What if uncertainty is the path to peace?
Lessons and learning in a year experimenting with futures and foresight in peace and security
The problems at the heart of conflict resolution, peacemaking and peacebuilding are inherently wicked. Wicked problems are difficult or impossible to solve for different reasons. They are highly complex, rife with causes and influencing factors that are not easily determined, and involve multiple stakeholders holding different perspectives, often with divergent goals. This past year much has been said, including by the United Nations, about the added disruption of uncertainty to wicked problems in complex systems.
One positive to emerge from the shock of COVID-19 is the resounding call across the UN System for anticipatory programming to better prepare for the emergence and withstanding of shocks — a central theme of the report on “Our Common Agenda” that Secretary-General António Guterres presented to Member States in early September 2021. The report looks forward to a strengthened global governance model that is fit for our times and future generations, enabled by futures methodologies such as foresight, horizon scanning and participatory futures.
In the work of peace and security, shocks and disruptions around political milestones, like elections, political transitions, and other moments of political instability, complicate analysis and conflict-prevention efforts. Rational models of prediction based on historical data are insufficient. They must be complemented and tested against the temporal and spatial dimensions in which the problem operates, such as processes of change and structural drivers, alongside the mapping of emerging issues and trends.
Foresight and futures thinking, used here interchangeably, is a structured process to engage with uncertainty by exploring alternative futures and seeking to understand how actions and decisions now can impact them. Foresight is by no means new to the field of peace and security: the US Air Force originated foresight for policymaking in 1945 with a famous memo asking for a report on “future techniques, weapons, ways of training pilots, and securing sufficient funding after WWII ended”. The widely cited acronym “VUCA” (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) was coined in the 1980s by the US Army War College.
The United Nations is not new to futures methodologies in its peacebuilding work. An oft-cited example is Lesotho’s 2017 futures-oriented national reform strategy, supported by the United Nations country team. Lesotho, a country with a history of political instability and security challenges caused by factors such as weak institutions, the elite control of political space and the politicisation of security establishments, recognised the importance of a home-grown reform agenda after a series of failed government-led reform efforts. The year-long exercise, “The Lesotho We Want: Imagining the Future, shaping it Today”, applied sensemaking and participatory futures scenarios and culminated in the adoption of a national dialogue and reform agenda by the government. George Wachira, then UN Peace and Development Advisor and initiator of the Lesotho project, noted that the foresight strategy created a safe space for national stakeholders who did not necessarily align on the immediate contentions of the day but managed to agree on a path to national reforms centred on long-term and desired futures. Importantly, the foresight project birthed professional futurists, now based at the National University of Lesotho, who are committed to sustaining the country’s futures capability by working with the Ministry of Planning to monitor the implementation of the agenda.
Over the past year, the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs’ Innovation Cell has worked with partners to launch a series of pilots exploring foresight and futures thinking. In our learning journey, we found that foresight fosters creativity and provides a safe space to think of uncomfortable and complex issues in already wicked problems. This, in turn, allows for a systematic way to prioritise and develop innovative solutions.
Examples of how we are exploring uncertainty using foresight approaches include:
1. Early Dynamic Sensing for Action
With a select number of UN Country Teams, we are conducting research-action pilots to see if we can introduce and embed a methodology for anticipatory decision-making that creates an environment for long-term thinking, but also prioritisation and innovation. This involves the use of foresight tools to determine future-proofed pathways for strategic cooperation both within UN Country Teams and with governments. In one West African country, for example, we are collaborating with Dr Njeri Mwagiru, a strategic foresight expert from the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, and the United Nations Development Coordination Office on a pilot with the guiding question: How can the UN system, that works with government counterparts, civil society and other diverse partners, apply strategic foresight to better deliver on transformative change against the Sustainable Development Goals commitments, despite shocks and disruptions? In our pilot, a nimble, early dynamic sensor framework that utilises the principles and tools of strategic foresight — scanning trends and emergence, participatory scenarios and sensemaking, linked with action areas — is currently being developed and applied (see concept map). Embedded in the project is the sharing of tools with national stakeholders, including civil society. There are many lessons emerging from this exercise, with implications for resources and partnerships. These range from the importance of building a group of champions in the UN Country Team to sustain momentum to the criticality of strategic foresight as a scientific discipline for credible insights and direction-setting.
2. Democratising Foresight
In our futures exploration, we started questioning whose vision of the future are we exploring, testing, and working towards? And why are the holders of this vision not involved in their futures discussions and policymaking? One project piloted by the Department to explore these questions is “Futuring Peace in Northeast Asia”, which has been developed under the umbrella of the UN’s Youth, Peace and Security Agenda, and in partnership with UNESCO’s Futures Literacy Team. In Northeast Asia, a region which holds significant historical grievances, and a specific nuclear threat, there is a dearth of data on youth, and youth inclusion in policy spaces is limited. Yet, according to ACLED, a database on political violence and protests worldwide, between 2018–2020 Northeast Asia saw the largest share of youth-involved social movement protests in the world. Meanwhile, the region has seen increasing use of futures in policymaking at the national level; Japan and the Republic of Korea have foresight units in government, and the latter, in addition, a Futures Institute (NAFI) working directly with its national parliament. Our approach involves the development of recommendations for the role of youth in futuring peace in Northeast Asia, including through virtual dialogues co-designed and envisioned by young people. Klara Wyrzykowska, covering the region from UN DPPA, posits “futures thinking provides the ideal tool to implement the YPS Agenda, as it empowers youth to imagine futures free from legacies and the urge to defend historical or personal narratives. It gives them the language to create their preferred, more inclusive futures, and communicate visions with policymakers”.
3. Giving Language to the Uncertainty
Through design methods such as speculative design, SciFi and worldbuilding, we are encouraging our colleagues to be more comfortable with operating in a continually emerging future. This is not an easy ask in a field of work which is naturally risk-averse. During the preparations for the celebration of the UN’s 75th anniversary, together with the Design Futures Initiative, we ran a competition on speculative design related to conflict prevention, peacemaking and peacebuilding. The competition fostered the creation of artefacts of speculative futures to push thinking on future scenarios as they pertain to our work. In workshops where the artefacts were used as guiding futures scenarios, they gave language to difficult and far-out futures and also revealed assumptions and biases behind our analysis and interventions. Speculative design for policymaking is also explored in the Northeast Asia project, where insights gathered through participatory dialogues with youth will be communicated to policymakers through artefacts from the future, also envisioned by designers from the region.
The value of foresight and futures thinking for peace and security — being able to look outside the box of hard political science, in spatial and temporal horizons, to spot emerging challenges and opportunities to shape the future now — is clear but still in the early stages of development. During our ongoing exploration, the value of foresight in peace and security contexts, and crucially its link to action — whether in anticipatory programming, innovative solutions or changing mindsets — continues to be tested, applied and learnt from. In the next phase of exploration, we plan to bring in technology to continue the learning journey, be it scanning for trends using advanced machine learning methods or simulating the physical experience of future scenarios using immersive technologies.
About the author: Minji Song is a member of the DPPA Innovation Cell where she explores new approaches and technologies for Peace and Security at the intersection of political analysis and policymaking. Prior to the Innovation Cell of the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, she covered Southeast Asian geopolitics in DPPA’s regional presence in Bangkok, Thailand. Her past experiences include policy development at Nesta, an innovation think tank, and managing post-conflict socio-cultural programmes and policies at UNESCO.
“Futuring Peace” is an online magazine published by the Innovation Cell of the United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (UN DPPA). We explore cross-cutting approaches to conflict prevention, peacemaking and peacebuilding for a more peaceful future worldwide.
