Anticipation in the Multilateral System
Written by Aarathi Krishnan, Senior Advisor for Strategic Foresight, UNDP Asia Pacific
The notion that we are “now navigating uncharted waters” for development policy and planning is true for every era. However, it has increasingly extreme ramifications for governance and policymaking in this age of the Anthropocene, where the potential costs of ineffective decisions and investments is existential in scale. Humanity not only faces a plethora of global crises but also the convergence of multiple existential crises. The threat of a global polycrisis on the one hand directs more of our attention to the long-term future. It equally reflects the need to deepen understanding of the inequities of the past, and the dynamics of governance systems in the present that perpetuate unsustainable development outcomes for people and the planet.
Within this changing context, most multilateral institutions are grappling with the notion that current development models might no longer be adequate for these complex uncertain futures. They do not reflect the emergence of large-scale dynamic risks that are inherently already cutting across all dimensions of sustainable development, and the conditions in which these changes are occurring. The very nature and scale of change and risk has changed so considerably that it surpasses our ability and our approaches to date to understand and manage it.
“I don’t predict the future. All I do is look around at the problems we are neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters.” — Octavia E. Butler
In the last 2.5 years, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Asia and the Pacific has spear-headed a systemic, applied process to institutionalise anticipation and foresight within our governance, risk, planning and programmatic offers. We very intentionally took a systems approach to this, shifting the focus away from tools and methods, singular approaches and lexicon, and siloed pockets of experimentation. Rather, our focus was to design the processes for intelligence gathering and meaning-making, culture and risk appetite, knowledge products and research. This pushed a more anticipatory decision-making process that would enable us to effectively see, manage and respond to short and long-term risk signals. As governments and multilateral organisations do not have infinite resources and must ‘hedge out bets’ on major policies and development investments.
Technical Components
The basis of our approach — noting that there can never be a static nor standardised model of foresight and anticipation — incorporates four core interconnected components:
1. Understand the development landscape and nature of risk (data and sensemaking) — Systematically scan for data about the future and create meaning out of it so that it can be ordered, prioritised, and used to inform decision making. Example: Anticipating Risks and Uncertainties for Asia and the Pacific
2. Interrogate the origins, inclusivity, and directions of the visions of the future we centre (imagination and knowledge practices) — Elevate the wisdom of imagination and lived experience, alongside traditional sources of expertise and data, to support more reimagined ideas of locally driven development. Example: Reimagining Development
3. Build adaptability and long-term thinking into our planning and governance architectures (integrating foresight and agility into operating mechanisms) — Reimagine planning processes, risk frameworks and budgeting so that we can consistently act based on emerging insights about future risks and opportunities. Example: UNDP RBAP Foresight Playbook
4. Fuel anticipatory systems through the people who drive them (capabilities and culture) — Cultivate individual capacities for long-term thinking and foresight, while building the kind of culture and leadership that empowers individuals to apply it in their contexts. Example: We built an active Foresight Network of over 500 practitioners from across the region and beyond, connecting people to the latest resources and sources of inspiration
But the technical ingredients are only one part of the puzzle:
Attending language and meaning: It’s important to remain vigilant in the ways we use language as a tool to include, rather than exclude, the very people we want to partner with.
Collective stewardship and trust: Stewarding trust is necessary to depart from business as usual — particularly when it entails making decisions based on information about uncertain futures. We steward trust and faith in how we build relationships with our partners, colleagues, and decision makers. Stewarding gracefully and with humility is how we hold people’s trust in our hands. It is a moral obligation.
Values as compass: In the end, much of this work is about being clear about what we value and our cultural systems. Centring the love of what we are here to do, and believing in our collective ability to achieve it, embracing humility, and rejecting arrogance. This helps us foster communal care and focus on the ethics and morality of change.
Non-binary focus: No institutional transformation can happen without two things: changing the culture and comfort around entertaining new concepts and influencing the internal ‘pipes’ for planning and programming. Doing this requires a mindset that is non-binary. For us, it has meant being less dogged about tools and methodologies, and rather embracing elasticity and adaptiveness to ensure it is fit for the contexts and mandates we operate in.
Tribes trump individuality: Change doesn’t happen through the individualised work of the singular change agent(s). Rather working through an ‘octopus’ approach — bringing in different teams, understanding how we influence, what are the common incentives, allows us to build a ‘whole of house’ ‘approach, rather than to sit the weight of this endeavour on one team. Privileging expertise is a violent form of exclusion.
As Adrienne Maree Brown says, “…it is healing behaviour, to look at something so broken and see the possibility and wholeness in it”. Believing in the capacity of the people in the system to push for changes of mechanisms, policy making and strategy — is hard, demanding work. But without pushing for this change from the inside, we are doomed to be rebels yelling at the castle from beyond the moors.
Aarathi Krishnan is a speaker at SOIF’s Summer foresight retreat where she will be sharing insights and her work at the work at the intersection of humanitarian futures, strategic foresight, and systems transformation.
