Karla Paniagua & Jose Antonio Sada Conjectures about the future of food are not new. Diverse studies outline a series of concerns and expectations that researchers and working groups in different geographies have raised about the availability and scarcity of commodities, significant changes in food practices, supply chain behavior, among other aspects of the complex food phenomenon: Los futuros de la alimentación en la CDMX (Arroyo, 2018); Co-Designing Water-Energy-Food Futures (Bell, 2018); The Future of Food – Who Will Be Hungry? (Russo, 2018); Imagining transformative futuresParticipatory Foresight for Food Systems Change (Hebinck, Vervoort, Hebinck, Rutting, & Galli, 2018); Eating…
Author: Abril Chimal
by Sohail Inayatullah and Satya Tanner Electrifying a Continent Nine years ago, while working for a large African national energy supplier, participants imagined a unique future for the continent. In their vision, every village would use solar with artificial intelligence and peer-to-peer energy networks to create a decentralized grid. Each village would have a storage battery. The energy company would become the platform connecting and electrifying the continent. They would move from being engineers to platform designers. Africa could become energy abundant, they believed. Traditional forms of energy would still be there, as needed, for backup. However, when they looked…
by Matt Scott Inspection practices used internationally by the red meat industry date back to the late 1800’s, which can constrain innovative thinking within historical boundaries. This paper documents the beginning of a transformative journey for meat inspectors in New Zealand, by applying Futures Thinking to stimulate collaborative innovation. Interactive workshops with meat inspectors triggered a paradigm shift, redirecting the focus from automating conventional inspection methods to exploring uncharted territories. This shift revealed new possibilities for meat inspectors, by reimagining their roles in possible futures scenarios dominated by non-meat alternative proteins, and with integrated data negating the need for post-mortem…
by Epaminondas Christophilopoulos The exploration of the future, a tradition as ancient as humanity itself, has evolved from oracular predictions to sophisticated, data-driven forecasts, reflecting a deep-rooted concern for what lies ahead. The 20th century’s broad use of “forecast” has given way to a focus on participatory, qualitative methods in futures studies, emphasizing the importance of foresight over prediction. This shift recognizes the future’s inherent uncertainty and the value of exploring different alternative futures to inform decision-making processes and improving futures literacy among organizations and societies, and in this direction, art can make a substantial contribution. Arts in various…
by Karina Vega, Mercedes Baltazar, Patricia López, León Ruiz and José M. Ramos Echoing insights from critical Futures Studies (Sardar 1999), the cultural critic Mark Fisher (2014) argued that the future has been “canceled”, reflecting on our collective inability to imagine something beyond the current capitalist-industrial system. The epistemic boundaries of both action and reflection are maintained both by the political economy and the discourses in late capitalism. Trapped in a zeitgeist of constrained imagination and the “weight of the past” (Inayatullah 2008) we are often unable to develop alternative visions of futures which we would prefer to exist in.…
by Chris Mayer By introducing students to multiple disciplines, a general education curriculum provides students opportunities to acquire the knowledge, skills, and habits of mind necessary for meaningful lives as citizens and members of the workforce. As currently designed, general education curricula do not provide students opportunities to demonstrate integrative learning related to the multiple disciplines they have studied. They also do not prepare students to systematically explore, think about, and gain insights from the future to make better decisions in the present. Using strategic foresight as the framework for a general education capstone course would address these gaps. Enhancing…
Camilo Maria Ricardo Q. Lopa Inspiration for this paper stemmed from a desire to make the foresight practice more proactive in transforming the present and creating a better future for everyone. In some cases, it is not merely enough to tell people about what could happen in the next few years. There also needs to be a follow-through or an answer to what people can do to achieve their preferred futures. However, transformation is arguably a difficult task because the world is far more complex today. For example, in the Philippines there are informal meetings to reimagine Katipunan Avenue in…
by Sohail Inayatullah This piece is In memory of Johan Galtung (1930-2024), author and editor of over 150 books and considered one of the founders of the disciplines of Futures Studies and Peace Studies. The interview was originally published in the Prout Journal, (Vol. 4, No. 1, 1989), 16–20, we republish it with minor editorial changes. Image from Transcend Peace University – www.transcend.org INAYATULLAH: We would like to hear your views on the present crises facing humanity, your vision of the future and on your interpretation of PROUT – the Progressive Utilization Theory – especially as related to your work…
By Roar Bjonnes Introduction This article looks at the development of green economics over the past decades and analyzes its various forms, including green economics, sustainable development, and green capitalism and concludes that none of these offers comprehensive system change and a viable solution to our current economic and environmental problems. Instead, the author argues, we need a new economic system beyond capitalism, one that can structurally replace it. The article introduces some of the main thinkers within the alternative economic movement over the past decades, from Karl Polanyi (1944) to Kate Raworth (2017), from E. F. Schumacher (1971) to…
By Javeria Masood What does tomorrow look like post COVID-19? How can we become better ancestors to our future generations? Human beings are cognitively not good at thinking about the long-term, without barriers of plausibility at present. That is why futurists help decision makers connect with the future emotionally to develop empathy in order to kick-start better decisions today, and also to stay ahead. Year 2020: Raza has been working at a reputable private enterprise for the last four years. He was very excited to get the much-awaited promotion to be an Assistant Manager for the technology division. Two…