LocationsPowering the Green Transition in Uzbekistan
February 29, 2024
Building Trust, Igniting Change
Strategic foresight: Powering a Green Transition in Uzbekistan
The Context
It is often thought that foresight is best applied to issues that are relevant to the far future - issues that have little to do with current reality. The UNDP Uzbekistan country office showed that, in fact, the impact of foresight is felt when it’s applied to both emergent and urgent, immediate issues. As a landlocked country, Uzbeks are feeling the effects of climate change all too painfully. Winters are becoming dryer, summers are hotter, and daily household conversations revolve around pollution and poor air quality. As far as Uzbekistan is concerned, the issue of a green transition could not be more urgent. As it turns out, this urgency is precisely what the UNDP Uzbekistan team needed to galvanize national partners to use strategic foresight to spark a just, inclusive green transition that would upgrade its economy.
We spoke to Muzaffar Tilavov, Head of Exploration, and Farida Ahmatiy, Head of Solutions Mapping at the UNDP Uzbekistan Accelerator Labs, who led the project team on this journey.
Farida and Muzaffar are both believers in the power of imagination. “By nature, I feel, people are imaginative”, says Muzaffar. “But most of our projects and programs are based on hard evidence. They don't really leave room for elements of imagination or ‘What if...?’ questions. One way to formally infuse imagination into our planning process in a formalized, robust way is strategic foresight”.
Strategic foresight is a way to formally infuse imagination into our planning process in a robust way.Muzaffar Tilavov, Head of Exploration, UNDP Uzbekistan Accelerator Labs
Farida says their government partners couldn't agree more: “They said that this [foresight] is a great tool. We are tired of using just numbers and predicting based on the data (and not always reliable data), we need something new. It’s difficult to imagine what can happen based on numbers. It’s better for us to use our imagination and see what future we are going to have if we act this way or that. It’s easier to convince decision-makers to make changes”.
The Process
The UNDP Uzbekistan team partnered with the Ministry of Economy & Finance, the Centre for Economic Research and Reforms, and the Institute for Macroeconomic & Regional Studies to form a core team of about 10 colleagues with diverse backgrounds and experiences. Insights were contextualized through regular interactions with an extended team including academia, NGOs, and the private sector. The team also enlisted an external foresight expert who helped employ the Houston Framework Foresight, navigating through four stages: framing, scanning, futuring, and visioning and designing.
Framing meant mapping the 60+ areas that needed to be addressed within the Green Transition. Scanning identified more than 450 signals of change, and interviews with local experts from diverse fields provided a contextualized understanding of the current landscape. Futuring translated these insights into snapshot scenarios. Visioning and designing identified potential impacts and implications and generated robust "key ideas," stress-tested for resilience through wind tunnelling exercises.
A detailed account of the phases, activities, and tools used in each step can be found on the Innovation for Development website.
The Results
The Green Transition foresight initiative in Uzbekistan generated four illustrative policy recommendations that served as the first stepping stone to more refined and granular policy implementation.
But the results of this exercise go far beyond the policy options it yielded. It showed the value of foresight more broadly and sparked interest in applying it to other areas. “We've got their trust,” says Farida of national partners who participated in the foresight initiative. “I think they trust that we can do this approach, and since national partners see the value of using this approach, they know that UNDP Uzbekistan can help them apply it. That's why we are getting all these requests from new partners, for example, the request to help apply foresight to the gender strategy with the Senate of Uzbekistan. Also, the partners we have already worked with are interested in doing this again. I think this is the best result we could ask for,” says Farida. “I think UNDP Uzbekistan is building its reputation on being a pioneer in this area,” agrees Muzaffar.
Finally, the impact on the internal culture in the Uzbekistan country office cannot be underestimated. Not only did the project build the foresight capacity of direct team members, it also raised the awareness and curiosity of colleagues beyond the team. The results of the exercise and the ensuing interest from stakeholders across the board made colleagues keen to develop their own foresight faculties.
Learnings and Advice
For country offices that want to replicate the success in their own contexts, the UNDP Uzbekistan team has some learnings to share from their experience.
- First, the significance of an internal core team cannot be understated. While external experts can be responsible for framing the project and steering the process, the core team, with their deep knowledge of local context, must own the outputs.
- Second, it may seem natural to keep the exercise small and choose more ‘obvious’ or ‘safe’ partners who have already expressed interest in trying something new despite the perceived risk of ‘failure’. However, this fear is misguided. The team realized early on that casting a wider net and being bold actually enriches the discussion and enhances the quality of the output.
- Third, Farida suggests approaching national partners early on. “If we had approached the government with this project earlier in the process, saying, “Let’s do the whole green strategy based on foresight,” that would have been even more impactful. The results of the foresight exercise would have been directly incorporated into the green strategy of the country”, she says. Applying foresight earlier in the policy- making cycle makes the implementation of the resulting policy options much easier down the road.
Applying foresight earlier in the policy- making cycle makes the implementation of the resulting policy options much easier down the road.Farida Ahmatiy, Head of Solutions Mapping, UNDP Uzbekistan Accelerator Labs
Finally, consistent communication is essential to gather and maintain momentum. “After you showcase some interesting intermediate results, people may jump in to join. For example, after the final stages of our work, the Ministry of Environment was interested. They said, “Okay, let's go ahead and do the next stage together. We want to be fully on board,”’ confirms Muzaffar. Communicating the results of each phase widely attracts more partners and stakeholders into the process, each with their own expertise and perspectives, and this diversity is critical in generating richer, more robust, systemic and actionable policy options.
Foresight is a very potent tool for policymaking but is unfortunately overlooked in some contexts and it hasn't become quite mainstream. You need to really take it as a very good yet underutilized policy tool and present it as such. Don’t offer this as something new or experimental. It's not something fringe where you have many risks. Be bolder and more confident in yourself, the process, and the value that it can bring.Muzaffar Tilavov, Head of Exploration, UNDP Uzbekistan Accelerator Labs
If you’re interested in conducting a similar exercise with your country office, reach out to futureofdevelopment@undp.org
Hear more about the work done by the UNDP Uzbekistan team from Muzaffar and Farida...
Why did you choose to apply strategic foresight to this challenge?
What is your advice to others who are skeptical?
Why should one think about when assembling a foresight team?
What observable benefits has this exercise brought?
How has this exercise impacted your stakeholder relationships?
What would you do differently the next time?