LOGIC Consulting: Why foresight will be critical to the GCC’s transformation agendas

Governments pursuing large national transformation plans, particularly in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, need to build stronger ‘foresight’ systems into their planning processes or risk being blindsided by a world where crises now overlap and reinforce one another, according to a new two-part report from LOGIC Consulting.

The report argues that the traditional tools of public sector planning, including multi-year strategies, annual budgets, and fixed performance targets, were built for a world that changed slowly and predictably. That world, the report says, no longer exists.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report has for several years flagged that the biggest global threats, from AI-driven misinformation to extreme weather and geopolitical tension, are deeply connected to one another rather than isolated events. By 2026, the report says, that warning has become an accurate description of daily conditions rather than a forecast.

The numbers cited illustrate the scale of recent disruption. Shipping delays in the Red Sea cost the Suez Canal an estimated $11 billion in revenue and foreign exchange between December 2023 and July 2025, and Red Sea and Gulf countries saw trade volumes fall by about 8% compared to pre-crisis levels.

Natural disasters caused $368 billion in global losses in 2024 alone, with weather-related events responsible for 93% of that total, and losses in the first half of 2025 already reached roughly $131 billion.

Heat, talent, and insurance add local pressure

For Gulf states specifically, the report points to extreme heat as a growing threat to transformation timelines. Qatar is projected to lose 5.3% of total working hours to heat stress by 2030, followed by Bahrain at 4.1% and the UAE at 2.6%.

Because Gulf transformation plans depend heavily on construction, infrastructure, and outdoor logistics work, the report says heat is not simply an environmental issue but a direct threat to labor productivity and project costs.

Competition for skilled workers is another strain. The report estimates a global shortfall of 85 million unfilled jobs by 2030, worth roughly $8.5 trillion in lost annual revenue, a gap that puts pressure on Gulf economies trying to staff new sectors in AI, clean energy, and advanced manufacturing all at once. Rising insurance costs for large infrastructure projects in disaster-exposed regions like the UAE add yet another layer of financial uncertainty to giga-projects and new industrial districts.

Vision alone is not enough

The report draws a sharp distinction between ‘vision’, which sets a destination like national roadmaps Saudi Vision 2030 or UAE Centennial 2071, and ‘foresight’, which is the ongoing work of testing whether the assumptions behind that vision still hold.

“Vision defines direction, but it does not ensure continuity because direction under evolving conditions requires a capability that traditional planning does not provide; a capability anchored in future foresight,” said Hussein Osman, director at LOGIC Consulting.

The report warns that once assumptions are built into a national strategy, they tend to become treated as fixed facts rather than variables that need regular review, a pattern it says is a common cause of strategy failure in long, capital-intensive programs. It notes that government budget systems in particular resist change once targets are set, a rigidity the International Monetary Fund has also identified as a structural barrier to adaptive governance.

Singapore’s Centre for Strategic Futures could serve as a model for embedding foresight directly into government decision-making. The UAE’s Dubai Future Foundation and Future Foresight Strategy, along with Saudi Arabia’s newer foresight stream within its Research, Development and Innovation Authority, are cited as regional steps in the same direction.

Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 has proven that adaptive execution is possible even without a formally branded foresight structure, with 93% of performance indicators tracked under the plan in 2024 were met, exceeded, or on track.

Making the business case for foresight

The report also draws on private sector history to argue that foresight pays off financially, not just strategically. It cites Shell’s scenario planning work in the early 1970s, which helped the company respond calmly to the 1973 oil crisis while competitors scrambled. A longitudinal study referenced in the report found that companies with stronger foresight capabilities achieved 33% higher profitability and 200% higher market capitalization growth than peers.

Looking ahead, the report flags several emerging risk areas governments should watch closely, including the global space economy, projected to grow to $1.8 trillion by 2035 from $630 billion in 2023, and data center electricity demand tied to AI growth, which could reach 945 terawatt-hours by 2030. It also notes that the top three countries refining critical minerals now control 86% of global supply, up from 82% in 2020, raising concerns about concentrated exposure to trade shocks.

The report concludes that for foresight to actually work, it needs to sit close to top decision-makers, run continuously rather than as a one-time exercise, and connect directly to how budgets and strategies are shaped, rather than existing as a side project disconnected from real governance.

“In an environment defined by structural uncertainty, the gap between a well-articulated national vision and its successful execution is not bridged by planning sophistication alone but by the institutional capacity to sustain strategic coherence through conditions that no plan can fully anticipate at inception. This is the capability that strategic foresight provides,” said Osman.

“Foresight must be embedded into the core operating architecture of government, rather than commissioned intermittently with the expectation of impact. The nations that will execute their transformation agendas most effectively will be those that build the institutional capacity to both protect and adapt their visions, ensuring they remain viable under the uncertain and evolving conditions that will define the years ahead.”