Foresight: The Art and Science of Anticipating the Future

Fo r e si g h t

Since the early 1990s interest in foresight has undergone one of its periodic resurgences and has led to a rapid growth in formal foresight studies backed by governments and transnational institutions, including many from the United Nations. However, texts that counterbalance in-depth practical experience with an exposition and integration of the many theoretical strands that underpin the art and theory of foresight are rare. Foresight: The art and science of anticipating the future provides entrepreneurs, business leaders, investors, inventors, scientists, politicians, and many others with a succinct, integrated guide to understanding foresight studies and using them as means for strategy development. The text dispels the belief that anticipations are ‘mere guesswork’, and conveys the depth of thought needed, implicitly or explicitly, to understand human foresight. The book examines: • The role of foresight and its institutional counterpart in the modern world • The epistemology underlying foresight • The need to extend foresight activity into wider spheres, including sustainable development • The role that foresight plays in planning processes (including scenario planning) Much of the material in the book is based upon the internationally known Foresight course at the Manchester Business School’s Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR), formerly PREST, which the author developed and directed from 1999 to 2003. Denis Loveridge is an honorary Visiting Professor at the Manchester Business School’s Institute of Innovation Research (formerly PREST), UK. He joined PREST in 1991 as an honorary Simon Fellow after 44 years in industry.

For es i g h t

The art and science of anticipating the future

Denis Loveridge

First published 2009 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2009 Denis Loveridge

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Loveridge, Denis. Foresight : the art and science of anticipating the future / Denis Loveridge.    p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.   1. Forecasting--Methodology. 2. Forecasting--Philosophy.   3. Knowledge, Theory of. 4. Planning. I. Title. CB158.L628 2008 303.49–dc22 2008002330 ISBN 0-203-89415-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0–415–39814–2 (hbk) ISBN 10: 0–415–39815–0 (pbk) ISBN10: 0–203–89415–4 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–39814–5 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978–0–415–39815–2 (pbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–89415–6 (ebk)

To Marion … … a n d Tr a c e y, Jaso n a nd Na tasha

C o ntents

List of figures List of tables Preface Acknowledgements

Introduction

Par t I

Sy s t e m s a n d f o r e s ight

viii x xi xv 1

9

1 Foresight and systems thinking: An appreciation

11

2 Foresight and systems – epistemology and theory

38

3 Institutional foresight: Practice and practicalities

79

4 Foresight in industry

115

5 Generalisable outcomes

130

Par t I I

Sc e n a r i o s a nd s us tainability

145

6 Foresight, scenarios and scenario planning

147

7 Sustainable world

169

8 The world of 2030, 2050 and beyond

224



Epilogue

250

Notes Bibliography Figure credits Index

252 254 265 267

List o f fi g u r e s

1.1 Streams of systems thinking and applications 1.2 Appreciation, learning, anticipations and foresight: adaptation to a cascade of situations of ever changing shape 1.3 Evolution of learning, appreciation, anticipation and foresight 1.4 Notional representation of ‘behavioural pattern’ and its components 1.5 Four types of models of the future 1.6 Needs of information and methods for models of the future 1.7 Matching the nature of models, their information and methods 1.8 Relationship between Foresight, Technology Assessment and Evaluation 1.9 The ‘telenomy’ concept redeveloped 2.1 Mitchell’s original VALSTM1 behavioural typology 2.2 Notional ‘picture’ of the territory of the future 2.3 Equally valid means of presenting an uncertain future 2.4 Examples of consensus and multimodal distributions 2.5 Notional policy matrix 2.6 Elements of a policy hierarchy 2.7 Aggregation of individual value/norm sets and negotiation into group values/norms A2.2.1  Illustration of Attractiveness vs. Feasibility matrix A2.2.2  Illustration of Attractiveness vs. Feasibility plot A2.2.3  Interpretation of Attractiveness vs. Feasibility 3.1 Influence of choice between broad or narrow consultation 4.1 Business cube: an illustration of the need for foresight in business 4.2 Illustration of a notional scanning process 5.1 Stylised representation of the four adaptive ecosystem functions 5.2 Addition of resilience to the adaptive cycle as a third dimension 6.1 Role of speculation and conjecture in foresight 6.2 Managerial response to placing of scenarios 6.3 A process for learning to appreciate situations 7.1 Legitimisation of new forms of behaviour

