Finding paths through the “World in Oak”
These days you may find yourself waking up in the morning, switching on or logging into the news, and immediately wishing you had not. The world seems to have become a forbidding and frightening place, like a dark forest in a fairy tale, impenetrable, sinister, full of strange sounds and only half-understood threats.
Welcome to the “World in Oak.” This blog explains how we at SAMI Consulting identified the concept of Oak, how it has evolved and continues to evolve, and how we are seeking to use foresight and Futures thinking to see how it may develop over the next 20 years. We invite you to share your thoughts and comments in what is an extremely unpredictable and volatile World.
Background to World in Oak.
In 2021 the European Commission Directorate General for Research and Innovation published a report (SAFIRE), containing a set of scenarios for the World between then and 2040.
SAMI Consulting wrote the scenarios – some 44 in total – as part of a wider programme of work involving colleagues from German, US, and Danish colleagues: IFOK, Cadmus and Teknologi Radet. We developed the scenarios in the report with input from our professional colleagues, as well as a number of experts from around the World, and from people at the European Commission itself.
A key stage in finalising the scenarios was a workshop, held in Brussels in November 2019 and attended by the colleagues and experts mentioned above. It was a chance to discuss the scenario framework for the World, and to break into ten groups to discuss and comment on scenarios for ten global regions covering the same period.
At the Workshop, nine out of the ten regional groups said that they believed that Oak was the scenario from which their Region was starting – with six saying their Region was fully in Oak, and three seeing theirs on the cusp between Oak and Willow.
The characteristics of Oak were set out in more detail than in the above wireframe in the SAFIRE report, and summarised in a previous blog. They included:
Increased protectionism;
Increased nationalism and more conflict around the World;
Hostility to foreigners, and migrants in particular;
Greater surveillance by states of their citizens;
Increased research and expenditure on armaments;
Disputes – and possible conflicts over access to natural resources – including water as well as minerals etc; and
Diminishing trust in Government and national and international institutions such as the UN.
The Return of the Four Horsemen
The strong consensus around Oak as the predominant scenario was clearly influenced by events at the time. And events were to take a significant further step in the same direction. Just two months after the Brussels Workshop, the Lancet published, in February 2020, preliminary research on the outbreak of a new coronavirus in Wuhan, China. The World began to lock down.
The repercussions of the onset of the Covid 19 pandemic are well known now. These repercussions tended to reinforce the characteristics of the Oak scenario, with the closing of borders, a concentration on protecting the population at home ahead of international co-operation, disruption to global trade and supply lines, and the use of surveillance to reinforce lockdowns.
Since the completion of the report (which, ironically, itself was delayed because of Covid), events have continued to reinforce the shadow of Oak in the world:
The continuation into 2021 of the Covid lockdown and its economic and social effects;
The war in Ukraine from 2022 to the present;
The conflict in Gaza in 2023 spreading to Lebanon and the waters of the Persian Gulf, causing further disruption to what is a key supply route; and
Conflicts in other regions, including the Sahel, Central and East Africa and Myanmar; and
“America First” isolationism, after November’s Presidential Election, already posing fundamental questions about existing alliances and global governance;
ALL these events are adding to pre-existing difficulties being felt by most, if not all regions. The World faces very real danger of:
Wars directly involving major global and regional powers, not merely their proxies …
… and wars in space, as warring parties seek to disable their rivals’ satellite capacity;
Structural economic problems affecting national economies …
…. but also making people poorer, and their lives more precarious, which in turn…
…amplifies the “baby bust,” as people decide they cannot afford to have children, even if they would like to;
Richer states becoming unable to sustain their existing pension and social security systems; middle and low-income states becoming unable to conceive of such benefits;
Mass-migration on a larger scale than ever, as people seek to flee conflict zones and areas of drought and famine;
Technology that enables both faster and more accurate armaments, and cheaper, easier to assemble ones;
To the “Oak effect” of these we see other long-term trends leading the world in the same direction:
The impact of global climate change, and the frequency of extreme events, such as record temperatures, droughts and wildfires in some places, and flooding in others; and
The economic and social effects of the combination of falling birth rates around the world and aging populations due to longer life expectancy.
It is possible to imagine these events as a latter-day avatar of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. All four – conquest, war, famine, and death – are present in the World today, and reinforce the prevailing sense of gloom.
This leads us to conclude that if the World was in Oak in November 2019, it has got deeper into Oak since then. We are deep in the dark woods.
So What is To Be Done?
That is what we aim to find out. We will be working to try to
identify if the current situation is – as seems likely – unstable and therefore impermanent: for example, what might happen when the current septuagenarian leaders of the USA, China, India, Russia, and Turkey step down or are replaced?
identify how dark Oak could get: how will other states and Regions react to the change of direction signalled by President Trump. How might China react to a possible rapprochement between America and Russia? What will Europe do?
Although most attention at present is on the USA, Europe and Russia, with China seen to be playing close attention, any seismic shifts in relations between these actors here will affect others, both influencing their own global outlooks and inviting shifts in strategy to reflect a suddenly more volatile reality. For example, where will emerging powers such as India and its delicate balance between the USA, China and Russia, and Turkey seek to place itself where both the Black Sea Region and the Middle East may become significantly more unstable?
Could there be a war, involving the major powers? What are the implications for Europe, and Taiwan – and from them to the global economic system?
If not a “shooting war,” it is almost certain that there will be continuing trade wars, and competition for access to raw materials and markets: how might these play out?
If there is not a route back to something resembling the “New World Order” of 1991, then we need to investigate what alternative scenarios there are for the way the World governs itself over the next 20 years;
We will identify opportunities – for example in the use of innovative technologies to help avoid catastrophic events and build better, more resilient systems for the future; and
Consider how to mitigate some of the adverse impacts identified in Oak to ensure that we avoid the worst possible outcomes.
In this way, we hope to find some paths through the Oak Forest, and illuminate them to help us, and others, on their way. As we said in the introduction to this blog, we would welcome readers’ thoughts and comments.
Written by David Lye and Jonathan Blanchard Smith, SAMI Fellows
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily of SAMI Consulting.
Achieve more by understanding what the future may bring. We bring skills developed over thirty years of international and national projects to create actionable, transformative strategy. Futures, foresight and scenario planning to make robust decisions in uncertain times. Find out more at www.samiconsulting.co.uk
Image by RegalShave from Pixabay
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