Foresight and futures thinking for international development co-operation: Promises and pitfalls

Abstract

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.