LocationsPartners for the Future
October 23, 2024
The Pact for the Future, a landmark declaration adopted at this September's Summit of the Future, reflects our collective need for action towards a safer, more peaceful, sustainable, and inclusive world for future generations. This ambitious Pact lays out clear goals but achieving them will require us to enhance our capabilities in areas like innovation, strategic foresight, and digital transformation. For North Macedonia, the pact offers significant action points including prioritizing sustainable development goals, fostering international partnerships, and implementing national strategies aligned with global initiatives. In this article, we focus on how the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) North Macedonia is already exploring one of these innovative approaches [foresight and futures thinking] to fulfill these goals, offering valuable insights and lessons for institutions and partners. Together, we can embed these practices to promote renewed functions within our organizations and strengthen our collective impact.
EVERYTHING STARTS WITH A SIGNAL
‘To tackle challenges like climate change and AI, we need to consider our actions' long-term impact’ Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator “
At UNDP, we’ve embraced foresight and future thinking as core elements of our organizational culture. This is evident in the work of our regional policy centers, which have developed foresight tools and playbooks for development work. Additionally, UNDP's global Futures Team produces an annual Signals Report, highlighting emerging trends relevant to development. Inspired by these efforts and fueled by the innovative spirit of our Accelerator Labs, we’ve begun localizing foresight practices and experiment with the process in North Macedonia.
In 2023, UNDP North Macedonia conducted an experiment aimed at localizing the signals scanning process, a method used to inform the above-mentioned Signals Report. Instead of relying solely on internal staff, we partnered with 20 national civil society organizations to identify key signals of change and emerging trends that could impact the country's future development. The experiment tested both the level of engagement we could achieve and the practical applicability of these insights. The results exceeded expectations. We learned from civil societies about how they believe we can use: open data for development; on the importance of the integration of the country in the EU for their core programs; on signals that they have seen of community led development programs in the country; as well as a range of signals on the importance of protecting natural resources and managing them more sustainably for a more prosperous future. You can learn more in depth about the signals we received in one of our previous blogs on the topic. Not only did we integrate these insights into our programming, but we also launched a second iteration of the experiment, this time focusing on signals relevant to our gender empowerment portfolio. This initiative demonstrated that foresight is not only a tool for reflection but also a valuable driver of actionable insights for our country’s future and the development work that will be done in the years to come.
BUILDING CAPABILITIES
While embedding foresight into individual projects is a good start, we recognized that to truly become future-ready, we should internalize this mindset across our organization. To that end, we introduced foresight processes within the UNDP North Macedonia office to deepen our understanding of opportunities, risks, and challenges that lie ahead in the next decade. This shift is helping our team think differently about the capabilities needed in the future to anticipate and respond to emerging trends, ensuring that we remain effective and impactful in the long term.
FORESIGHT IN ACTION
One of our most significant efforts to embed foresight into national processes has been our involvement in the design of North Macedonia’s National Development Strategy - NDS. In collaboration with our Governance team, national institutions, and a range of civil society organizations, we co-created foresight workshops aimed at generating a fresh, forward-looking vision for the country. These workshops explored how trends could be leveraged to accelerate development and offered innovative ideas for the future, and became the norm, when it comes to how organized inputs and engaged with people in this process. The NDS process, enabled a society-wide national conversation on how the future of the country could look like, and what we need to change today in order to enable processes that would lead to those futures. The process has now been a part of the national conversation for some while and supported with almost a consensus in our political landscape.
REHEARSING FOR THE FUTURE
UNDP North Macedonia’s experiences with foresight and innovation offer valuable insights for other institutions and partners in the country. We invite stakeholders to join us in this journey—one that prioritizes future readiness, leverages data and innovation, and anticipates the challenges of tomorrow. By working together, we can translate the vision of the Pact for the Future into actionable strategies that will shape a more resilient, sustainable, and inclusive future for North Macedonia. The development of the Sustainable Development Goals was one of the largest collective intelligence exercises in our history, and building on that we think we are in the need of an even larger partnership for the future, one that leverages innovation, technology, and diverse voices and perspectives in order to accelerate the achievement of the Goals and address emerging challenges.