16 23 24 25 31 34 35 36 36 47 53 54 57 59 60 60 77 77 78 90 119 127 143 143 150 158 159 173

List of figures  ix

7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 7.9 7.1 A 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 8.6 8.7 8.8 8.9 8.10 8.11 8.12 8.13 8.14 8.15 8.16

Influence of the 3-RRR’s Kernel of a model of sustainability Long duration world needs Interrelatedness of world needs Symbolic representation of Venturi-like process for sorting ideas flowing from thought experiments Notional policy matrix Interrelatedness between the notional policy matrix and the STEEPV set Venn diagram illustrating role of possibility, feasibility and desirability in sustainability A notion of inter-relatedness for sustainability The Earth’s cosmological home in relation to foresight Long duration human needs and forces acting on them Interrelatedness of long duration human needs and world needs Content of long duration needs Some possible elements of geo-social change Some possible elements of a geo-science and technology set Some possible elements of a geo-economic set Some possible elements of a geo-ecology set Some possible elements of a geo-political set Some possible elements of a geo-value-norm change set World population growth 1950–2050 World population growth rate 1950–2050 World average total fertility rate 1950–2050 Notional pictorial description of the post-World War II demographic transition Notional illustration of the demographic transition after some decades Pattern of world population by regions 1950–2050

174 205 214 214 216 217 218 219 221 234 235 236 236 239 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 245 247 247 248

List o f t abl e s

1.1 Nature of models of the future 1.2 Correspondence between the Jantsch–Loveridge policy hierarchy and the revised concept of telenomy 2.1 Criteria of the ‘Jones method’ of intelligence gathering 2.2 Some frequently used methods of prioritisation 3.1 Questioning involved in revealing the elements of an institutional Foresight programme 4.1 Representation of government’s intelligence organisation 2.1 Criteria of the ‘Jones method’ of intelligence gathering 5.1 Issues for foresight 5.2 Estimates of world population (1971, 1995 and 2030) 7.1 Content analysis of a listing of the principles of sustainability 7.2 Estimates of world population (1971, 1995 and 2030) – from Table 5.2 7.3 Summary of Perrow’s arguments about complicated vs. complex system

32 37 61 70 83 125 126 138 140 176 181 187

Pref ace

There has to be a reason and a purpose for a book. One of Peter Checkland’s students claimed that any book should make two earlier books redundant, while a one-time colleague, Trevor Williams, always tested a book’s quality subjectively by asking whether it would win a place on his ‘six inch’ bookshelf of invaluable books. As this book will not follow conventions I cannot be sure whether it will meet either of the above criteria. The lack of convention will come from the informal, story-telling style used by Donald Michael in many of his papers and followed (unwittingly I suspect) by Susan Greenfield in Tomorrow’s People, which she claimed should have been a novel. Rather than ‘a book’ this will really be a series of short books (chapters); interrelated if the reader wishes, but stand-alone, in current vernacular, for those whose interests lie in chosen chapters. The choice of presentation is deliberate so that those who dismiss say, the underlying notions of foresight as ‘gobbledegook’, may at least content themselves with some practical ideas relating to its execution in either business or the public sphere. Throughout there will be much emphasis on interrelatedness and interconnectedness, two systems properties that my long time colleague, Philip Holroyd, and I have discussed endlessly (Note 1). The success or otherwise of the scheme ‘will be history’, as the saying goes, once the text is complete. I would not have set myself this unfamiliar task had I not believed that systems thinking, which will be constantly in my mind, has been separated from futures studies for far too long. To attempt to bring the two together is both the reason for and purpose of the book, while strengthening the case for foresightful futures studies is another purpose of the book. If the book concerns systems thinking and futures studies you may well ask why is its title ‘Foresight’? Unashamedly, because foresight and systems thinking are tightly interrelated; it is also a widely used term and because the community of institutional practitioners have chosen, dangerously and unwittingly I believe, to slide towards the more complicated activity of scenario planning, which is inherently based on systems thinking. Now is not the time to take that argument further, but I should differentiate between foresight as an individual or small group activity that depends on appreciation, anticipation and learning and Foresight as a procedural activity currently much in vogue in national

