Evaluation’s Journey towards the Future, Part 6. Evaluating yesterday’s world for tomorrow’s challenges?

 

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Why are we still evaluating yesterday’s world to plan for tomorrow’s challenges?

Evaluation after evaluation that land on my desk for review describes context as if time stopped yesterday - dutifully mapping out past achievements, current realities, societal and stakeholder dynamics, but rarely explore the future, the unfolding landscape we are walking into. It often feels to me as if strategies, theories of change and evaluation recommendations are being designed for a world that's vanishing, even as a new one takes shape.

Evaluators are slowly embracing foresight techniques thanks to the work of committed specialists (see also here and here), but most organisations have not yet woven future-awareness into their strategic and evaluative DNA. To help shape relevant ideas and plans in a rapidly changing world, we must lift our gaze from narrow context slices to the full picture of what the future might hold.

The future is not completely unpredictable!

I have spent the last two decades looking beneath the surface of our shifting world, including tracking megatrends—the large, transformative global forces that influence and shape economies, societies and social-ecological systems over long periods. These are not often considered in strategies, theories of change, evaluations or even scenario planning, yet they make the future less unpredictable than we think.

Yes, we live in a time of polycrisis—interconnected shocks accelerating change and deepening uncertainty—but patterns emerge if you know where to look. Megatrends lie at the core of many of these dynamics. They can be both cause and effect, driving global risks while also being shaped by the disruptions they contribute to.

In a world defined by volatility and uncertainty, these megatrends can be very helpful in making sense of what lies ahead. Sophisticated strategists and futurists use these deep, long-term forces not to predict the future, but to build more grounded, plausible models and scenarios and stress-test decisions against a range of possible outcomes. By examining how megatrends intersect, combine and cascade through systems, they identify emerging risks and opportunities that simpler models often miss.

So, megatrends do not remove uncertainty, but they make it more legible and help us navigate it with far greater clarity. Futurists use major global shifts and trends as a framework to better understand and organise the complexity of the world, so that they can develop strategies that are not only imaginative, but also grounded in real-world dynamics and more likely to succeed.

Many analyses catalogue megatrends (see for example here, here, here and here). But many of those listed are actually surface symptoms of deeper global shifts. I like to peel back the layers to identify those that are truly foundational.

Megatrends and evaluation

In this post I highlight 5 of 11 megatrends that I believe have the most potential to influence our strategies and evaluations in the next five years. The unlisted trends are: systemic thinking and the polycrisis; advances in global health, nutrition and pandemic preparedness; decolonisation acceleration and knowledge pluralism; demographic asymmetries; rapid urban growth; and digital immersion and sovereignty.

I believe that in every evaluation that we do or facilitate, every MEL system we help develop, we have to consider the possible implications of these 11 global trends.

How should they influence our monitoring, evaluation and learning questions? Our theories of change? How will they change our evaluation criteria, designs, findings and recommendations?

Here are my selected ‘big five’ megatrends, with my views of what this could mean for the field of evaluation/MEL.

Megatrend 1. Shift in global power

What is likely over the next 5-10 years?

This is the one mega-shift that will affect everything more deeply than we realise.

We are already in a multipolar, multi-alliance world, where powerful nations and blocs pursue shifting strategic interests without a single dominant superpower. Economic and soft power will continue to move rapidly East and South. This will lead to greater pluralisation of governance models and development paradigms. New narratives are already gaining ground—like the Beijing Consensus as counter to the Washington Consensus, promoting state-led development, pragmatic reform and national sovereignty. No more forced democracy. No one-size-fits-all framings of change. More systemic thinking.

Governments will increasingly navigate multiple centres of influence, balancing competing interests and forming diverse financing and trade relationships. Many cities and provinces will bypass national governments to forge international partnerships to escape geopolitical tensions. Place-based and bioregional initiatives will create bottom-up momentum where systems appear to be stuck.

While communities in large parts of the Global South will face growing poverty amid aid reductions, resource conflicts, trade dynamics and enforced and unfair debt repayments, they will also have new opportunities aligned with more transformative, context-specific development models and new partners.

Many nations are already embracing these alternative models and modes of cooperation as more closely aligned with their strategic and developmental priorities. Many potentially powerful forums are emerging to explore new cooperation opportunities, as the recent ASEAN-GCC-China Summit demonstrates. Key alliances supporting the interests of the Global South are becoming more prominent despite efforts at destabilisation; taken together, they are already reshaping the global balance.

