Visioning Change and Alternative Futures: Foresight as a research and planning tool

In this article, we motivate the use of foresight as a tool for research and policy planning, and draw examples from a number of foresight studies that have been done to envision global change and to better understand their underlying drivers. We point to the weaknesses that some foresight studies have had – in terms of their ability to speak directly to the needs and concerns of policymakers – and point to ways in which foresight practitioners can further enhance the applicabililty of their studies to policy questions and strengthen the role that foresight can play in decisions support. We argue for the local customization of global assessments to provide the momentum for more useful country-level foresight studies, and for the combination of thought-based ‘mental models’ with numerical and computational modelling tools, to enhance coherence and internal consistency of foresight assessments.