23 Jun My Journey through the Foresight Training in Nepal
Written by Alex Sam Thomas
Edited by Sofia Juliet Rajan
When the email about the foresight workshop landed in my inbox, I was pleasantly surprised. I had just joined the CLAPs project last year, taking over from my friend and colleague Kabir, who had left Gram Vikas to pursue higher studies. I was not expecting such an opportunity to present itself so soon, and in Nepal, no less. The land wrapped in mystique, familiar by name but foreign in every other way. My excitement reached a crescent when Liby asked if I could attend. I didn’t think twice. I said yes on the spot.
In the weeks that followed, as other work picked up, I picked up readings about the foresight process, scenario planning and ICIMOD, the organiser of the workshop. Before I knew it, I was on a flight to Nepal. It was an eventful journey: I nearly missed my flight, caught a glimpse of the Himalayas from above, and landed in Kathmandu, which resembled any Indian city, minus the skyscrapers.
From there, my colleague Prathigna and I made our way to Dhulikhel, the workshop venue. As we left the capital, the rolling hills came into view. Hailing from Kerala and based in Odisha, the high-mountain terrain was something new for me. The road climbed up to Dhulikhel ever so slightly and as the sun climbed down, we arrived.
The Workshop
The workshop focused on “Foresight and scenario development for anticipatory adaptation in the Hindu Kush Himalaya”. With the global polycrisis, of which climate change is one, there is a growing need for anticipatory action. We can no longer afford to be only reactive. The effects of these crises are strong, disruptive and impact livelihoods, environment, communities and systems.
Foresight is a structured process to think about possible futures to help make informed, proactive decisions in the present, especially in the face of uncertainty and long-term challenges like climate change and reach desirable future scenarios. Or at the very least, help avoid undesirable ones. The foresight approach accounts for uncertainties, risks and trends. It then identifies the key drivers, focusing on actions that can lead to better outcomes.
We engaged in a range of activities from visualising systems using rich pictures, mapping causal loops showing interconnectedness, dependencies and polarities, STEEPLE analysis, and scenario projections. Foresight is not a ‘one- size-fits-all’ approach. One of the key advantages of foresight is its flexibility to mix and match these tools as long as they make sense in the context used and helps move the process forward. Foresight also brings a healthy respect for boundaries, scope and viability of what one can do for systems change. It reminds you not to overpromise while countering the possibility of missing out on critical factors.
The group
So, what happens when you bring together people, mostly from the same age group, but who have grown up and work in varied socio-cultural, political, economic and ecological contexts, in different capacities and sectors? Chaos!!
But there was a thread of order, a thirst for learning, an openness to discuss and finally, a shared understanding of evidence-based action. And we all agreed on one thing: climate change does not affect everyone the same way. Its impacts vary across geographies and communities. It was both reinforcing and encouraging to realise that we are not alone in facing these challenges and there was shared momentum to tackle climate change and build adaptive capacities of both human and natural systems.
Reflections and Musings
A few questions have lingered with me:
- Foresight, by nature of the process and its components, is seemingly a lengthy, resource-intensive process. How do small organisations or local communities adopt it meaningfully? This seems very significant when a lot of us work at the hyperlocal level, both due to necessity and often due to resource constraints. How will foresight help when there are limited operational areas that are subject to externalities far beyond your control?
- With the changing geopolitical climate, how reliable are the current trends and patterns that we depend on for forecasting, especially for larger, complex systems? With high unpredictability in the global political and climate action space, with powerful actors undermining years of progress, where does the confidence to rely on these trends come from? This becomes true since the actions of these actors can have cascading effects across socio-ecological systems for years to come.
- How do we move from theory to practice? How does one bridge the gap between academic exercise and the practical components of foresight? One of persistent tensions in the development sector is this seemingly large divide between research and practice. Research without practice lacks functional value, while practice without grounding in research can lead to greater risks and uncertainties, including maladaptation and setbacks. What then is the path that one walks?
These are questions to be asked, and answers to be figured out. Maybe the only way to find out is to put it into practice with a leap of faith.
In the two years since I started working and even during my university days, this was my first conference experience. The language felt both alien and familiar. The concepts seemed like long-lost friends from classroom discussions. The topics felt grounded in real-world contexts and at the same time, also so far removed from them.
The foresight workshop was a window into the past and a welcome change in scenario and setting. Forums like these that bring people together—from all sides of the table— can be messy and chaotic, but they also open up space for meaningful learning and mutual understanding. That perhaps is the high note for me, personally.
PS: This blog was meant to come out right after the training in August 2024. While the workshop was great, I was nearly clueless about what it meant for me, for our work and the communities we are working with. It took me nearly half a year to wrap my head around this concept and what we could try out. And with this courage, I have finally managed to jot this down. Not that the constant reminders to write this have been a strong factor, phew!
Further Reading:
1. United Nations Environment Programme, & International Science Council (2024). Navigating New Horizons: A global foresight report on planetary health and human wellbeing. https://wedocs.unep.org/20.500.11822/45890.
- UNDP Global Centre for Public Service Excellence. (2018). Foresight Manual – Empowered Futures for the 2030 Agenda. In UNDP[Book]. https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/publications/UNDP_ForesightManual_2018.pdf
- UNDP (2022). UNDP RBAP: Foresight Playbook. New York, New York. https://www.undp.org/sites/g/files/zskgke326/files/2022-07/UNDP-RBAP-Foresight-Playbook-Appendix-2022_0.pdf