Development Policy Review最新文献

Motivation

Strategic foresight is gaining traction for anticipating changes in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world—one which will require different mindsets and approaches. Yet international development co-operation practitioners have been slow to adopt foresight.

Purpose

What promises and pitfalls should development practitioners consider in order to integrate strategic foresight into their work?

Methods and approach

We review the literature on strategic foresight applied to development. We draw on reflections from the articles included in this special issue. We incorporate the International Development Research Centre's experiences and early insights on the use of foresight for development.

Findings

Strategic foresight provides tools to anticipate long-term and potentially disruptive change. To apply the approach effectively, organizations need to understand the debates about foresight. But no one size fits all: organizations must identify where and how foresight can best be used; be clear on its purpose, use, and end-users; be sensitive to how foresight intersects with broader calls for decolonizing development and the future; and should adapt methods to different sociocultural contexts.

Connecting foresight practitioners and international development actors to explore potential synergies between these two worlds offers opportunities to innovate.

Policy implications

Traditional, short-term strategic planning, and reactive responses to emerging crises, are increasingly ill-suited to a VUCA world. To be fit for the future, international development actors must consider adding proactive longer-term anticipatory planning—that accommodates more systematic understanding and appreciation of plausible futures—to reactive responses.

Motivation

Foresight is increasingly being institutionalized and used in science, technology and innovation (STI) policy processes around the world. Foresight is a toolbox to help decision-makers generate intelligence about future scientific and technological advances and to frame long-term STI policy goals and rationales. Foresight can be used to inform policy to steer research and innovation (R&I) towards attaining sustainable development goals. Yet, foresight is not institutionalized and used in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) at a time when many governments are formulating new STI policies and some of their science granting councils (SGCs) are setting R&I priorities.

Purpose

This exploratory study is about challenges and opportunities of institutionalizing STI foresight in SSA. It identifies ways of institutionalizing and using STI foresight.

Methods and approach

A literature review, bibliometric analysis, interviews, an online survey, and focus group discussions were conducted to identify challenges to, and lessons for, institutionalizing STI foresight in SSA. The literature identified good practices for institutionalizing STI foresight in selected developed countries, to draw lessons for SSA.

Findings

While academic research on STI foresight and related topics is increasing, there is very limited foresight practice in STI policy processes in SSA. This is mainly owing to low awareness of STI foresight, weak technical capacity, and generally a lack of foresight culture in STI policy-making in the region.

Policy implications

Building capacity within governments and establishing a community of practice in STI foresight may help improve the quality and effectiveness of STI policy in SSA. It may enable institutions such as science granting councils (SGCs) to make informed funding decisions, targeting scarce resources at priority research and innovation. Overall, building STI foresight literacy and skills, as well as establishing designated offices for STI foresight, supported by the knowledge to select and adapt foresight tools, will result in improved STI policy-making in SSA.

Motivation

In the three years before 2023, we have seen multiple parallel crises—from climate emergencies to economic instability, dramatic increases in costs of living, and political insecurities. Looming larger than the risks is the resultant uncertainty. Development agents, including governments, are historically unprepared for managing converging crisis. When risks are analysed and governed in narrow ways, the historically oppressed and excluded continue to carry the brunt of impact.

Purpose

This article reflects on the question: How can institutions, including governments, become more anticipatory against this backdrop, to ensure that their policy and investment choices do not leave anyone behind due to lack of preparedness?

Approach and methods

It draws insights from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Asia and the Pacific's efforts since 2020 to apply more future-fit planning and programming, recognizing that foresight is not an end in itself, but a mechanism for shaping more anticipatory institutions. It is based on qualitative learning synthesized from over three years of work to establish new systems, capabilities and processes for UNDP and its partners to engage in anticipatory risk and planning.

Findings

Practices rooted in strategic foresight and anticipation can support institutions to incorporate long-term thinking in planning and analysis, but their translation into development decisions and investments requires shifts in perspectives and risk appetite. Historically, strategic foresight has not been mainstreamed within international organizations and governments owing to: failing to embed anticipation into core systems and processes; giving more attention to tools and building skills than to the demand for alternative decision-making models and to risk tolerance; relying overly on external support and static models; insufficiently attending to organizational culture and relational drivers of thinking and action.

Policy implications

We suggest four interconnected levers to help sustain impact and equity when bringing anticipatory approaches into policy processes: ensure design elasticity to encourage local, context-specific models of anticipatory decision-making; build anticipatory systems as a base to understand future risks, harms, and cor