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Introduction to foresight
1. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
An introduction to foresight
Robin Bourgeois
GFAR Secretariat
Thefuturesustainabilityof ruralareas
andimplications forAfricaFeedingAfrica
Pre-plenary foresight event
Accra, 15-16 July , 2013
6TH AFRICA AGRICULTURE SCIENCE WEEK & FARA GENERAL ASSEMBLY
2. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Background: improved foresight
“Forward-looking, anticipatory research
and analysis needs to integrate a range of
perspectives on key issues, making use of the
best available data and interpretations from
different sources and directly integrating the
diverse views of farmers and other
stakeholders on specific problems, so that
important issues are examined through
multiple ‘lenses’.”
3. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Background: improved foresight
“The need for improved foresight must be
addressed by mobilizing expert analyses
within countries ... and bringing
together, via GFAR and the regional
fora and on a coherent and regular basis,
the diverse national and international
initiatives ..., learning from the outcomes
of the different models and perspectives
employed.”
4. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Content
Defining foresight
What do we know?
What can we do together?
5. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Defining foresight
• “A process which combines three fundamental elements:
prospective approaches: long-term or forward-looking,
planning approaches: including policy-making and priority-setting,
participative approaches: engaging stakeholders and knowledge sources”.
A working definition for the GCARD2:
Foresight = “forward-looking, anticipatory research and
analysis”
6. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Defining foresight: engaging in foresight
Knowledge (how the future could be, why)
– Understanding the futures
Interaction (where we want to go together)
– Choosing our future
Change (what can we do, how)
– Creating our future “We cannot predict the future,
we can create it”
scientists,
governments,
companies, donors,
…
7. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Defining foresight: methods
Qualitative to Quantitative
Context dependent
No single/best approach
Fits objective and resources
Allows participatory approaches
8. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Defining foresight: methods
Projections and simulations based
on quantitative methods
2
1
Likely
Wanted
Plausible
Unwanted
Toda
y
2025
2040
6
5
3
4Ruptur
e
Scenarios and visioning
based on qualitative methods
Both are needed…
9. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Content
Defining foresight
What do we know?
What can we do together?
10. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
What do we know? The current state of foresight in agriculture
The inventory
New challenges/priorities
Controversies
Current practices
Impact
11. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Contacts: 5000 +
Answers: 1000 +
Positive: 400 +
Selected: 43
36
State of Foresight Report
3 Write workshops
Analysis and synthesis
38 Briefs
The Futures
of Agriculture
Synthesis
What do we know : the foresight inventory
12. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
What do we know? The current state of foresight in agriculture
The inventory
New challenges/priorities
Controversies
Current practices
Impact
13. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
What do we know: new challenges/priorities
More focus on food insecurity
The “Farming World” questions
Policies and societal values as drivers of changes
14. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
What do we know: new challenges/priorities
Explore alternatives to technology-based farm productivity
How consumers may change attitudes and behaviours
Account more for diversity
15. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
What do we know? The current state of foresight in agriculture
The inventory
New challenges/priorities
Controversies
Current practices
Impact
16. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
What do we know: controversies
–Larger more concentrated farms
–Smaller more diversified farms
–Something else?
–Food security ensured by:
–Family agriculture
–Large industrial farms
–Something else?
Evolution of farming patterns
17. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Future agricultural land uses
Agricultural land expansion
• Agricultural land reduction
Multifunctional use
• Specialized use
Rural area abandonment
• Rural area revitalization
What do we know: controversies
18. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Future links between production and consumption
• Standardization of consumption
patterns and food supplied by
international market
versus
• Regional and diversified
consumption patterns supplied by
local/proximity production systems
What do we know: controversies
19. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
What did we learn? The current state of foresight in agriculture
The inventory
New challenges/priorities
Controversies
Current practices
Impact
20. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
What do we know: current practices
Global/regional works more quantitative, less inclusive
National works more qualitative, more inclusive
Absence of LDC
Absence of FO/CSO
21. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
What did we learn? The current state of foresight in agriculture
The inventory
New challenges/priorities
Controversies
Current practices
Impact
22. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
What do we know: impact
Capacity to affect stakeholders
Influence or change
Capacity to change policy and orient
actions
Impact evaluation is still insufficient
23. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Content
Defining foresight
What do we know?
What can we do together?
24. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Issues
• Reaching the limits of the planet (water, land, energy, biodiversity)
• The future of civilization: End, Clash, Polarity, Positive chaos
• The consciousness of humankind: Fatalism, Fundamentalism, Scientism,
Pragmatism
• Difficulty of the global community to address sustainability
25. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Questions
Who can design a new planet?
How?
What new planet?
26. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Who: Answer 1
YOU.
27. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Who: Answer 2
ME.
28. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Who: Answer 3
WE.
TOGETHER
29. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
What new planet?
30. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Rural poles Rural continuums
Rural stations
Rural ghettos
Today
Revitalisation
of rural areas
Abandonment
of rural areas
Smaller numerous
multifunctional
farms linked to local
markets of
diversified products
Fewer large agro-
industrial farms linked
to global markets of
standardised products
Rural oases
31. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
How?
Change leadership: evolutionary co-leadership
conscious followership
Take advantage of critical junctures to promote new
options every hour, day, week, month, year
Built and connect networks for empowering
citizens
Reflect on our own thinking habits and attitudes: are
we agents of change? And what change?