BRICS+ – a real counterweight to the G7, advancing multipolarity and pushing for fairer global governance and finance;

SCO – a Eurasia-based model of security and governance;

BRI – China’s (now greener) infrastructure web, stretching across continents;

ASEAN/+ – inspiring and guiding regional stability, trade and diplomacy outside Western-led forums;

G77 + China – over 130 nations strengthening the Global South’s collective voice at the UN;

OIC – 57 Muslim-majority states shaping Islamic finance and sovereignty debates;

CELAC/ALBA – prioritising sovereignty and solidarity Latin America and the Caribbean, without the US;

AfCFTA – Africa’s mega-trade zone, still developing but poised to reduce dependency on external powers.

But power never surrenders quietly, so we can expect a period of great and increasing instability—more instigated resource wars, armed conflicts, manufactured enemies to justify arms build-up at the cost of social programmes, and pervasive propaganda and censorship in democracies as the Western-centric narratives that have shaped the world since WWII recede.

Why should we care about this major shift?

As global power shifts, many global-to-local dynamics will evolve. Conventional evaluation frameworks often fail to reflect or resonate with some of the most successful, non-aid-driven development examples of recent decades. This will shape our technical, strategic and political roles as strategy and evaluation specialists.

We will need to cross more disciplinary and philosophical boundaries, engage more with underrepresented experts from East, Southeast, Central and West Asia, explore alternative financing sources and development paradigms, and better understand what really works, for whom, how and under what conditions.

Examples like China’s emphasis on systemic, state-led strategies and collective prosperity over individual freedoms, India’s jugaad (frugal, creative, flexible) innovation philosophy, Africa’s ubuntu principles, and Indigenous worldviews of collective responsibility and interdependence of people and nature all challenge conventional evaluation’s criteria, metrics, linear logic and prevailing values.

This shift therefore demands that we reexamine existing evidence, question dominant narratives of progress, and rethink the values, assumptions and criteria that guide our evaluations. We must adapt to, and help shape, South-South cooperation, blending insights from both Global South and North.

Doing so requires not only professional skill but also inner transformation—relearning how to see, think, and respect diverse ways of knowing and being.

Megatrend 2. Capitalism under pressure

What is likely over the next 5-10 years?

This is the second very important megatrend that underlies several others, including climate change and environmental destruction.

Capitalism (produce, consume, profit—repeat!) is entering a period of growing turbulence as its internal contradictions deepen and global megatrends converge. In many Western countries, extreme wealth concentration will increase, with political systems increasingly shaped by elite interests. Inequality within countries will continue to rise, fuelling public frustration over stagnant wages, declining public services, inflation and insecurity around housing and energy. This pressure may push governments to consider redistributive reforms, although powerful financial markets and other entrenched interests will likely resist meaningful change.

In much of the Global South—especially in low-income countries—poverty will worsen as resource extraction intensifies. While resistance to these trends will grow, so will the challenges.

Major economies that cling to growth-at-all-costs models risk long-term instability, and will become more and more mired in unsustainable debt. This will cause them to lash out with increasing intensity. Climate shocks will expose how vulnerable these systems are, prompting deeper discussions—especially in Europe and among younger generations—about alternative models like degrowth and post-growth economics.

AI will further widen global inequality by reshaping labor markets, displacing workers in both high- and low-skill sectors without adequate protections. The impact will vary across regions: in the Global South, AI’s effects may be less extreme due to the dominance of manual and interpersonal work and slower adoption linked to limited digital infrastructure—offering a window for adjustment.

Meanwhile, the major ongoing efforts to reduce reliance on, and diversify from the US dollar will continue, as emerging economies push for greater financial independence. While the dollar will likely remain dominant in the near term, alternative currency and trade systems will steadily gain traction, undermining American economic dominance.

Why should we care about this global trend?  

As capitalism faces mounting pressure—from deepening inequality, climate breakdown and disruptive technologies like AI—evaluators are stepping into a more complex and politically charged landscape. Traditional neoliberal models are being questioned or reshaped, and evaluation must evolve accordingly: not just as a technical exercise, but as a critical practice that helps societies define and navigate fairer, more sustainable futures.

To stay relevant, evaluation must take a more systemic lens—recognising how economic, social, and ecological forces interact, and how feedback loops and power dynamics shape outcomes. GDP alone can no longer serve as a sufficient measure of progress. New indicators are needed—ones that reflect well-being, ecological health, intergenerational equity and the fair distribution of wealth and opportunity.

