This perspective reflects on three key trends that became increasingly prominent over the course of the Mistra Geopolitics programme, running 2017-2025.

While their future trajectories remain uncertain, these developments highlight broader shifts that are likely to influence the geopolitics of sustainability in the years ahead: a “flexilateral” turn in multilateral cooperation, shifting conceptions of security, and emerging technologies as growing drivers of uncertainty.

These developments carry both risks and opportunities and may at times be in tension with one another. Importantly, developing a clearer understanding of their possible trajectories can strengthen strategic foresight, preparedness, and resilience.

1. A flexilateral turn of multilaterism 

In the past, multilateral cooperation has produced key sustainability agreements, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement. Today, however, the rules-based multilateral system is under growing pressure, and sustainability governance is becoming increasingly pluralized and diffused. “Flexilateralism” describes a strategic approach adopted by states – and, potentially, by non-state actors – to achieve policy objectives through the simultaneous and pragmatic combination of unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral instruments.

The impacts of flexilateral governance on sustainability outcomes remain to be seen and represent an important area for future research. Risks include the possibility that hard-won multilateral agreements are undermined, that national governments deliberately bypass multilateral and rules-based cooperation in their engagements with others, that smaller or less powerful states are excluded from selective arrangements, and that pragmatic, flexible approaches prioritize quick wins over the long-term structural transformations needed for sustainability.

However, flexilateral approaches may also enable quicker progress on specific goals, as they are not constrained by the slow pace of multilateral negotiations. They can foster innovation by allowing states to experiment with tailored, context-specific solutions that can later be scaled up to global frameworks. Combining unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral instruments may also create complementarities, where the overall level of ambition and policy “hardness” is greater in aggregate than when relying on individual instruments in isolation. Finally, if non-state actors are meaningfully engaged, flexilateral governance can broaden participation and draw on diverse capacities, knowledge, and resources for sustainability transformation. The role of non-state actors within flexilateralism remains an important area for future research.

2. Rethinking security

We see an increase in violent conflicts around the globe; an accompanying trend is a re-emphasis on traditional security thinking, focused on the territorial integrity of states, increased military spending, and issues around sovereignty and political independence. With this trend comes the risk that security that includes human, ecological, and relational considerations gets sidelined, despite how vital these considerations are for building positive peace. Human security highlights people’s safety, dignity, and livelihoods; ecological security underscores the resilience of ecosystems and the resources that sustain societies; and relational security, the sense of continuity, belonging, and mutual stability that arises from sustaining meaningful relationships among people, communities, and ecological systems in times of upheaval. The associated risks are multiple, including failure to address root causes of conflict (e.g. water scarcity, inequality, food insecurity and weak governance), civil–military tension and loss of social cohesion, and missed opportunities for conflict prevention and cooperation around transnational risks.

In the long run, narrow security thinking might make nations less resilient – and ultimately less secure. Concrete ways to achieve more broadly encompassing and integrated security thinking could, for example, be to include climate and ecological risks in national security assessments and to develop policies that connect food security and environmental sustainability – ensuring that efforts to improve preparedness also protect ecosystems. Without such thinking, key environmental and social drivers of insecurity may get lost in geopolitical and policy thinking, with implications for the overall resilience of societies. Environmental and social issues also could be captured in the push for securitization, should military security become the main framing, trumping sustainability – with implications across areas such as mineral resources and mining pollution, food chains, and water supplies.

3. Emerging technologies as a driver of uncertainties

The rapid development of emerging technologies has the potential to disrupt societies – including geopolitical dynamics and sustainability trajectories. Some disruptions occur when the incremental development of a technology reaches a critical threshold. For example, when solar energy becomes cheaper than fossil fuel–based energy, investment flows shift dramatically, disrupting global energy markets. Emerging technologies can also be inherently disruptive, as illustrated by artificial intelligence (AI). Unlike sector-specific innovations, AI cuts across all areas of society, making its impacts on geopolitics and sustainability difficult to predict.

Under the right conditions, AI can drive new economic activity, optimize energy systems, and improve resource efficiency. Yet it also risks deepening power imbalances. AI may become the first general-purpose, strategically significant technology in which states are not in the driver’s seat – instead, large global tech companies lead its development. Governments now face the challenge of fostering innovation while regulating actors that operate largely beyond national boundaries. This growing influence of private technology firms represents a new kind of geopolitical tension, distinct from traditional state-centric competition. At the same time, the race for critical minerals and the rise of green industrial policies show how states are strategically positioning themselves in emerging technological arenas. While these efforts can advance sustainability, they may also reinforce existing inequalities, with the benefits of AI and green transitions concentrated among early and wealthy adopters.

Given the current pace of development of AI technologies, as well as associated uncertainties regarding societal impacts, it has become even more difficult – using standard approaches – to build trustworthy scenarios on time scales relevant for decision-making on environmental change. An interesting and promising line of research here is to use AI technologies for building better future scenarios. As researchers scramble to grasp the development of AI, and the challenge of building long-term scenarios increases, AI could hold potential to aid this process.

Promising futures? 

The three trends outlined above highlight the growing complexity of the geopolitics of sustainability. Flexilateralism, evolving security priorities, and rapid technological change are reshaping how states and non-state actors interact with each other and the environment. These dynamics make decision-making more uncertain – but also more consequential.

In this context, science has a critical role: not in predicting the future, but in clarifying what is known, identifying where uncertainties lie, and supporting decision-makers in developing strategies that are robust under diverse conditions. Systemic analysis and foresight can help reveal trade-offs, synergies, and unintended consequences before they lock in – for example, how flexilateral arrangements might accelerate progress on specific sustainability goals while weakening global coordination; how rapidly increasing investments in military security could undermine long-term ecological and human security; or how emerging technologies such as AI can simultaneously enable resource efficiency and deepen existing inequalities.

By combining scientific insight with policy engagement, it becomes possible to test assumptions, explore alternative pathways, and identify leverage points where interventions can strengthen both sustainability and security. The ability to generate and apply such knowledge will be central to navigating future geopolitical disruptions – and to ensuring that decisions made today expand, rather than constrain, the space for sustainable action.