xii  Preface

planning. Tiresome though the differentiation is, it has become unavoidable. So foresight is the genesis of the two subtitles (‘care or provision for the future’ or ‘the muzzle sight of a gun’) and is needed now more than ever if nations are to avoid sleepwalking into future situations they would rather avoid. The relationship to freedom and democracy are clear. Both have to be struggled for continuously against those people and situations that would restrict them, possibilities that are only too obvious, and in some surprising places, in 2008. Appreciation, anticipation and learning form a feedback loop that enables foresight to play a fundamental part in human development in every sphere. As the art of looking forward (the meaning intended throughout the remainder of the book), foresight is an essential ingredient in the development of the relationships between humanity and the world in which we live. However, this distinctive human activity takes place on a planet that depends effectively on a complex form of dynamic ‘homeostasis’ or homeorrhesis (Note 2) (more will be said about this later) for the survival of its population of living organisms of all kinds. Homeorrhesis is devoid of foresight so that there is an immediate discord between humanity’s attempts to shape its own future within a system that is largely blind to those attempts and can severely punish the presumption that ‘we [humans] are in control’. For this reason, amongst others, my expectations of foresight are tempered by knowing that it is neither forecasting nor prediction nor is it a science, but is a marriage of intuition, substantive knowledge projected into the future and sensitivity to developing trends, issues and events in a symbiogenetic way. Often these traits give plenty of opportunities for disparaging comparisons with vitalism or prophecy or give rise to references to futurology, a notion thoroughly rejected in hard headed circles in business, government, science and secular society. In scientific circles, this view, while understandable, is a cause for some amusement since ideas dignified by the word theory are often little more than speculation or conjecture (both of which are discussed later) or better described as scenarios as is evidenced, dare I suggest, in cosmology despite its extensive scientific validation. Happily, these speculations, conjectures and scenarios can change science and its counterparts elsewhere for example, in business, the social milieu, politics and notions of sustainability. None of this is possible without embarking on the arduous step of understanding, through appreciation, anticipation and learning, the intermingling of themes from the Social, Technological, Economic, Ecological, Political and Value/norm events (the STEEPV set that will often be referred to), issues and trends that inform and make foresight possible. It is drawing together all of the above threads in an integrative way that gives rise to the many themes and the inter-working of practice and theory explored in this book. Inevitably, the emphasis on interconnectedness, relationships and integration are ‘glued’ together by the notions of systems thinking that ultimately underlie all that is said in the following chapters. I have spent most of my working life in industry and industrial research. Much of that time involved activities that did not conform to conventions, no

Preface  xiii

more so than during the last 20 years before retirement in 1991. Rarely was I involved in a project that lasted more than five years and, unlike many of my generation, by 1991 I had worked for five different organisations in 44 years. Consequently, appreciation and anticipation of constantly changing situations have occupied a large part of my thought processes. The key to these two ‘a’s has been a willingness to learn the language of each situation as it occurred, either sequentially, or more frequently, in parallel. My early life as an analytical chemist, in a small chemical works that produced a bewildering array of products, taught me the irreplaceable skill of managing several complicated tasks simultaneously without getting them confused (the consequences of doing so could be dramatic as was demonstrated by a colleague’s carbon disulphide explosion that filled the laboratory with SO2 in a matter of seconds!). Later in life this basic training proved invaluable, but had to be extended, as in research and corporate venturing complicated simultaneous tasks almost always involve interrelatedness, transforming complication into complexity. Once again there was no help but to learn the language as often as needed. As happens to so many people I was not bent on becoming involved in corporate venturing and similar activities; it happened by chance. The way was paved at the British Coal Utilization Research Association in the early 1960s where I was concerned with energy research. There, my one time director, the late Donald Hicks (Note 3), taught me the difference between thinking about and conducting research in a narrow, problem centred context, as opposed to the more preferable way of researching in the context of a system and its perceived boundaries. The notion of systems has never left me and later drew me into the futures field (Note 4), a fortunate accident as it is so closely aligned with the notions of appreciation, anticipation and of learning the language of the project in hand. Later, in industry, the late Dennis Oliver (Note 5) allowed me an extraordinary degree of freedom to think about the future in many contexts for the company we worked for, while simultaneously the late Leslie Wall (Note 5) taught me all I shall ever know about business, benefiting hugely from his acutely sharp business mind. To these three people I owe a great debt; their mentorship helped prepare me for the excitements of corporate venturing that occupied the last two decades of my time in industry. Once embedded in the futures field from 1971 onwards Philip Holroyd (Note 6), Andy Lipinski (Note 7), Roy Amara (Note 7), Peter Schwartz (Note 8), the late Willis (Bill) Harman (Note 9) and the late Clive Simmonds (Note 10) all left their mark upon me; I cannot thank them enough. Similarly, in the 1970s David Pilkington (Note 5) placed much confidence in my one-time colleagues Philip Holroyd, Ron Halford, Phil Wieldon, Alan Clague and myself, to conduct some highly exploratory work on social futures, the outcome of which still has much relevance today. I retired from industry in August 1991 when corporate venturing came to an end in the company I then worked for. Successful open heart surgery had intervened before that event, but it would not have changed the course of events as I had already begun to explore the possibility of working with the

