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Reimagining Development in Asia and the Pacific


While futures analysis and academic research of possible development trajectories can help to extend the timeframes and systemic lens through which policy actors make decisions, the work of shaping more just and equitable futures calls for more than anticipating what might happen, to expanding the spaces within which diverse change agents can imagine, articulate and build consensus around their desired visions of collective futures, as a compass for orienting action. This is what we’ve started to do through the RBAP Inclusive Imaginaries initiative and why we’ve produced a Reimagining Development in Asia and the Pacific Synthesis Report.
 
We hope these resources can help to provoke further thinking, discourse, and policy options with partners, and inspire more development planning processes to draw on futures- and imagination-based insights as an integral part of the broader knowledge base for decision-making. We’d love to hear what resonates in your contexts.


Reimagining Development Report + Foresight Briefs


 As underscored by the just-launched Human Development Report, the realities of increasingly uncertain futures, novel forms of insecurity, and the convergence of new risks with historical drivers of inequity compel us to invest in more inclusive and anticipatory modes of knowledge creation and analysis for decision-making. This includes examining many possible futures that could unfold from emergent risks and signals of change, and expanding our ‘evidence’ base to encompass diverse lived experience, imagination and speculation, alongside quantitative data and trends. What are some ways we can do this?
 
Rigorous foresight research is one mechanism that can amplify our policy, innovation, and strategic intents. With leading subject experts, we’ve produced a set of foresight briefs that deep dive into four emergent areas of change/inflection points of particular significance to development pathways in the region (and beyond):

  •  NEW CATEGORIES OF RIGHTS  With increased focus on our planetary obligations, on digital futures, on greater equity and on future generations, how must rights evolve for the challenges of our futures? What are new forms of rights that we must pay attention to and what are the policy implications?
  • INDIGENOUS FUTURES   How might Indigenous development paradigms and epistemologies inform and transform how sustainable development is considered, contrived and implemented in Asia and the Pacific?
  •  POLYCRISIS AND LONG-TERM THINKING   As we confront new forms of risks, including a global polycrisis, what types of risk assessment, policy measures, governance and programming might strengthen long-term thinking to navigate increasingly uncertain futures? This brief also includes an approach to Futures Impact Assessment penned by Aarathi Krishnan, and supported by Pedro Conceicao
  • CAN DIGITAL PUBLIC GOODS DELIVER MORE EQUITABLE FUTURES?  How can governance of digital public goods help to enable sustainable development without reinforcing existing inequities or locking in a particular vision of our development futures?

The synthesis report blends perspectives from collective imagination exercises done with youth and civil society in the region with insights from the foresight briefs, to not only highlight pathways for future resilient policymaking, but equally to elevate the many forms of wisdom and expertise that must inform it.


Inclusive Imaginaries

Today’s complex challenges- including climate change, global health, and international security, among others - are pushing development actors to re-think and re-imagine traditional ways of working and decision-making. Transforming traditional approaches to navigating complexity would support what development thinker Sam Pitroda’s calls a ‘third vision’ demands a mindset rooted in creativity, innovation, and courage in order to one transcend national interests and takes into account global issues.

Inclusive Imaginaries is an approach that utilises collective reflection and imagination to engage with citizens, towards building more just, equitable and inclusive futures. It seeks to infuse imagination as a key process to support gathering of community perspectives rooted in lived experience and local culture, towards developing more contextual visions for policy and programme development.

This Strategic Foresight Network offering, as part of the Reimagining Development series, includes both a report, covering the 2021 Pilot in 5 RBAP COs, and a toolkit for replication in your own contexts. Find both the report and toolkit here.


Achieving Equitable and Sustainable Futures in Asia and the Pacific: The place for imagination and foresight    

With increased awareness by government and development institutions of the need for more anticipatory modes of planning and programming to meet the needs of 21st century risks and uncertainties, more questions have emerged on the types of knowledge and evidence needed to render our decision-making fit for 21st century challenges. Working towards the realization of more equitable, resilient, and flourishing development futures calls for heightened attention to the sources and forms of insights that shape our understanding of the future and underpin the guiding visions and priorities upon which we base our decisions and investments.  

This offering, as part of the UNDP RBAP Strategic Foresight Network’s Applied Anticipation series, showcased the value of imagination and foresight-informed knowledge as part of efforts to render institutions and decision-making processes more anticipatory, inclusive, and risk-informed, building on the ideas and approaches underpinned by the recently launched UNDP RBAP Strategic Foresight Network’s suite of recently released knowledge products, including Reimagining Development  Report and Inclusive Imaginaries. The event featured speakers from the UNDP Human Development Report Office, UN DPPA, and the co-director of Whose KnowledgeWatch the recording here.


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