How can foresight help to reduce vulnerability to climate-related hazards?
This policy brief highlights how foresight – combining participatory futures thinking with strategic analysis – can support the integration of Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR).
Foresight typically involves systematic and participatory intelligence gathering, and medium- to long-term vision-building processes to uncover a range of alternative future ideas.
This policy brief discusses barriers and opportunities to support using foresight in CCA and DRR. Barriers include the following:
- DRR is participatory and mainly based in the past and present: CCA is forward-looking but uses methods dominated by quantitative scenario analysis and gradual change with limited relevance for local action;
- Summaries of foresight methods exist, but case-studies, where foresight is applied to CCA or DRR, are not widely available;
- The European foresight platform that could have been useful is no longer active.