While the benefit of ‘looking back to look forward’ is well recognised within development research, foresight is more akin to ‘looking forward to look forward’. The new IDS Bulletin ‘Foresight in international development’ argues that foresight approaches should be at the centre of development research and questions why they are not.
The latest IDS Bulletin, edited by Gioel Gioacchino and James Sumberg, explores the opportunities and challenges associated with the wide range of foresight approaches and methods that help individuals and groups to think about and prepare for different possible futures.
What is the ‘foresight’ approach?
Foresight encompasses a wide range of methods and approaches that help individuals and groups to think about and prepare for different possible futures. James Sumberg explains ‘foresight approaches and methods provide powerful tools for reflecting on and planning for the future, yet they are not widely used within the development sector’.
He notes ‘this could be down to two reasons, one being that most social science disciplines are more comfortable with the analysis of the past and the present than the future, and the other that the model of the large, well-funded public sector foresight programme simply does not reflect the realities of much policy-oriented development research’.
Four years of foresight at the forefront of development
This issue of the IDS Bulletin is a culmination of four years of work, with support from the UK Department for International Development (DFID). Researchers at IDS and their partners undertook a number of small-scale, policy-oriented projects using foresight approaches and methods.
The studies reflected a selection of current and upcoming challenges within development, including: the rise of noncommunicable disease; the meaning of resilience in rapidly urbanising contexts; drivers of investment in alternative energy; urban waste; the potential of insects as food; big data as a development resource; implications of knowledge sharing for development; the future of social protection; and security provision in the cities of tomorrow.
In October 2015 a one-day conference on ‘Foresight and International Development’ was held at IDS. The conference brought together 30 academics, development practitioners and foresight experts to ask: What is foresight in the context of international development? And what kind of foresight is useful? These are the questions addressed by The Bulletin.
How can ‘foresight’ be integrated into small-scale research?
From broadening participation and engagement to using the methods and approaches to unique and specific contexts, there are a number of steps that could enable the successful integration of foresight into small-scale research. Going beyond experts and policymakers in developing scenarios for the future is of critical importance argue Kate Bingley and Alun Rhydderch in the Bulletin. This must come alongside with much more attention to understanding the views of different actors, and the power relations amongst actors, as noted by Marie de Lattre-Gasquet and Sébastien Treyer.
In fact, Ashish Chaturvedi and Jai Kumar Gaurav explain that the foresight process has opened up deliberations beyond the usual expert committees, and has the potential to help open up and democratise the policymaking process of waste management in India, particularly through the inclusion of the informal sector.
How can the research respond the policy agenda of the future?
The global community need to focus more on the local contexts to allow foresight studies to be more relevant to the transformative agenda that is integral to the Sustainable Development Goals. Robin Bourgeois highlights this point and argues that in relation to the future of food security that policy, cultural values and individual and collective behaviours can disrupt the patterns of food insecurity observed today.
In exploring the possible futures for social protection following its rapid ascendency up the development agenda, a ‘wind-tunnelling’ exercise used by Stephen Devereux, Keetie Roelen and Martina Ulrichs highlights the importance of a country’s political regime as a fundamental determinant of its approach to social protection policy. They conclude that a better understanding of political processes is needed to protect the gains made in social protection systems against possible reversals when the political climate shifts against pro-poor redistributive policies.
Jaideep Gupte and Stephen Commins developed two contrasting scenarios: ‘coastal collapse’ and ‘post-capital commons’ in asking ‘how will security in cities be understood in the future?’. They concluded that misconceived urban planning, policy and design are likely to create insecurity, not reduce it. In this sense there is a critical gap in the understanding of the lessons that the safest cities can provide in terms of other very different cities.
Why foresight?
As the global community sets out to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, understanding what the future might look like will be integral to their success. Dominic Glover, Kevin Hernandez and Alun Rhydderch describe how they adapted existing foresight approach to force participants to confront potential trade-offs and tensions. It is this process, they argue, that can help expose some of the difficulties and challenges which might be faced in international development in the coming decades.
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