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Ecodynamics of Life

Ecodynamics of Life

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This is about the interrelationships that make life on earth sustainable – between humans, animals, plants and all elements that the Earth needs. The biodiversity of life is something that we can connect with naturally, that needs to be preserved and that we know so much about. Or so you’d think…

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Supported by The European Commission

ANTICIPINNOV: Anticipation and monitoring of emerging technologies and disruptive innovation

Anticipation and monitoring of emerging technologies and disruptive innovation” (ANTICIPINNOV) project is a collaboration between the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) with the European Innovation Council (EIC) to strengthen strategic intelligence capacity through the use and development of anticipatory approaches. Learn more about the project from its's 3 different barnches.   Everybody is looking into the Future! A literature review of reports on emerging technologies and disruptive innovation   Growing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, present leading challenges in policy-making nowadays. Anticipatory thinking and foresight are of utmost importance to help explore trends, risks, emerging issues, and their potential implications and opportunities in order to draw useful insights for strategic planning, policy-making and preparedness.   The findings include a set of 106 signals and trends on emerging technologies and disruptive innovations across several areas of application based on a review of key reports on technology and innovation trends and signals produced by public and private entities outside of the EU institutions. Its goal is to strengthen the EIC’s strategic intelligence capacity through the use and development of anticipatory approaches that will - among other goals – support innovation funding prioritisation. Other insights were extracted, namely those related with the scope of the EIC Programme Manager portfolios.   Read the report   See the lessons learned from the blog post     Scanning deep tech horizons: participatory collection and assessment of signals and trends   The Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the European Innovation Council (EIC) conducted a series of Horizon Scanning exercises across six EIC programme managers’ (PM) portfolios as part of an ongoing collaborative effort to strengthen EIC strategic intelligence capacity through the use and development of anticipatory approaches. The fields covered include: Space Systems & Technologies; Quantum Technologies; Agriculture & Food; Solar Fuels & Chemicals; Responsible Electronics and Architecture, Engineering & Construction.   The main findings of this Horizon Scanning – the identification and analysis of ‘signals’ from nascent research, technologies, or trends on the periphery of the mainstream – show opportunities for investment in emerging technologies and breakthrough innovations that can advance EU competitiveness while also serving to support the EU’s long-term policy and societal visions. Other insights were taken from this exercise, namely the identification of drivers, enablers and barriers to technology development and adoption, that could be the starting ground of further foresight exercises and policy initiatives.   The report highlights three main themes – sustainability, energy, and scalability, which are overarching across signals, drivers, enablers and barriers. And concludes with a series of recommendations to streamline Horizon Scanning activities in the specific context and needs of the EIC.   Read the report   Learn more about the process from a blog post   Technology Foresight for Public Funding of Innovation: Methods and Best Practices   In times of growing uncertainties and complexities, anticipatory thinking is essential for policymakers. Technology foresight explores the longer-term futures of Science, Technology and Innovation. It can be used as a tool to create effective policy responses, including in technology and innovation policies, and to shape technological change.   In this report we present six anticipatory and technology foresight methods that can contribute to anticipatory intelligence in terms of public funding of innovation: the Delphi survey, genius forecasting, technology roadmapping, large language models used in foresight, horizon scanning and scenario planning. Each chapter provides a brief overview of the method with case studies and recommendations. The insights from this report show that only by combining different anticipatory viewpoints and approaches to spotting, understanding and shaping emergent technologies, can public funders such as the European Innovation Council improve their proactive approaches to supporting ground-breaking technologies. In this way, they will help innovation ecosystems to develop.   Read the report
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Supported by The European Commission

RESCHAPE - Reshaping Supply Chains for a positive social impact

As a result of the recent pandemic, global value chains have completely transformed. This has raised concerns over the ensuing social, economic and environmental trends and related impact on the way supply chains are organised. In this context, the EU-funded ReSChape project will analyse social, economic and environmental changes and disruptions, including the COVID-19 pandemic, and evaluate their impact on supply chains.New supply chain models will be proposed, aiming towards a more streamlined supply chain process to assure humans (workers, consumers and in general citizens) to be at the center of the business also thanks to new digital technologies. It will be studied how to assure a positive social impact and innovative policy scenarios will be developed with recommendations to support the future supply chains.
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Supported by The European Commission

