By Zoe Barois

Like many other countries, Bangladesh is working to develop it’s Food Systems Transformation Action Plan. This will be presented during the United Nations Food Systems Summit Plus 4 Stocktaking event. On November 6 and 7, Foresight4Food collaborated with GAIN Bangladesh to host a workshop on how foresight could contribute to the development of the Action Plan.

If transforming food systems were easy, it would have been done! But it’s not. Discussions dug into deeper questions about HOW change can be brought about and the implications of this for action in Bangladesh.

The participatory and dynamic workshop brought together policymakers, researchers, youth leaders, key UN organisations and members of the private sector. The workshop served two purposes, first to help clarify directions for the Action Plan, and secondly, to take forward the work on using foresight to help drive food systems change.

Discussion during the workshop focused on the five commitment pathways:

  1. Nourish all people
  2. Boost Nature-based Solutions
  3. Advance Equitable Livelihoods, Decent Work & Empowered Communities
  4. Build Resilience to Vulnerabilities, Shocks and Stresses and
  5. Accelerating the Means of Implementation

Validating scenarios for the future of food systems in Bangladesh

It was great to engage in discussions around four visual future scenarios. These were  developed using rich pictures during a lively multistakeholder event in June earlier this year. Future scenarios are an excellent way to open discussions around what different stakeholders see as a desirable future. Interestingly, these do not always align as the implications would vary depending on what outcomes you’re seeking. At the end of the day, a poor farmer will desire different things when compared to a corrupt businessman!

The scenarios displayed different outcomes based on these uncertainties:

Equity – Would there be high or low levels of equity?

Climate resilience – we all know that climate change is happening, but whether Bangladesh will have high or low climate resilience is definitely in question

Healthy food consumption – Would people in Bangladesh be eating traditional diets or would they follow a diet that resembles something like a North American diet, something seen in many parts of the world.

Business structure – would Bangladesh have a diversified or consolidated business structure, dominated by a few large conglomerates

Creatively naming these scenarios helps convey the messages. So we had a fun exchange where groups came up with poetic Bangladeshi names to better describe the scenarios. Part of the validation will be to update these, helping spur action towards the most desired and away from the least desired future.

Unpacking five critical issues

Key issues blocking progress towards food systems change in Bangladesh relate to:

  1. The cost of a healthy diet in addressing malnutrition
  2. Climate resilience
  3. The role of social protection programmes in shaping food systems change
  4. Fruit and vegetable production
  5. Land use change and dietary patterns

These key themes were the result of a longer participatory process that emerged from the food systems map of Bangladesh. Diving into these topics, FoSTr’s five research partners shared their work on the key trends, challenges, and opportunities within each theme. Exploring these themes using a future lens can help clarify desired directions of change.

The power of causal loop mapping

How often do you get policymakers, youth and researchers around one table, heavily immersed in discussion using sticky notes and flip charts? My response: not often enough! This combination of actors is rarely seen but proves oh so valuable in uncovering insights previously hidden from each sector. The tool casual loop mapping, may be familiar to some. It’s a systems thinking tool where the interconnections between elements are mapped and the direction of causality identified. It’s a great way to map out the elements within a system and identify levers of change – small actions that lead to a large impact. For each of the commitment pathways, this casual loop mapping was performed. Insights like forming alliances between farmers and entrepreneurs to boost sustainable farming practices, or using the power of advertising to improve healthy food consumption and inspire healthy lifestyles were uncovered.

Reflections

Whilst having many people come together who don’t usually converse – the so-called ‘breaking the siloes’ is a huge achievement in itself, the task of writing yet another policy document looms above our heads. Everyone in the room has appeared here for a reason – which I hope is to create the change we need, a future that we all desire. After such positive discussions and recognition that we need to act – and act now, the fear I have is we will all fall into the same trap. The trap of being consumed by our busy agendas and becoming frustrated that yet another policy document has to be produced. Leading to un-actionable and hugely categorised actions. We don’t want this Plan of Action to become another document that has great suggestions but continues to lack the HOW. Let us think about how will these actions be implemented.

