SYSTEMS THEORIST, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST, STRATEGIC ADVISOR
Dr Nafeez Ahmed keynoting at the Future of Sustainable Innovation Heads of State plenary panel in the Blue Zone at the 28th United Nations Conference of the Parties Climate Summit in Dubai, UAE
“Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed: an award-winning journalist, academic and prophet for the coming post-carbon age.”
My work has influenced government inquiries, led to policy changes and resignations, and informed MAJOR UN strategies
I map the hidden systems driving our planetary crisis—from the rise of authoritarian movements to the collapse of climate and energy stability—and show how these upheavals can seed civilisational renewal. My investigations have uncovered extremist networks and exposed systemic failures, while my research develops systems frameworks for collective intelligence to guide us through the most consequential transformation in human history.
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AGE OF TRANSFORMATION
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Every week I publish Age of Transformation, a newsletter read by policymakers, investors and citizens. It connects breaking developments—from energy transitions to extremism—with deeper systemic drivers, providing foresight grounded in what I call the Planetary Phase Shift.
Join thousands who rely on this briefing to navigate an uncertain future.
PLANETARY PHASE SHIFT: NAVIGATING THE TRANSFORMATION OF CIVILISATION
We are living through a once‑in‑civilisation transition. The Planetary Phase Shift is my peer‑reviewed systems framework that integrates physical, biological, energy and information systems to explain how crises across climate, energy, technology and politics converge. Rather than predicting inevitable doom, it identifies where adaptive cycles open pathways for both risk and renewal. This framework underpins my research, strategic advisory work and journalism.
READ THE PLANETARY PHASE SHIFT PAPER, PUBLISHED IN FORESIGHT: THE JOURNAL OF FUTURE STUDIES
INVESTIGATIONS & JOURNALISM
Over two decades I’ve reported for The Guardian, VICE, The Independent, The Atlantic, The Times and others. My investigations have exposed extremist networks, systemic failures in energy, climate and security policy, and government misconduct over COVID-19. Cited in Parliament and Congress, my work combines journalism with systems thinking to reveal root causes and drive change.
READ MY GUARDIAN REPORTING
READ MY VICE REPORTING
READ MY MIDDLE EAST EYE REPORTING
READ MY BYLINE TIMES REPORTING
BIG IDEAS THAT RESHAPE THE DEBATE
My books range from peer‑reviewed transdisciplinary systems science to investigative exposés. Together they chart a journey from diagnosing systemic crises to identifying the systems driving political extremism, as well as mapping how we might build an ecological civilisation.
My latest book is ALT REICH: THE NETWORK WAR TO DESTROY THE WEST FROM WITHIN.
I’m also the author of Failing States, Collapsing Systems: BioPhysical Triggers of Political Violence (Springer Nature), A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save it (Pluto), and several other books.
“If you still need something to worry about, how about a grand conflagration of climate, financial, energy, food, and civil-liberties crises, which might destroy the world as we know it before the century is out? Such troubles, Ahmed argues, are not blips in our civilisation but ‘integral to the ideology, structure and logic of the global political economy’, which therefore needs to be changed if humanity is to survive.”
SCIENCE, STRATEGY & FORESIGHT
I’ve anticipated major events from the Afghanistan war and the 2008 banking collapse to the rise of the far-right and the global post-carbon transition. In 2010, I predicted the systemic transformation of the world economy by mid-century. As a Commissioner for the Club of Rome’s Earth4All and Distinguished Fellow at the Schumacher Institute, I integrate Earth system science, economics and history to map civilisation’s future. I’ve advised UN summits, governments and institutions including the UK Ministry of Defence, US State Department, and governments from Malaysia to The Gambia.
“Nafeez is developing a unique form of what he calls systems journalism, intended to throw light on the true scale of the planetary crisis, how this crisis demonstrates the inevitability of the demise of the prevailing system, and what true systems change inside and out might look like… Much of his writing powerfully conveys this sense of living in momentous, unsettling times, a time when we need independent thinking, and journalism, if we’re to thread the needle of constant breakdown, and renewal”
28th United Nations Climate Summit, Heads of State plenary on sustainable innovation
Keynote speaking
I deliver keynotes, briefings and media commentary on energy, climate, extremism and civilisational change. Recent highlights include addresses at the UN COP28 climate summit, the UN Summit of the Future, Carnegie Europe’s ‘Situation Room’ and the SHARE Investor Summit. Audiences range from heads of state and Fortune 500 executives to activist communities and students. My talks are described as “mind‑blowing,” “riveting,” and “life‑changing”.
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A User’s Guide was the first major peer-reviewed study integrating analysis of climate, energy, food, and economic systems with conflict, terrorism and state-power. It offered a roadmap to a viable post-carbon future.
Failing States, published by global science publisher Springer Nature, created a new peer-reviewed systems framework connecting Earth System Disruption (ESD) with Human System Destabilisation (HSD)
“International security analyst and consultant who has spent much time looking at how environmental risks and terrorism threaten our eco-security and well-being.”
RethinkX’s flagship climate report, for which I was research editor and contributing writer, shows how leveraging key technologies can drive system changes to go beyond net zero by the 2030s.
Co-author of this special brief applying RethinkX’s net zero roadmap to Europe. Delivered to German policymakers, it helped influence national energy policy.
Club of Rome paper explains the core dynamics of the clean energy transformation, how fast it will scale, and how decision-makers should leverage emerging opportunities for clean energy superabundance.
Award-winning academic paper provided an in-depth systems critique of orthodox International Relations theory and its failure to account for fundamental empirical and historical data.
In November 2024, Foresight: the Journal of Futures Studies, released the pre-print of my new peer-reviewed paper creating a collective forward intelligence framework for decision-making at planetary scale. This was the culmination of nearly two decades of work in systems theory across multiple disciplines. Powered by a global strategic communications push in collaboration with the Club of Rome, the theory was picked up across some 500 million impressions and media coverage about the paper was read by some 12 million people.