Reframing Food Futures: Making Foresight Transformative
The workshop will bring together foresight leaders, innovators, and food systems changemakers from across the globe. Our focus will be on how to realise the transformative potential of engaging food systems stakeholders in foresight. We will push the boundaries of integrating foresight into the political and social realities of making decisions and shifting mindsets for food systems transformation. The event aims to strengthen linkages across science, policy and practice.
What to expect
- Highly dynamic workshops designed to foster dialogue, ignite creativity, and spark actionable progress on the foresight agenda:
- Latest foresight tools and approaches
- Integrating quantitative modelling and participatory approaches in food systems foresight
- Knowledge platforms for food systems transformationFinance and foresight for food system transformation
- Quality criteria and monitoring for effective foresight processes
- Cutting edge-updates on foresight practice: hear from colleagues how they are putting foresight and scenario analysis into practice in a diversity of contexts.
- Applying foresight to country realities: drawing on country experiences, including the host country Bangladesh, we will go deep into the challenges and opportunities of integrating foresight into national food system transformation pathways and the implications for future investments in the sector.
Interactive learning and networking space: the workshop will be highly interactive with engaging workshops, panel discussions, and collaborative exercises designed to maximise dialogue.
Demand and impact-driven programme: Help us shape the final agenda, we welcome your suggestions on what would make this event worthwhile for you. We are also seeking expressions of interest from those who would like to offer a presentation of their work or run an interactive session.
Workshop Objectives
- Strengthen the international community of foresight practitioners, users and researchers
- Identify opportunities for enhancing the use of foresight in food systems transformation initiatives
- Deepen the understanding of effective foresight approaches, methods and tools
- Understand how foresight approaches and methods can be applied to food systems transformation
- Explore how foresight and scenario analysis can be most effective in contributing to societal understanding, policy innovation and systemic change
Why we need to ‘reframe the future’ of food systems
Transforming food systems will require imagining radically different futures in the way food is consumed and produced. Change requires consumers, producers, agri-food businesses and policy actors to reframe their understanding what food systems should deliver, how they function, and the incentives that drive the behaviours of actors in the system.
More than ever, longer-term perspectives are needed to underpin food system transformation efforts. Substantial uncertainties and systemic challenges are unfolding, including impacts of climate change, shifting diets, disruptive technologies, trade tensions, and the impacts of pests, diseases, natural disasters and conflict. At the same time, the world is increasingly behind on achieving the SDG targets, many of which depend on transforming food systems for health, livelihoods and the environment.
Foresight processes, which can effectively integrate qualitative and quantitative information, can offer options for stakeholders to be better prepared for the future.
Linking national efforts to global communities of practice
The United Nations Food Systems Summit and the National Pathways for food systems transformation have put the spotlight on the critical need to work on food systems change across multiple scales. The Foresight4Food network actively seeks to link national, regional and global processes and perspectives. The workshop will bring together facilitators and users of foresight along with researchers, from across national, regional and international institutions. The workshop offers a setting for this diversity of foresight players to push the boundaries of how foresight can help to make a practical difference at national and local levels.
Strengthening the policy-science-practice interface
Strengthening the science-policy-practice interface is a key objective of the Foresight4Food network and the workshop. This means reflecting critically on foresight approaches and methods, exploring how research evidence and data can be better integrated into foresight process, and understanding how foresight can be made policy relevant.
Bangladesh: our host country
After successful workshops in Europe, Foresight4food felt it was time our international workshop to be hosted on a different continent, giving easier access for wider group of interested people. Bangladesh is one of the four Foresight for Food Systems Transformation (FoSTr) Programme countries. Our country partner GAIN kindly agreed to host the workshop, in collaboration with the Government of Bangladesh. In Bangladesh there are interesting and valuable examples of applying foresight, for example, the Dhaka Food Agenda 2041 and the Vision 2041 Bangladesh Perspective Plan.