Foresight helps us to keep the bigger picture in mind, where do we want to go and where do we want to be in the future? Let’s use this thinking to help us prioritise and select key activities to implement. Working together to do so.

Over the past year, the Foresight4Food Foresight for Food System Transformation – FoSTr team and our country partners have begun a foresight process in Jordan, Uganda, Kenya, Bangladesh, and Niger to support national food system transformation. As an initial step, a collective understanding of the food system in different contexts was needed. Hence, the Foresight4Food team in collaboration with our facilitators and research partners in each focus country, created comprehensive food systems reports mapping the dynamics, trends, drivers, and activities within the food system.

Being a lead on food system mapping, I’m sharing my reflections on the process in this blog.

We started with a scoping phase using the Foresight4Food foresight framework, which allows for flexibility and contextual adaptation. This phase involved identifying key stakeholders, understanding their interests, and assessing current and future concerns.

Our next goal was to foster a shared understanding of the food system’s key dynamics, outcomes, drivers, and activities to identify trends and uncertainties. This collective understanding forms the foundation for a participatory process using foresight and scenario analyses to support meaningful food systems change.

The second step, system mapping, was done in collaboration with country facilitators and research teams. We used the Foresight4food framework to identify key food system outcomes, activities, and drivers, considering their interaction with the broader environment. Data were compiled from national and global sources and generated through participatory workshops.

In addition to providing an overview of current status and trends, we conducted a deeper analysis using causal loop diagrams created with research partners during workshops. This approach helped identify trade-offs and synergies, informing actions to improve food system outcomes. We also noted recurring patterns that affect feedback loops, further clarifying the system’s structure.

These reports offer an initial snapshot of the current food system status and are intended to inform a more comprehensive foresight process. As the dynamics, trends, drivers, and activities within the food system continually change, these reports welcome ongoing reflection and discussion.

Read and download reports

By Zoë Barois

To support the lasting and valuable development of any multi-stakeholder network, it is important to explore its perceived values and positioning from the perspective of various key and transdisciplinary stakeholders. In line with this concept, five members from the Advanced Masters International Development (AMID) Programme at Radboud University including Emma John, Guusje Dijkstra, Meg van Grinsven, Nadia Rinaldi, and Zoë Barois, collaborated to explore stakeholder perceptions on the perceived values of the Foresight4Food Initiative and the risks it faces when participating in multi-stakeholder networks.

The team conducted seven interviews with foresight experts and practitioners from private, governmental, research, and multilateral organizations, in addition to experts in multi-stakeholder partnerships. Some interesting findings came up in the interviews that led to the development of several guidelines.

Perceived Values of Foresight4Food

The interview participants appreciated that the Foresight4Food Initiative connects stakeholders to (new) players in the field and enables their work to be critically examined by specialists. Being able to harness expertise in the field of foresight and apply this to food system transformation was highlighted to facilitate a deeper understanding of the suitability of foresight tools in diverse contexts.

Additionally, the interviewees highlighted Foresight4Food’s unique value is that it is one of the few initiatives working on food system transformation on a global level, as opposed to most initiatives that focus on national or regional scopes.

Foresight4Food’s deliberate focus on the processes (rather than the product) of forecasting future scenarios was emphasized as a value in itself as it is a strategic tool for food systems transformation.

Document title: Kenya – INSURED Programme – February 2022 Author: Isaiah Muthui

Description: Local boys transporting left over maize stalks after a harvest in Mananja location, Machakos county

Copyright notice: ©IFAD/ Isaiah Muthui Copyright info URL: www.ifad.org

An interviewee highlighted the benefit of Foresight4Food’s open-access resource platform and their ability to provide a neutral meeting space that facilitates cross-learning and a deeper understanding of foresight and food system trends among stakeholders.

“…we see it [Foresight4Food] as a great forum to exchange learning, for example, we just took the exploratory scenario planning process and customized it for use with multi-stakeholder partnerships… this is a tool that already existed that we kind of adapted and would love to share how that works so other people can pick that up…’’ – Foresight Practitioner

Risks Faced by Foresight4Food: Positionality & Durability

During the multi-stakeholder interviews, several thematic risks emerged relating to Foresight4Food’s durability and positionality within the active foresight landscape.

