What are the key dynamics shaping the 2020s?

by Futures Centre, Oct 13
2 minutes read

The coming decade will be one of transitions – for good or ill.
There are five key dynamics that lie at the heart of these transitions.

Dynamic areas - future of sustainability 2020 report

For many years, Forum for the Future has mapped emerging trends across society, the economy and the natural world, and explored what their implications might be for the prospects of a sustainable future. Trends, of course, do not act in isolation; they interact, and change each other. It is a complex picture, they do not, of course, operate in isolation. They themselves are each part of a living, evolving system.

Rather than simply tracking individual trends and their interaction, we have instead sought to understand how a whole cluster of trends can combine together to produce a really dramatic impact on the world; one which can shift whole systems.

How we respond to COVID-19 – particularly how governments spend their trillions – will shape our destiny going forward. The 2020s could see us transition into a world of ever more destabilising shocks, or towards a reconfiguration of the systems we rely on based on goals of equity, sustainability and resilience. How we respond to these dynamic areas will shape the next decade and in turn the next century.