xiv  Preface

University of Manchester’s Programme for Policy Research in Engineering Science and Technology (PREST). In that way I started my sixth ‘career’ in late 1991. At PREST my involvement in what has become called Foresight (more will be said later about the relation of this term to the two ‘a’s and learning) has been more formal and public. First, through taking part in the UK government’s sponsored Technology Foresight Programme from its formative events in 1992 and onwards. My colleagues and I at PREST have also taken part in other countries’ Foresight programmes on numerous subsequent occasions. During this time I was fortunate enough to create and direct, for five years, a successful international course on foresight. Some of the material in this book comes from that course. Though PREST’s participation in Foresight programmes and its foresight course have been successful, they still left me dissatisfied, with a feeling that there was much more to understanding how the concepts of systems thinking might augment futures studies. The frequency with which the word foresight appeared in all kinds of books, papers and conversation, all of which were divorced from institutionalised Foresight, struck me forcefully. It was not just the frequency and breadth of references to foresight that struck me. It was also the very long history of the concept, together with its multiple synonyms and antonyms that indicated the depth and breadth of thinking embodied in foresight that, connected to systems thinking, went well beyond anything included in the course material. Parts of the book will explore these notions while other parts may be more familiar to either systems thinkers or practitioners of foresight or those engaged in Foresight. Is the book worth pursuing? I asked myself that question many times before embarking on the task that now confronts me. At times I may seem to be an unrepentant sceptic of Foresight. My scepticism is deep with regard to highflown claims for foresight and its institutional derivative. Often they amount to little more than unwarranted hype, and for that reason are a cause for concern as recent behaviour of the world’s stock markets has shown. However, after 40 years, I know that real foresight is a hard trade with few rewards, even for entrepreneurs, and plenty of personal risk, brickbats, criticism and disbelief. When the rewards come they are often deeply personal, occasionally financially rewarding, but most often too far into the future for those involved at the beginning to see the outcome. There are ghosts of tattered or ‘tacky’ visions with little credibility that haunt the foresight world. Detractors use them disparagingly and in doing so too often display a shocking ignorance of the ineluctable nature, purposes and processes of foresight, and of the extent to which human development has depended on it and continues to do so. Last, the book owes much to conversations with colleagues too numerous to mention in the Futures Network that flourished in the UK between 1976 and 1996; my thanks go to all of them. After the Introduction the book falls into two parts: the first develops the synergy between foresight and systems thinking, while the second is based on the use of what is set out in Part I.

Ackno wl e dg e m e n t s

I wish to thank many people who, through discussions over decades have helped to shape the thoughts embodied in this book: many of them are mentioned in the Preface. The Open University’s Open Business School generously agreed to my request to reproduce parts of the course material on scenario planning that I prepared for them in 1992. My colleagues Maria Nedeva, Michael Keenan and Kerstin Cuhls also generously agreed to my using, in Chapter 3, parts of the annexes to our 2001 review of national foresight programmes. My appreciation goes to Michael Keenan for many hours of discussion on the awkward subject of prioritisation, a matter we never resolved. My thanks also go to Michael Keenan, Ian Miles and Rafael Popper who shared in the considerable trials and tribulations as we conducted our first international foresight programme: we learned a great deal that has provided some of the insights in the text. To Michael Keenan and Ozcan Saritas – many thanks for hours of creative argument about systemic foresight: here the interpretation of the notion of systemic foresight is entirely mine ‘warts and all.’ Discussions with Cristiano Cagnin and Paul Upham helped to place Corporate Social Responsibility, the Global Reporting Initiative, the precautionary principle and the Natural Step in the context of foresight and systems thinking: again I accept complete responsibility for the presentation here including any misunderstandings. On more mundane matters, the population data used to construct the graphs in Chapter 8 are drawn from the ‘World Population Prospects Population Database the 2006 Revision’ by the United Nations Population Division, 2007. The data used in constructing the illustrations of the demographic transition are drawn from the 1998 World Development Indicators on CD-ROM.