Evaluators will need to ask: who benefits, who is left behind, and what values underpin the systems we assess? As AI, climate action, and market reforms reshape societies unevenly, questions of equity and justice must move to the center of evaluation design and interpretation.

In a time of declining trust in institutions, evaluation also has a role to play in strengthening democratic legitimacy—by amplifying the voices of affected communities, using participatory and culturally grounded methods, and challenging extractive or top-down narratives.

Finally, drawing on diverse worldviews will be essential. Indigenous ethics of relationality, African principles of interconnectedness, Confucian notions of harmony, and Islamic and Persian ideas of justice as moral balance, stewardship, and harmony between humanity and nature can enrich evaluation frameworks, helping us assess not just what works, but what truly matters for people and the planet.

Megatrend 3. Convergence of AI, algorithmic power and new technologies

What is likely over the next 5-10 years?

This is the third megatrend that underlies several others, and will change nearly everything.

AI will radically and rapidly reshape nearly every aspect of human life. It will evolve from a tool of automation to a cognitive partner—transforming how we think, work, govern, and relate. It will accelerate scientific breakthroughs, personalise healthcare and education, and enhance responses to crises like climate change. Human relationships will be increasingly mediated by AI—from dating to political organising—reshaping social cohesion through algorithmic matchmaking. It will also democratise expertise by making specialised knowledge accessible to farmers, entrepreneurs, and vulnerable communities, helping narrow global knowledge gaps.

AI will change education and research or knowledge production in powerful ways. In schools and universities, AI will create personalised learning experiences that adapt to each student's pace, needs and learning style, collecting detailed data about how students learn and perform. This will transform education from a standardised, classroom-based model into a continuous, AI-driven process that extends beyond traditional boundaries.

In research and knowledge production, AI increasingly influences what topics get studied, which projects receive funding, and how research is prioritised by analysing citation patterns, trends and impact metrics. AI tools also accelerate research processes like literature reviews, hypothesis generation and data analysis. It will drastically change how knowledge is conceptualised, done, reviewed, published and shared. However, these AI systems risk amplifying existing biases and favouring dominant knowledge systems over diverse perspectives, potentially making both educational experiences and research directions more uniform rather than embracing the full spectrum of human knowledge and cultural contexts.

Combined with biotechnology, AI will accelerate drug discovery, diagnostics and tailored treatments. Its convergence with materials science and engineering will drive major innovations and breakthroughs in smart manufacturing, robotics, neurobiology, sustainable energy and advanced materials. Other benefits include real-time translation with cultural nuance, targeted mental health support and high-precision environmental monitoring.

All of these advances can be used for the good of humanity and the ecosystems that define the beauty of our planet. But it can also be used for the (very) bad. And AI will reconfigure power, not always in good directions. Control over algorithms will shape economies, worldviews, technologies and political narratives—all this while AI is still in its infancy, and therefore prone to hallucinations and misleading information. The commodification of humans may intensify, eroding dignity, deepening inequality and weakening collective wellbeing. As reliance on AI grows, critical thinking will decline, while ‘AI shamanism’—where communities ascribe spiritual power to AI—will challenge traditional belief systems. Emotion AI will manipulate feelings, while predictive policing and AI-managed borders may entrench systemic injustice. Indigenous and other oral knowledge systems risk being overwritten by data-driven logic, reducing human agency.

Perhaps most critically, AI will fragment human experience into personalised reality bubbles, creating unprecedented challenges for shared truth and democratic discourse.

Why should we care about this global trend?

Artificial intelligence will not just enhance evaluation; it will transform its core. Over the next decade AI will take over many traditional evaluator roles: real-time data gathering, trend analysis, causal modelling and multilingual synthesis. Evaluations will become faster, more adaptive and embedded in programme cycles. Complex systems like climate adaptation or health resilience will be dynamically modelled, allowing virtual testing before real-world implementation.

Yet with these advances come profound shifts. As AI systems increasingly shape policy, perception and power, evaluators will have to move beyond measuring impact to interrogating the algorithms themselves. Who owns them? Whose values, data and knowledge systems shape them? Evaluators will need to audit algorithmic bias, assess ethical use and track unintended consequences—especially in contexts like predictive policing, AI border controls and emotion-manipulating systems.