Futures Consciousness Scale

Collaborative research on the human capacity to understand, anticipate, prepare for, and embrace the future. ABOUT FUTURES CONSCIOUSNESS The futures consciousness concept and scale has been developed by researchers at the Finland Futures Research Centre (University of Turku) and University of Geneva, with help from other contributors. Teach the Future received a grant from the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF) and the Prince Mohammad bin Fahd University (PMU) to adapt the Scale for use by young people, ages 12-18.  The results of that grant are being submitted for publication by the partners. After that, the Scale will be available for use by schools and other organizations that work with youth. The details will be published on this page shortly. Take the test: https://fctest.utu.fi/ The Five Dimensions of Futures Consciousness are: time perspective; the ability to be aware of the past, present and future, as well as the way events follow each other over time agency beliefs; basic sense of confidence that an individual has in their own ability to influence the external world openness to alternatives; abilities used to critically question commonly accepted ideas and influences an individual’s willingness to consider alternative ways of being and doing systems perception; the ability to recognize human and natural systems around us including groups, societies and ecosystems concern for others; relates to the degree to which an individual pursues favourable futures for a group beyond themselves Full article explaining the concept: The Five Dimensions of Futures Consciousness, Ahvenharju et al (2018) Ahvenharju et al 2018 Five dimensions of futures consciousness Futures vol 104 .pdf OUR PARTNERS Teach the Future collaborates with the University of Turku in Finland, the Finland Futures Research Centre and Digital Futures to research and promote the work in the context of education and (young) students. Sanna Ahvenharju, Matti Minkkinen and Fanny Lalot are the research experts that developed the futures consciousness concept and scale.  OUR ACTIVITIES Teach the Future supports the development of a scale matching the language and level of young people. This project is in collaboration with schools in the Netherlands, Italy, Turkiye, United States, and United Kingdom. And we thank our sponsor the Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd, Center for Futuristic Studies. Next to this we support the testing. Erica Bol has worked with Martin de Wolf of the Master Learning and Innovation at the Fontys University of Applied Sciene. She designed a futures lesson program supporting the Master program and tested if the students futures consciousness improved. The students did a test before and after the lessons program. A paper on the project and results are published in FUTURES issue 12-2022.
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Supported by The European Commission

How will we disgust our descendants?

It would be short-sighted to assume that we, as humanity, have reached such a level of maturity that our descendants will not find some aspects of our – apparently civilised – everyday life repulsive and sad. So we asked 60 futurists from around the world:“What will we disgust our descendants with?”Many of the submitted ideas are already present in public discourse and confirm areas in which we need to change. But we were especially interested in novel barbarisms that humanity is still largely oblivious to.That’s why this infographic shows the futurists’ answers grouped into 93 contemporary barbarisms ranked in a public vote according to how eye-opening they are.
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Supported by The European Commission

Chem4EU Foresight for chemicals

The chemical industry is a significant contributor to the EU’s economy. It is simultaneously instrumental to the green and digital transition and exposed to its effects. A steady supply of (green) chemicals is required to deploy renewable energy generators, insulate Europe’s building stock and create reusable and recyclable consumer goods. On the other hand, chemical synthesis is an energy-intensive process inherently dependent on carbon-based feedstock (currently derived almost exclusively from fossil fuels). In addition, chemistry is a global industry with international value chains, where the EU both collaborates and competes with other countries for materials, knowledge and skills. Transforming the European chemical industry into a sustainable motor for the green and digital transition will require investments in infrastructure, assets and skills. Focus should be placed on chemicals that are crucial to this Twin Transition, Europe’s resilience, or both. The long lead time required for the deployment of infrastructure and the development of skills means that such investments must be made now to achieve targets set for 2050. In connection with these issues, the report at hand aims to give insights into a number of value chains that are strategic to EU economy. It considers which chemicals and innovations are vital to transforming these value chains as well as rendering them more resilient and future-fit. To this end, a participatory workshop-based foresight approach was implemented to provide a unique set of insights from stakeholders and translate them into actions and policy recommendations.The project was carried out by a consortium involving Steinbeis 2i GmbH, 4CF and TNO.
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Supported by The European Commission