Intro d uct i on

… if it be not nipped in the bud, it will burst into a conflagration which will deluge the world Sir Boyle Roche (1743–1807) What is systemic thinking? What is foresight? After all, we know there are boundaries to our lives and thoughts, and both are essential parts of the wholeness explicit to systemic thinking. Similarly, we all anticipate the future in small and large ways so that anticipation or foresight is hardly an unusual activity. So what is all the fuss about? Sir Boyle Roche clearly knew the answer lay in the freedom of creative thought and anticipation, combined with the need to control their consequences, intended and otherwise, at whatever scale is involved. History has a strong influence in any endeavour and that of foresightful activity is no exception. Indeed, I would contend that hindsight and foresight work in harness through the notions of wholeness. ‘But why study history at all? Why concern ourselves with anything beyond the range of our own time and place?’ were cogent questions Toynbee asked in the Foreword to his monumental, systems-based study of world history conducted between 1924 and 1972 (Toynbee 1972:10). Rhetorically, Toynbee’s response was that ‘Within the last 500 years, the whole face of the globe, together with its air envelope, has been knit together physically by the amazing advance of technology, but Mankind has not yet been united politically, and we are still strangers to each other in our local ways of life, which we have inherited from the times before the recent “annihilation of distance”.’ While I would demur from Toynbee’s first contention, the evidence for the second is greater now than ever. Toynbee concluded that ‘… Man does not live in just the immediate present’ but in a ‘… mental time-stream, remembering the past and looking forward – with hope or with fear – to an oncoming future.’ In the global context of history, acts of anticipation, some of global influence others much more local, have been recorded throughout human history. The continual reference to and appearance of jesters, prophets and seers makes clear the ever-present interest of rulers and others in knowing what the future has in store for them. The penalties paid

2  Introduction

by the purveyors of anticipations were generally painful and often fatal even when they turned out to be right, as Nicolai Kondratieff found in 1923 when he developed his long cycle theory of capitalism (Kondratieff 1935:105) that did not give Stalin the answer he wanted! Beyond a small set of current certainties, knowing what the future holds, as purveyed by sages, can only be opinion even when supported by complicated modelling – mathematical or otherwise. Selective listening is an enduring and endearing human trait that leads to the Biblical dictum, ‘A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house’ (Matthew 57). Everyone concerned with foresight does well to remember that saying. Similarly, that the ancients were sceptics is illustrated by the philosopher Horace: ‘What shall be to-morrow, think not of asking. Each day that Fortune gives you, be it what it may, set down for gain’ (Odes, I, ix:13). Denigration of acts of anticipation, of foresight, have a long history. It is only the strength of human curiosity to know the future, to engage with the mystery and paradox of wanting to know the unknowable, that has stayed the powerful hand of denigration and often ridicule. The history of human foresight and its influence is complicated and deep. All that will be attempted in a few short paragraphs is to set the activity in the context of the last 2500 years. Anticipation, or foresight, is fiercely argued over wherever it occurs or whenever it is claimed or referred to; it is after all a political activity, related to agenda setting, that is why it is either ‘care or provision for the future’ or ‘the muzzle sight of a gun’. Clauswitzian though this comment may seem (Clauswitz 1832), there is little doubt about the wholeness of the combination of force and politics to the extent of Mark Twain’s contention that ‘soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run’ in bringing about change in ways of behaviour. The first may be more permanent, but too often massacre is the preferred situation. In 2008, at a time when the idea of the preventive or pre-emptive war has undergone one of its historical recrudescences (Note 1) these dual properties of systemic thought and foresight can hardly be more evident even though their use may have left much to be desired. Foresight was alive and well in the ancient world. The BOGSAT committee (bunch of guys sat around a table) was as well used then as it is now. Various ways were used to reach a consensus about what to do as a result of their anticipations. These may well have been rather more brutal and physically direct than those of modern times, which have their deeply combined psychological and physical aspects of economic and social exclusion. To ancient (and modern) societies their ‘worlds’ were simultaneously simple and baffling. Simple, because physical survival was always the dominating theme of life (it still is in 2008), but baffling because survival was often difficult, if not elusive, in the face of threats and dangers that were and remain ever present. In such worlds, simple blunt responses to situations often worked immediately within tightly drawn boundaries, but were soon found (and still are) to have many unanticipated outcomes, a feature that remains prominent. However, there was no pretence