AI will also personalise education at scale. Evaluation will therefore need to assess how learning is shaped and whether AI systems support diverse learners, respect cultural and local knowledge, and promote inclusion. This includes tracking not just outcomes, but also the assumptions and biases built into algorithms, and their effects on equity and access. As education becomes a continuous, AI-driven process, evaluators will have to capture long-term impacts on curiosity, critical thinking and learning autonomy.

The same scrutiny will apply to universities and knowledge production, where AI will influence what is researched, funded and prioritised, often reinforcing dominant paradigms. Evaluation will also have to examine how AI reshapes academic incentives, peer review, and knowledge dissemination. It will be vital to ensure that technology broadens rather than narrows the meaning and purpose of learning, and protects the value of diverse knowledge systems, contexts and histories.

Evaluators will also need to adapt to rapid innovation, assess cross-sector impacts, and evaluate not just technical outcomes but also cultural, ethical and equity dimensions: Who gains? Who’s excluded? What values are reinforced or erased? The commodification of people through data extraction raises urgent ethical questions—about human worth, incentivised traits, and how to affirm human beings as relational, not extractable.

As AI fragments reality into personalised truths, threatening shared meaning and democracy, evaluation will play a vital role in rebuilding coherence—assessing not just effectiveness but fairness, cohesion and epistemic justice. As solutions become more context-specific, evaluation will have to evolve to track individual-level outcomes while retaining systemic insight.

Non-Western perspectives—rooted for example in interdependence, reciprocity and cyclical time—have the potential to offer critical correctives to AI’s extractive, linear logic. Crucially, the field will have to champion plural ways of knowing, and protect oral traditions, communal knowledge and spiritual relationships with land from algorithmic erasure.

In this future, evaluators will act as translators, stewards and ethical navigators—ensuring that AI serves humanity, not the other way around.

Megatrend 4. Climate change  

What is likely over the next 5-10 years?

Climate change is no longer a distant threat—it is already reshaping life, especially in the Global South, compressing long-term impacts into short-term political and policy cycles. It is driving resource scarcity, forced migration, conflict, and geopolitical tensions over water, land and other natural resources. Agricultural systems are being disrupted through shifting rainfall, extreme weather, soil degradation, and declining yields, threatening food security and rural livelihoods.

Prosperous societies and elites will likely continue to overlook climate impacts and resist reparations, while vulnerable countries in the Global South intensify calls for compensation—fueling further geopolitical tension.

China will continue to lead in climate strategies and technologies, advancing its constitutionally enshrined goal of building an “ecological civilisation” for over a billion people. Governments globally will be pressed to adopt urgent economic policies, resilience planning, early warning systems, and restructured incentives and climate finance—enabled by cross-sector, cross-border coordination.

Communities will increasingly face displacement, competition over resources, and the need for hyper-local adaptation to survive mounting climate shocks.

Why should we care about this global trend?

Future-focused evaluation and MEL systems have to be designed to embrace uncertainty, assess adaptive capacity, and apply systems thinking to track cascading effects. We need to work across time horizons and disciplines, support efforts that foster geopolitical stability and social cohesion, and refine how we assess equity—particularly in terms of how climate finance and adaptation efforts reach vulnerable communities.

Advocacy for, and integration of, local and Indigenous ecological and societal knowledge will be essential. This is already visible in reforestation efforts in China and the Sahel, and relocation strategies in the Pacific. Evaluators will have to interrogate the values, assumptions, tradeoffs and tensions behind concepts like a ‘just transition’—and examine whose priorities are being served.

Indigenous and other non-Western philosophies will have to help reframe how we define and assess climate disruption, resilience and response.

Indigenous knowledge systems view climate disruption as a rupture in the relationship between people and place. Adaptation is not just technical—it is relational and spiritual: restoring balance, honoring ancestral land and sustaining life cycles. Evaluation will have to ask whether interventions respect traditional seasonal indicators, protect biodiversity and support not only physical survival but cultural continuity and intergenerational flourishing. East Asian traditions—shaped by centuries of adaptation to monsoons, droughts, and floods—offer philosophies centred on living with change rather than resisting it. Daoist and Confucian thought emphasises balance, frugal resource use and governance attuned to nature’s rhythms. A Buddhist lens highlights interdependence: what we extract, emit or alter reverberates across time and space.

Evaluations grounded in these frameworks might ask: Are we restoring and strengthening harmony, or deepening imbalance? Are our responses aligned with natural cycles, or working against them?

