Blog

Last Monday I was a mentor at Hack for the Futures, a one-day AI for Climate Action hackathon during London Climate Action Week 2026. The premise was simple and demanding: bring together young developers, researchers, designers, and climate experts, and ask each team to produce a working prototype and a future scenario tied to climate action. They had six hours. That is not six hours for a foresight exercise. It is six hours for everything: defining the problem, forming the t

Our recent blogpost on the second- and third-order implications of the Strait of Hormuz closure brought out several issues with the UK’s food distribution system. The impact in fertilisers and farming may lead to lower yields, higher prices, poorer diets, malnutrition, excess deaths, and instability in food-importing states (of which the UK is one, relying on imports for around 50% of its food). Food shortages could lead to hoarding, theft, black markets, fraud, protests, fo

This is the second of two blogs looking at the impact and importance of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Part 1 was an overview of the issue and its potential geopolitical importance. Part 2 looks at the potential implications in detail. Modern economies burn hydrocarbons. They build with them, wrap and package with them, fertilise with them, cool with them, fly with them, clean with them, seal with them, lubricate with them, and sterilise with them. Medicines and medic

This is the first of two blogs looking at the impact and importance of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Part 1 is an overview of the issue and its potential geopolitical importance. Part 2 will look at the potential implications in additional detail. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz places the world at risk of a major global economic and geopolitical shock. The closure is not merely an “oil shock”, affecting the global supply of oil and natural gas. It is already

A changing global landscape, and how might the land lie in the future In the first blog we summarised the disruption to geopolitics caused by the end of the “New World Order”, the rise of China and the BRICS countries, events such as Covid-19 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the impact of the second Trump Presidency on the United States and its relations with other powers and regions. The blog identified growing pressures on the global systems of international trade, an

A changing global economic landscape, and how might the land lie in the future. This is the first of two blogs looking at the challenges facing the global economy now. The second blog will present a scenario set indicating possible future directions in what is an unstable and unpredictable world. A Disrupted World The end of the “New World Order” has been apparent now for more than a decade. A look back over this period reminds us of just how much disruption there has b

The self-appointed National Preparedness Commission has updated its list of Strategic Issues first produced in 2020. The NPC likes to think of itself taking a “a systems view of national preparedness” so its selection of issues can be wide-ranging and eclectic. It seeks to lobby Government into adopting a more structured approach to preparedness and resilience, and critiques Government strategies such as 2023’s UK Resilience Framework (UKGRF), the Resilience Action Plan (RAP

This blog is the 6th in the SIP blog series; a set of blogs shared among the partners of the Sustainable Innovation Pathways project. This cross-border, collaborative effort brings together foresight, financial forecasting and technology readiness levels to understand where companies, industries, and countries can best decarbonise. Decarbonisation is no longer about compliance or reputation. It is about staying in business and gaining a future competitive advantage. This is n

Welcome to the Climatetech SuperCluster on 19th March with some notes – 'from smart cities to wise'... Figure 1: ‘not in the algorithm’ If human interaction is about zero… As a kid in the 1960s I got the bus to school, and soon got to know everyone at the bus stop – now everyone is on their feeds and apps, and human interaction is about zero… So does smart city tech point towards a city of strangers controlled by distant overlords – or – a city of local synergy and cohes

The world shrugged its shoulders. The Paris Agreement 1.5C target is unattainable; 2C unlikely. “Overshoot” is here. But the world carries on, enduring more frequent extreme weather events, gradually incurring more costs and losing more lives. Financiers factor in extra costs into their modelling and change nothing. Only crises galvanise people into action. And there are plenty of prospective tipping points that could do that – when it will be too late to respond. Economic m

This blog is the fifth in the SIP blog series, a set of blogs shared among the partners of the Sustainable Innovation Pathways project. This cross-border, collaborative effort brings together foresight, financial forecasting and technology readiness levels to understand where companies, industries, and countries can best decarbonise. The majority of net zero and decarbonisation strategies fail not because the goal is incorrect but rather because the approach is insufficient.

Last year when we reviewed the 2025 WEF Global Risk Report , Donald Trump had recently taken office and we were all wondering what came next. Last year, the 10-year view was dominated by environmental risks. Extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, critical change to Earth systems and natural resources shortages led the 10-year risk rankings. This year’s report has the same top three long-term risks, but misinformation and adverse outcomes of AI have