Three Views Along the Road Ahead

We recently concluded the World Government Summit, just as the gates were closing on the remarkable global exhibition that was Expo 2020. Expo 2020 saw 192 nations come together, united under the theme, ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’. Held at Expo, the World Government Summit (WGS) itself in its 2022 edition brought together over 7,000 delegates from over 190 countries to discuss the future of government around the world.

Our goal at the WGS is to bridge the gaps between governments, to unite them in anticipating the future. Not only the future of governments, but of humanity.

The WGS has always had a future focus, and throughout the years it has brought several opportunities and challenges to the attention of governments. For example, at the 2018 edition of WGS, the Director General of the World Health Organization presented a detailed report on the potential for a pandemic that could sweep the world and pose unprecedented challenges to humanity. Little did we know, at the time, that we were only a couple of years away from witnessing such a pandemic.

Back in 2016, speakers at the WGS talked of blockchain and of crypto currencies and their tremendous potential and growth. Today, many governments are struggling to keep up with the fast-changing challenges and opportunities of a $2 trillion global crypto currency market. Many are wrestling with regulation, legal frameworks and strategies to address crypto currencies.

Few years ago, during the World Government Summit, we discussed the technologies of virtual reality with the global entrepreneur Elon Musk , and today the world is speaking about Metaverse technologies and their tremendous potential. How will governments address such opportunities and challenges?

In 2013, we presented for the first time a ‘Museum of the Future’. A few weeks before the 2022 World Government Summit, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum inaugurated the Museum of the Future, a global hub for futurism, human development and forward planning.

In short, the World Government Summit has itself become a truly global platform for casting our minds forward into the future and ensuring that our governments are agile, future-focused and ready to encompass the future and all it brings with it.

We understand how complex it is to attempt to understand the future. We understand that what we call “future” has many variables and surprises. However, this should not discourage us from attempting to make informed predictions about the future. That is because preparing for the future makes us part of making it, and gives our teams a clarity to deal with its opportunities and challenges.

To that end, I made three predictions for the future in my address. The first was that the coming pace of change will be greater than we expect. The events of the past ten years, in terms of scientific, economic, social and technical development, have far exceeded the pace of development and change in the previous century.

The past two years have eclipsed the events and changes of the ten years before that. Whatever happens in the future will be much faster than this.

E-commerce sales have multiplied 8 times in the last two years compared to the previous decade to reach $4 trillion, online education has become the new normal, and we have seen a tremendous reduction of time needed to develop a vaccine.

The fast pace of change is not only about the opportunities, but also about the challenges that face the world. In the past two years we have seen inflation multiplying four times, natural disasters connected with climate change have multiplied as well. There are many other examples that prove the unprecedented acceleration of change, which means that the governments’ ability to study the future and to anticipate and adapt with change is more important than any time before.

My second prediction is that there are no ‘givens’ when we address the future. We can no longer expect any status quo to provide us with comfort. Everything is subject to change. Our trajectory towards globalization, towards interconnectedness through network technologies and global agreement on humanities challenges has dissolved into populism, pandemic and atomization. Who would have predicted a war in the heart of Europe? What other comforting, stable situation are we depending on today that will be subject to the winds of change tomorrow?

My third is that public-private partnership is not an option. It is not a choice. It is an absolute necessity for governance into the future. For centuries governments have been the key tool for the development of society and the promotion of growth and development. But in today’s world, a lot of governments are lagging behind. Technology companies exist today that manage greater funding flows than many treasuries and have greater valuations than many national GDPs. Access to space is no longer a governmental prerogative, private sector enterprises can manufacture and send rockets to space in a way many governments can’t. Our media and culture are being influenced by trans-national players who are beginning to have political stances. We absolutely must have a solid relationship between our public and private sectors, a relationship that allows for and positively encourages development and innovation but that also ensures the cohesion and security of our societies.

There we have three challenges for the future – three predictions I made at the 2022 World Government Summit. By preparing for the future, by encompassing the future in all of our thinking, planning and day to day work, I believe we can truly grasp the opportunities presented to us and navigate the challenges that come our way.

In short, if we are to thrive, the future has to become our daily focus and change has to be our welcome companion.