Megatrend 5. Environmental destruction

What is likely over the next 5-10 years?

Climate change is just one strand in a wider environmental crisis driven by how we live, consume and discard. Our planet is exhausted; if we are to sustain our current way of life as a global society, we will need 1.7 Earths. Humanity’s growing footprint is destroying the web of life on which we rely, yet we continue to breach multiple planetary boundaries.

Efforts to value nature beyond capitalist notions, create circular economies, and implement strategies focused on regeneration will slowly come to the fore and evolve, while land overuse continues, oceans choke and species disappear at alarming rates. Pollution will continue to pile up in Earth’s remotest corners. Microplastics, soil collapse and poisoned rivers will deepen the crisis, while toxins, forever chemicals and unchecked waste will drive more and more serious health crises. Large regions will eventually grow unlivable.

Resource conflicts and disputes, exploitation and wars will target unpolluted lands and rare earths and other strategic minerals. We will see rising conflicts over land, water, clean air and habitable space. Wealthy nations will continue to externalise environmental costs—importing resources from poorer parts of the world and exporting waste back to them. While interest in the rights of nature will grow, legal systems focusing on issues related to the natural environment will split—some tightening, others unraveling.

In essence, nature will move from backdrop to disruptor, contributing to economic and social instability.

Why should we care about this global trend?

Evaluation must urgently shift to treat environmental collapse as a present reality, not as a future risk. Footprint evaluation already shows the way. Success cannot be measured by social or economic gains alone. We must ask: Do interventions help communities adapt to scarcity, avoid harm, and build resilience when ecosystems fail? We need frameworks that assess whether interventions reduce pressure on Earth’s systems; embed ecological limits; and expose trade-offs—tracing supply chains, environmental costs and system stresses.

Environmental, social and economic systems are deeply interconnected. Evaluators will have to assess synergistic and cascading effects using systems-informed, interdisciplinary approaches. Indicators have to track challenging issues such as adaptive capacity, applications of the rights of nature, environmental justice and long-term resilience. We must also challenge false solutions, focusing on who really benefits, who holds power and the implications, who is harmed, and what is left behind.

Embedding ecological limits also means rejecting illusions of progress that do not reflect appropriate worldviews. We need to consider alternative, often overlapping worldviews, for example: Indigenous knowledge recognises that environmental ‘collapse’ reflects the severing of sacred relationships between humans and other beings. It will centre reciprocity with land and species, asking if interventions restore balance for future generations. East Asian philosophies emphasise ecological rhythms, harmony and interconnection—seeing impacts as relational and cyclical. Islamic and Persian traditions view environmental destruction as a moral and spiritual imbalance, and positions humans as caretakers of the Earth, entrusted to protect creation. Ecological harm is seen as a breach of this trust, requiring justice, balance and humility in resource use. African philosophies emphasise deep interdependence—among people, land, ancestors and the spirit world. Nature is not a resource, but part of a living moral fabric. Environmental damage is a communal and spiritual rupture, calling for restoration grounded in relational accountability and intergenerational continuity.

These perspectives shift evaluation beyond nature as resource toward regenerative justice and sustainable coexistence.

In Conclusion

These megatrends highlight the potentially transformative role evaluation will have to play over the next five years.

As global power shifts, capitalist and environmental systems strain, and AI reshapes knowledge and governance, evaluation will have to evolve urgently and boldly. Evaluators will have to embrace plural worldviews, holistic methods, systemic foci, and deeper questions of justice, equity and sustainability. Success can no longer be measured by economic growth alone. We will have to ask: Do interventions reduce harm, build resilience, and restore balance between people, communities and nature?

Non-Western philosophies challenge dominant paradigms, calling for evaluation to reflect principles such as reciprocity, cyclical time, and intergenerational responsibility. This shift will require not only new professional approaches, but personal transformation—rethinking assumptions, working across disciplines and valuing diverse ways of knowing.

Environmental breakdown is not a future risk—it is a present reality. Evaluation will have to trace ecological limits, system stresses and trade-offs. While AI enhances technical capacity, it also demands ethical scrutiny. Evaluators will have to assess not just outcomes, but the algorithms, values and power dynamics behind them. As AI fragments shared meaning and reshapes truth, evaluation will have to protect epistemic justice, uphold human agency and support social cohesion.

Evaluation will have to become a vital practice for making sense of complexity, restoring trust and co-creating just, sustainable futures—together with those most in need of change.