When one assesses the practice of foresight as generally applied within government, industry, and the non-governmental sector, an important gap quickly becomes apparent: poverty is rarely included as an explicit issue for consideration.  While foresight exercises typically take into account the impact of long-term political, economic, social, and technological trends, the differential implications of these factors for the lives of the poor tend not to be substantively addressed.

With support from the Rockefeller Foundation, IAF convened a workshop of leading experts in foresight from around the world.  The workshop, entitled Foresight for Smart Globalization: Accelerating & Enhancing Pro-Poor Development Opportunities, was held from March 16-20, 2009 at the Rockefeller Foundation’s conference facilities in Bellagio, Italy.  It was co-chaired by Leon Fuerth (founder and director of the Project on Forward Engagement, research professor at the George Washington University, and former national security adviser to Vice President Al Gore) and David Jhirad (special advisor for energy and climate change at the Rockefeller Foundation).

By convening a group of high-level experts to explore opportunities for implementing foresight focused on pro-poor solutions in the global South, the workshop aimed to achieve a number of goals:

• To highlight the rationale and practice of pro-poor foresight in accelerating and enhancing “smart globalization”
• To gain a better understanding of foresight in relation to a set of key issues that are relevant to the global South
• To convene and create network-building opportunities for a burgeoning community of practitioners concerned with advancing f oresight for development.

The summary report (large file) looks at some of the connections between the worlds of foresight and development. There are clear opportunities for making connections and enhancing pro-poor development.  A number of these opportunities are captured in the report as recommendations for furthering pro-poor foresight and development.

Following the meeting, IAF developed a "scenario toolkit" for use by communities, countries, and regions to develop scenarios of their own futures.  IAF will collect the scenarios developed by groups around the world and will post them online.  A special committee has also been established to award prizes to the best scenario submissions.  Click here for the scenario toolkit and here for a set of global forecasts for the year 2039 for use in the scenario development process.