Futures of civic resilience in Europe

Resilience and preparedness relate both to coping with the immediate and gradually developing threats, hence contributing also to the transition towards ecological and resilient deliberative communities and society. For instance, we consider personal and community survival skills (both mental and physical wellbeing), deliberative policy and civic skills to avoid polarization and confrontations and sustainable lifestyles based on self-reliance and autonomy. While the challenges considered are global, policy implications are addressed especially from the European research and innovation policy perspective. This project targets toward 2040 exploring the civic (both individual and community level) resilience and preparedness in Europe. We develop scenarios to consider alternative plausible futures characterized by societal uncertainties caused by major disruptions (wars, upheavals, wildfires, floods, etc.) in different hypothetical contexts of reference (where possible changes induced by trends and weak signals are also considered) and try to imagine how Europeans could be prepared at the individual and community level, especially from the perspective of relying less on the external services provided by the public and private sectors. This deep dive is part of the "European R&I foresight and public engagement for Horizon Europe" project which aims to help valorise foresight elements from R&I projects of Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe by increasing their visibility and the potential uptake of their results in EC R&I policy planning. For more information, see: https://www.futures4europe.eu/about
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Supported by The European Commission

FORPOL

From October 2022 to March 2023, we ran a forecasting tournament with a total of 54questions. Almost all of our forecasting questions were developed in cooperation with 16different public institutions and ministerial departments. Each institution or department definedits most useful forecasting topics, participated in a workshop to define specific questions withus, and was later provided with the results. This was intended as a proof of concept of onepossible approach to incorporating forecasting in public decision-making.Once defined, our forecasting questions were then posted on a private Metaculus sub-domain(in Czech), where an average of 72 forecasters had the opportunity to address them as theywould any other question on Metaculus (median of 18 predictions per user). Throughout thetournament, we produced 16 reports detailing the rationales and forecasts, to be used by thecooperating institutions.A handful of our partners have already reported acting on the information/judgment presented inour reports. This has concerned, for example, the national foreclosure issue (some 6% of thetotal population have debts in arrears) where the debt relief process is being redesigned midststrong lobbying and insufficient personal capacities; or the probabilities of outlier scenarios forEuropean macroeconomic development, which was requested by the Slovak Ministry of Financeto help calibrate their existing judgements.It also seems useful to explore various approaches to grow the number of policymakers withpersonal experience & skills in forecasting. In our case, we found curiosity and willingness to tryforecasting even in unexpected institutional locations (i.e. the Czech R&I funding body). Thismakes us more confident that the “external forecasts” approach (as compared to buildinginternal prediction tournaments or focusing on advancing forecasting skills of public servants) isworth investigating further precisely because it allows us to detect and draw on this interestirrespective of institutional and seniority distinctions and resource constraints.While we hope that any readers with an interest in forecasting may find our experience useful,we expect that both this and any future projects of ours make it easier for other teams to worktowards similar goals. To that effect, the write-up also contains an Annex of “MethodologicalGuidelines,” where we outline in more explicit terms the questions and decisions that we foundwere important to tackle when running the project, and what they may entail.
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Supported by The European Commission

Actualization of Czech republic 2030 strategy

The aim of this study was to serve as one of the inputs to the update and to initiate a discussion on the possibilities of updating the Czech republic 2030 strategy. In order to ensure that this strategic document reflects the dynamic developments on the global and domestic scene, mechanisms for regular reviews and updates of the objectives and measures have been proposed. Given the events of the last 3 years (especially the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine), it is relevant to review the relevance of the assumptions regarding the long-term development of the Czech Republic, which served as the basis for the original wording of the strategic objectives and targeting of the document.The role of České priority was to provide foresight exercises in order to reach two goals:· Assess the relevance of existing goals: the problems and challenges facing society are changing and so are the definition of objectives for further development. The task of this section is therefore also to determine whether the original ČR 2030 goals are still relevant in the context of change and respond to the major challenges that society is facing and will continue to face in the coming decades.· Identify blind spots: there may be issues or opportunities that the document does not cover - i.e. blind spots. The next task of this part of the update is to identify such gaps to increase the comprehensiveness of the document.The project was implemented in the form of workshops, which were attended by experts and representatives of public institutions and ministries. On the basis of pre-prepared scenarios of development, the participants had to identify the resulting challenges, opportunities and areas that have not yet been covered in the CR 2030. The list of these areas was subsequently consulted with representatives of public institutions. These expert consultations were complemented by input from the general public through a creative competition held in September 2022.
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Supported by The European Commission

Foresight for Social Innovation

We implemented the ForSI (Foresight for Social Innovation) project with the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, with the Unit of Social Innovation. The aim of this collaboration was to identify so-called social time bombs - in our definition, problems that will be significant in the future or are already known today, but not yet sufficiently addressed by the state administration. The learning process itself was also a framing goal of this collaboration, where the unit team wanted to learn some foresight methods and implement them into certain processes of the department's work. The project involved desk research, two expert workshops, expert interviews, and also working closely with leading experts on social issues to develop a set of social issue cards. The final list of social time bombs was used by the unit to define calls for grant programs for nonprofits seeking to address diverse problems through social innovation. Foresight was thus used in this case to direct public funds more effectively, thereby addressing the problems that need to be focused on with an eye to the future.
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Supported by The European Commission