The long-term thinking required to envision the outcomes of Foresight4Food poses challenges in terms of sustainability as this makes it difficult for organizations to invest in the initiative due to investors’ often short-term vision and the need to “show results as quickly as possible” – Foresight Expert — a common challenge faced by many organizations in the development sector.

In relation to Foresight4Food’s positionality, the initiative faces the risk of being duplicated by similar organizations and, consequently, being “squeezed out by the big players if they feel that we are an irritant on the side of what they consider to be their patch” – Foresight Expert

Lastly, Foresight4Food faces the risk of not being “democratised enough and sublevel enough” to truly get involved with the root causes of the food system issues. This stems from the current engagement of true experts in the field and thus emerges as an ‘’elite network’’  initiated by two high-profile universities. This lack of inclusivity is further emphasized by interviewees “not capable of being inclusive we are going to fail giving to those that actually can benefit the most from our work”  – Foresight expert

Subsequently, one of the main challenges of F4F is effective outreach and engagement with stakeholders.

Proposed Guidelines

Taking into account Foresight4Food’s vision and the thematic risks which emerged from the multi-stakeholder interviews, several guidelines were generated aiming to support the sustainable and valuable development of Foresight4Food’s multi-stakeholder network.

1.     Foresight4Food’s Positionality 

Enhancing F4F’s positionality is crucial for the initiative to find its niche. Therefore, the following guidelines are suggested:

  • Conducting a needs assessment of the current network members can enable F4F to identify and prioritize their needs.
  • The outcomes from the needs assessment can provide an informed direction to perform a visioning exercise. Matchmaking between desired visions and the long-term forecast
  • Continuously update the existing mapping of foresight initiatives across the food system. This can be used to perform a competitor analysis to assess the existing gaps in the foresight and food systems field and formulate associated research questions.
  • Facilitating smaller partnerships amongst F4Fs members, was highly valued by an interviewee thus F4F could link initiatives conducting complementary activities identified in their foresight initiative mapping, further enhancing their value.  

2.     Sustainability: Foresight for Foresight4Food 

To ensure Foresight4Food’s sustainability and longevity, Foresight4Food must become more attractive to investors:

  • ‘Foresight for Foresight4Food’: generating potential future scenarios for F4F to clarify what outcomes and impact F4F envisions in its short- and mid-term futures.
  • This can be further enhanced and formulated into concrete goals by a Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning (MEL) expert, who can contextualize F4F’s Theory of Change towards each of the five FoSTr countries, providing concrete outcomes, which are actualized for funders to grasp and support. 
  • Develop a funding strategy to generate a diversified funding portfolio to ensure financial flow from a variety of sources.
  • Attract funding from the private sector and from philanthropy as they are harboring the most financial power within the field.
  • Consider transferring core operations and leadership to stakeholders in target operational areas (i.e., the FoSTr countries). This would require creating an inclusive roadmap for phasing-out and phasing-in new or alternative network partners. 

3.     Inclusivity & representativeness

To make F4F more inclusive, the following recommendations are provided:

  • Stakeholder Characteristics and Roles Matrix to map to identify stakeholders who are not yet on board or have a low influence within the network.
  • Introduce a ‘second circle’ around the steering committee to include a diversified set of stakeholders in the decision-making processes. This second circle could include farmers, youth representatives, and/ or representatives from the five FoSTr programme focus countries.
  • Generate a sense of ownership amongst second circle members through co-creation

To conclude

Foresight4Food Initiative is striving to develop and strengthen its network among foresight practitioners and different stakeholders. However, it gets challenging for any organization to work in a multi-stakeholder environment. Therefore, an exploratory look at the perceived values and positionality becomes imperative.

Foresight4Food, under its FoSTr programme is working in five countries across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, conducting foresight orientation, stocktaking, capacity building, and exploring ways to transform the country’s food systems. Thus, making it the right time to explore sustainable positioning from a stakeholder’s perspective.