The Global Panel at the Power of Foresight Workshop, hosted by Foresight4Food and UN Food Systems Coordination Hub
The Global Panel’s Director, Prof Sandy Thomas, joined other experts and practitioners at the Power of Foresight: Supporting Implementation of Food Systems Transformation Pathways workshop, held at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome between the 30th and 31st of January 2025, to discuss how foresight can drive food systems transformation.
This workshop, supported by the governments of the Netherlands and institutions such as The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), addressed critical gaps in data, knowledge, and collaborative strategies, as the world moves toward the next Food Systems Stock Taking Moment (UNFSS+4).
Professor Thomas contributed with over a decade of knowledge and evidence gathered by the Global Panel, to help shape conversations around harnessing foresight tools to navigate the complexities of food system transformation, building on the successful reports and briefs from the Panel, particularly their two Foresight reports.
Insights from the Workshop included
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17 different cases and the stories of 48 participants from 27 countries demonstrated that foresight approaches have much to offer to the process of food systems transformation
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Working with complex systems is what it’s about, and effective foresight practices for food systems change to embrace this
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Openness to new and inclusive perspectives should be central to all foresight for food systems transformation efforts
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The process brings the answer – and foresight can bring awareness of crucial process elements such as collective intelligence, agency, time and scale
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Embracing the ‘ifs’: how you do foresight, and what comes before and after, is just as important as the development of scenarios
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Foresight is not one approach or one methodology – there are a diversity of ways to go about it
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The national food systems pathways can benefit from foresight approaches
Further details of the workshop can be found here