Navigating our future: the critical role of strategic foresight in regional security 

Pacific people are among the world’s greatest ocean navigators. Their ability to observe the sun, stars, ocean swells and winds led to grand voyages of discovery, kinship building and trade across an ocean that spans more than 30% of the Earth’s surface.

As navigators, they read subtle signals and understood the importance of timing; looking for the moment of opportunity to act and adjust course to reach their destination.  

Today, Pacific Island leaders navigate a different ‘ocean’; one shaped by shifting global and domestic conditions, the accelerating impacts of climate change, and growing geopolitical interest. It is an environment where leaders must navigate a sea of agreements, proposals and partnerships that bring consequences that can last far into the future.  

Like their forefathers, today’s leaders can learn from the past while anticipating change and adapting, and holding fast to the national and regional objectives they have charted.

Strategic foresight, like traditional wayfinding, is a tool to guide the journey. As a discipline, it enables leaders to assess complexity, anticipate possible futures and translate insights into decisions and actions that serve their people, now and over the long term. 

Treacherous waters of the polycrisis 

At the inaugural Pacific Regional and National Security Conference in June 2024, Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka reminded the region the Pacific faces a growing ‘polycrisis’ – a convergence of threats including climate change, transnational crime, human security issues, and intensifying geopolitical tensions.

Strategic foresight offers a pathway through these complex challenges, allowing leaders to explore different scenarios, to develop forward-looking strategies, and to act at the moment of opportunity. Foresight also supports the identification of ‘no regrets’ actions and builds the adaptability and resilience needed in unpredictable times.  

The polycrisis presents real risks and strategic foresight helps us shift from binary thinking to an approach that is more holistic and that generates innovative responses, including those shaped by the aspirations of our youth, whose futures are most at stake. 

In an era where external actors are approaching the Pacific far more frequently, leaders who make decisions informed by weighing a range of possible futures, while staying anchored to their stated priorities, will be better placed to act with clarity and confidence. 

When long-term agreements cast long shadows 

As the polycrisis worsens, Pacific Island countries will have to find new ways to secure their futures. Many will have to consider the possibility of entering into long-term partnerships and agreements with their regional and bilateral partners.  

Such agreements can produce consequences that last for generations limit future flexibility and cast long shadows.  

By applying foresight, leaders can anticipate risks and cascading impacts, and in so doing, structure agreements that protect their long-term strategic autonomy. The challenge is not simply securing favourable terms today, but ensuring those terms remain fit for purpose as circumstances change into the future.  

Foresight as an opportunity 

While long-term approaches as set out in the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent seem almost too distant to be actionable, strategic foresight offers the means to bridge the gap and help to link our short-term planning, medium-term outcomes, and 2050 goals and ambitions. 

Strategic foresight is not about predicting the future – an impossible task. It is about analysing and preparing for a range of possible future scenarios and choosing the best course of action in the present. For busy Pacific officials, foresight might seem burdensome, but integrated into decision making, it becomes an opportunity to: 

• Increase decision making confidence by testing policies against various future scenarios;  

• Strengthen negotiating positions with external partners by clearly understanding long-term national interests;  

• Identify emerging opportunities that might otherwise go unnoticed amid daily urgencies; and  

• Build regional resilience through collaborative preparation for shared challenges.  

Foresight invites participation; it helps leaders and their people, including youth, to imagine alternatives and build shared commitment around preferred futures. It opens space for creativity and innovation, often allowing us to reframe problems collectively. Strategic foresight takes less time than repairing damage from hasty, short-sighted decisions.  

The path forward 

By embedding foresight into their strategies, Pacific Island countries can enhance their agency and resilience in an increasingly unpredictable world. 

In forthcoming articles, we will introduce key strategic foresight approaches to demonstrate how policymakers can use foresight as a powerful tool for sustainable decision making.  

Joel Nilon is Senior Pacific Fellow at the Pacific Security College at the Australian National University. He previously served at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat for nine years as a Policy Adviser and led the development of the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.  

Gareth Priday is a foresight practitioner with Action Foresight and a director of the Australian Living Labs innovation network. He supported the foresight process for the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.

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Views expressed via the Pacific Wayfinder blog are not necessarily those of the Pacific Security College.

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