What else?
32. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
Thank you
33. The state of foresight in food and agriculture and the roads toward improvement
What new planet?
What else?
People
before
product
Sustainability
before
productivity
Happiness
before
profit
Equity
before
growth
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&
&
Notas do Editor
Quote from the GCARD Roadmap. This quote and the next one have shaped the structure of the Foresight breakout session. Please keep in mind the words that are highlighted, because this is what we will focus on during the foresight session
Quote from the GCARD Roadmap.
I will first present some elements to be shared here so that we can work together during these foresight sessions with a common understanding and language about foresight Then I will present the result of an inventory on the state of foresight in agriculture. This will be followed by a short introduction of the framework of the foresight session.
As defined by the European Union one of the most important provider of foresight studies, THE EU conducted comprehensive assessment of foresight works in all sectors in Europe and worldwide.
Why do people/organization engage in foresight? It is possible to define three types of objectives when engaging in foresight. (Talk about them briefly). This diversity of objectives shows that it is impossible to establish a normative way for doing foresight. How and what kind of foresight work we conduct is determined by the way those who engage in foresight, users and practitioners, see the world, by the type of question they intend to answer and the scale at which they look at these questions.
This is about what foresight practitioners say about foresight methods (common position) . Diversity is the key word. Here for example the European Union has identified more than 30 different tools that can be used and combined in order to do foresight works. Some of them are specific to foresight others are more universal. But methodological advances are still needed.
There are two big families of approaches in foresight. The « likely » area is the domain of quantitative foresight methods (we know and can measure) The « unlikely » is the domain of the qualitative foresight method (what we know and cannot measure and what we don’t know and can imagine) Together they form the domain of plausible futures, this is why they are complementary and why improved foresight is about marrying so as to make the best of each, getting something more than just the sum of their specific virtues.
Let’s see now the result of an inventory on the state of foresight in agriculture that was undertaken with the objective of facilitating in-depth discussion during these sessions at GCARD. After this presentation you will see five examples of foresight, which will illustrate what we found in the inventory.
The inventory started with contacting more than 5000 people and resulted in more than 40 cases. Then explain Briefs and the report Criteria of selection: 1. long term (more than 10 years). This excluded all the purely planning exercises 2. recent (less than 5 years when it started in 2012) in order to provide feedback on the latest activities 3. focused on agriculture and/or rural development issues so as to keep concentrate on challenges for AR4D Screening was done by a group of 10 foresight practitioners who volunteered from the Global Foresight Hub.
First bullet: A lot of work has been done in foresight about the future of food security, concentrating on global food needs and production. Most foresight works indicate that more than availability, access to food is the future key challenge for food insecurity. They indicate that access is not just a problem of logistics, moving products from surplus areas to deficit areas, that can be solved by market mechanisms, it is an issue related with he capacity for people to acquire the quality they need, either producing it or purchasing it. Second bullet: What could be the future of those (smallholders) working on agriculture: who would be farming; what would happen with employment and more generally with the future of (rural) societies, how to achieve ecologically sustainable societies; conservation of local culture; what would be the impact of increasing urbanization on agriculture. Third bullet: The challenge for future foresight work is to integrate more systematically these new drivers in the analysis, rather than considering them as external factors. This means working on understanding how and why policies and societal values could evolve;
First bullet: this is a challenge to general views and a call to think out of the box. To think about alternative options to productivity increase Second bullet: More knowledge about consumer behaviour in the future is needed in order to understand the link between “people, profit, and planet” as mentioned in one of the Briefs Third bullet: ... taking into consideration variations at local/national level as different and multiple drivers do lead to different situations in different context: link global dimensions to regional, national and local level and reciprocally (see Indonesia, can Brazil feed the world)
The first controversy is due to the fact that the exploration of alternative scenarios lead to contrasted future situations to which different types of farms are more or less adapted. The second controversy is due to the facts that the potential of family small scale agriculture has not been realized yet, and that food security can be considered at various scales from global to local.
The first controversy is due to the fact that the divergent and opposite effect of different drivers of land use changes, such as expansion of urban area and non food land use versus need to produce more food, or intensification freeing more land versus demand for non food products. The second controversy is due to the uncertainty related to potential opposite effects of policy orientation and economic forces The third controversy by the uncertainties about the future states of the drivers of population migration toward urban area, such as services, quality of life, employment. Here again policies are important potential drivers which could shape the current trends in different ways
This controversy is due to the combination of uncertainties related to the possible evolutions of the dietary patterns and the capacity of different farming patterns to respond to these evolutions. The local dimension is adding to uncertainty.
First bullet: These works are developed by experts or scientists from international organizations or national organizations from advanced countries in the North/West. What is striking in our inventory is the absence of the LDC in foresigth, and the absence of FO and CSO when we look at who initiated or conducted the foresight works.
First bullet point: … is witnessed by the numerous cases which have raised awareness and/or provoked debates based on their result; Second bullet point: the type pf impact depends on the aim : producing knowledge (influence) or producing priorities and informing choices (change) Third bullet point: … is very much linked with the demand for foresight from a decision-maker, and the ability of foresight leaders to directly interact with decision makers in the policy setting process; Fourth bullet point: … and needs to be strengthened in future foresight works
Let’s see now the framework of the foresight session and how it relates to possible commitments from the participants here and the wider audience outside the GCARD2.