional trade agreements have been notified to the World Trade Organization-a 145 percent increase since 2008. However, trade fragmentation and the rise of new economic players are only part of a broader pattern.

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Rival blocs now compete across multiple dimensions: economic, political, and military. Rising defense spending and renewed state-based conflicts mirror the same upward trajectory as proliferating trade fragmentation. As South Korean President Lee Jae Myung noted in a recent CSIS address, "[we are in a time] where security and economics converge." In this environment of rivalry, common ground between powers seems limited. Yet megatrends, by their very nature, cut across borders-offering the possibility to turn competition itself into a race to address shared global challenges through the promise of technology, prosperity, and innovation.

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Trends and Technology

Megatrends and innovation reinforce one another in cycles. At the broadest level, technological innovation has fueled an era of unprecedented economic prosperity. Over the past 200 years, extreme poverty fell from 90 percent of the global population to just 10 percent. Since 1991, the global middle class has tripled. This economic progress has, in turn, shaped the course of the demographic, resource, and geopolitical trends we grapple with today, setting the stage for the next cycle.

As we look ahead, from biotech, AI, semiconductors, and supercomputing to precision agriculture and renewables-technological innovations offer potential pathways to meet tomorrow's challenges. However, they are also resource-intensive, energy-dependent, and disruptive to workforces. Without proper guardrails, they risk amplifying the very challenges they are meant to solve. Just as new technologies are often a response to megatrend-driven shifts, the rules, policies, and institutions that comprise the hardware of governance must also update their systems accordingly. If technology is the vehicle driving change, governance is the steering mechanism-keeping us on course or sending us off track. Despite the popular depictions of Silicon Valley's "move-fast-and-break-things" ethos squaring off against Washington's sclerotic bureaucracy, a healthy innovation ecosystem needs both to work in concert.

From light bulbs to polio vaccines, the splitting of the atom to smartphones, history has taught us that it is not the eureka moment alone that defines the world's most impactful technologies, but rather the speed and scale at which such breakthroughs can be delivered to those in need across markets. Current development strategies focused on revenue growth in narrow markets risk missing out on the long-term gains that would follow wider technological capacity building efforts. This is especially true when considering regions where the majority of the global population will be living in the future, but where access to digital infrastructure and advanced tools remains uneven. A renewed focus on building technological readiness could enable targeted investments, inclusive innovation, and adaptive policy frameworks for sustainable impact.

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Navigating New Frontiers

There is no GPS for navigating the future. But by scanning the horizon with tools like trend analysis, strategic foresight, and scenario planning, we can reduce surprises and anticipate emerging possibilities. In a geopolitical landscape defined by uncertainty, agency comes from knowing which signals matter, where systems are shifting, and how to stress-test strategies and lead when the future refuses to wait. Blazing the trails of tomorrow begins with the decisions we make today.

Eric Palomaa is director of the Hess Center for New Frontiers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.

If you are interested in learning more about this topic, explore CSIS's Executive Education courses: the New Frontiers Megatrends Workshop and the Strategic Foresight and Scenarios Program.

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