EUARENAS

Democracy across Europe has experienced immense challenge, change and uncertainty in recent years (Canal 2014; European Commission & Merkel; 2019) - from the rise of populism to decreasing levels of public trust in governance institutions and processes, to the war in Ukraine. Set against the backdrop of these issues, EUARENAS has been investigating how cities and urban spaces can strengthen legitimacy, identification and engagement within the democratic public sphere. Specifically, EUARENAS has been exploring how participation and deliberation in democracy and decision-making can be increased, and how voices and communities who are excluded from such arenas can be more actively involved. Foresight is one of the research strands present in EUARENAS. In this project, foresight is both a tool for understanding democratic innovations as they emerge, and for engaging citizens and other actors in such innovations within the participatory and deliberative realms. Mixed method approaches to foresight that incorporate a diversity of activities such as media discourse analysis, lived experience storytelling, social media analysis, three horizons mapping, driver-mapping, scenario and visioning exercises and policy stress- testing have been used in EUARENAS to investigate and hypothesise over future trends and scenarios in participatory democracies. From this work, we propose the following recommendations for Cities wanting to strive towards more equitable local democracies:Address structural barriers to participation Build relationships of trustInvest in formal and civic educationMake decisions for the long-termA more equitable, inclusive local democracy landscape is not too far in the distance for us to conceive it being possible. In fact, the future is now – the seeds to create it are already being planted, they just need nurturing by:Scaling and mainstreaming existing pilot or niche practices that are working locally – whether that beparticipatory budgeting, citizen assemblies or other smaller-scale projects – so that these become thenew ‘status quo’Adopting test and learn approaches to promote experimentation and on-going learning – this will enableongoing innovation and be responsive to society's needsFinding ways to celebrate and connect-up the small changes that are taking place - this will help peoplesee that progress is being made, even when it feels like things are changing too slow

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Is Hydrogen that good for the Climate?

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Albert Norström

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A better place for the world.
A better place for the world.
A better place for the world.

Anonymous

In the future i see Sustainable practises becoming more commonplace, redefining our interaction with the environment. Renewable energy, eco-friendly transportation, green areas, sustainable agriculture, and trash reduction are all projected in the future. I see the world being better and cleaner. That future would be nice as the roads would be clean and have no trash.

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Utopia (unfortunate) (Utopie (leider))
Utopia (unfortunate) (Utopie (leider))
Utopia (unfortunate) (Utopie (leider))

Anonymous

I want a greener future: —Cities other than heat bells:fewer cars, more space for people, parks, trees, green roofs, etc. —to ensure that we truly meet our climate goals and thus minimise the impact of climate change; —Protecting species that we stop our way of life for animals and plants and no longer contribute to the massive extinction of species —a policy that involves people more and does not give part of society the feeling that they have nothing to say and don’t count —a green, more liveable future for me also includes access to GUTER education for all, that everyone is addressed and you learn things that are useful to one even in times of AI (I believe that one example here is Finland) —build a prudent approach to AI, internet, digitalisation --> benefits, but also take into account the disadvantages and risks (e.g. climate damage, possible job losses, etc.), better communicate and educate people —good health care for all

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Sustainable future (Sustainable future)
Sustainable future (Sustainable future)
Sustainable future (Sustainable future)

Anonymous

In 2040, Europe thrives as a model of sustainability. Clean energy powers our lives, urban green spaces abound, and circular economy practices eliminate waste. Environmental education is paramount, fostering a society dedicated to preserving Europe's natural beauty while embracing progress

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Whole-planet survival and prosperity.
Whole-planet survival and prosperity.
Whole-planet survival and prosperity.

Anonymous

I would like by 2040 to see the world move beyond using fossil fuels to fully renewable sources of energy. This is not the only issue that is important to me, but I believe it is essential first to maintain a stable climate for allowing humanity to keep progressing in terms of expanding scientific knowledge, improving social justice, allowing continued prosperity for a greater number of people, and facilitate evolution in understanding and equality between people of different racial origins, sexual orientations and gender identities, as well as expand our understanding of nature and promote care for non-human animals and the planetary ecosystem as a whole.

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