To help navigate current and future uncertainty and disruptive change, while effectively delivering on its mandate, UNEP has been implementing an institutionalized approach to strategic foresight and horizon scanning with the view to developing an anticipatory and future-oriented culture.
This Navigating New Horizons report outlines a process focused on planetary health and human wellbeing—an intentional framing to expand the range of issues and informed views that typically shape UNEP’s work. Why? To ensure we are looking in places not normally considered, but where the organization can act or provide advice for others with relevant portfolios.
This 18-month foresight process—which encompassed a two-part Delphi survey, the development of scenarios, sensemaking at global and regional levels and engaging with youth voices—has resulted in diverse data points and qualitative feedback to uncover what the future (near and far) could hold for planetary health and human wellbeing.
Through the process, it has become clear that the world is facing a different context than it faced even ten years ago. Some of the issues are the same, but the rapid rate of change combined with technological developments, more frequent and devastating disasters and an increasingly turbulent geopolitical landscape, has resulted in a new operating context, where any country can be thrown off course more easily and more often…