Introduction  3

that human beings were anything other than part of a much larger natural world in which only human foresight (or anticipation), and understanding accumulated from it, would ensure survival from day to day. The world remains the same today. So has the world really changed and become more complicated? Or has population growth and human persistence in the pursuit of knowledge created complexity? Whether this complexity will improve the human being, as is now proposed by an ardent posse of transhumanist advocates – and opposed with equal passion by others – remains a huge uncertainty that I cannot escape. For the Earth as a living system, the returning notion that a separate human world can be created is based on the hubris that humanity continues to believe in its dominant position in the world, as set out in Genesis (1:26–31), that we are ‘in charge’ of the Earth and can fashion it (or even worse improve its design or even redesign it as humankind has been attempting to do for millennia) to our desires, while avoiding the unanticipated or unwanted outcomes: this is a disastrous lack of systemic thinking, of foresight and of learning. While foresight is an inherent human activity, conducted both consciously and unconsciously, it appears to be both simple and complex, one of its many paradoxes. Some years ago, I was asked what would be the characteristics of a manager in the future; I had no hesitation in placing the ability to manage paradoxes at the top of the list. I believe this to be true now and for some distance into the future since the more we think we know, rather than understand, the more hobbled and inappropriate humanity’s actions seem to become. In the rich parts of the world an hedonistic economic system promotes a culture of possession of artefacts. These have an ever-shorter life cycle, but not lifetime, creating mountains of junk while the majority of the Earth’s people live in unpleasant circumstances and often in poverty and starvation, while supermarkets force good food to be thrown away. The threat of disease and natural disaster is ever present for all people, with the possibility that the relationship to survival may be inversely related to wealth, though transhumanists, who believe in a post-human future providing immortality, would disagree. Demographics alone point to the emergence of immensely difficult situations while our understanding of growth phenomena lead inevitably to ask ‘What will bring population growth to an end?’ and ‘At what level may that occur?’ Foresight, as the progenitor of forecasting and futures studies, has said a little about that so far. Will it be disease? Or a major natural disaster, such as the eruption of a giant caldera or the impact of an asteroid of kilometre dimensions? Or the crowding effects referred to in World modelling (Meadows 1972 & 1992)? Or will it be homeorrhesis (ibid.) as anticipated by Lovelock’s notion of Gaia, in which mankind might finds itself in a world too inhospitable for survival? All are possible and at least some may occur simultaneously. There are shining examples of systemic thinking and foresight in the ancient world. Anaximander’s first cosmological view (Anaximander c. 600 bc) broke the ancient belief that the Earth was held in place by some kind of physical support. More important were the writings of the fifth century Pythagoreans

4  Introduction

who effectively postulated that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, but moved around a central fire like all the other heavenly bodies, a feature that led Copernicus to embark on his work (Copernicus 1543) that rejected Ptolemy’s epicycle theory of the central position of the Earth and hypothesised that the Earth revolved around the Sun. Copernicus’s De revolutionibus ended an era as knowledge of its thesis diffused through the civilised world of the time. Aided by Guttenberg’s and later Caxton’s printing presses, it brought to an end the era of pre-science, effectively breaking the authority of the Church as the source of understanding and changing much that depended on that position of authority. These changes took centuries for their completion and for some people they are not yet complete. From the Renaissance there is probably no better example of foresight than Leonardo da Vinci’s outpouring of ideas. Leonardo, more than anyone at the time, conveyed the wholeness of the relationship between science and art, something that should not be lost on anyone involved in systemic thinking and foresight. Leonardo’s fertile mind produced designs for submarines, aeroplanes, bicycles, screw-cutting machines and also a tank, that were not only feasible but were remarkably similar to the real items when they eventually appeared often centuries later. Leonardo’s work is, perhaps tenuously, an illustration of the enduring belief that the methods of science can be used in Foresight and, worse still, in spuriously exact predictions. Despite a total lack of evidence to support her conclusion, Susan Greenfield (Greenfield 2004) has claimed that scientists are now able to make precise predictions regarding the future of science more widely. Leonardo’s work also illustrates the long-established tendency for technology forecasts to be too optimistic about the time when a technology may be introduced and too pessimistic about the extent of that technology’s penetration into society, the phenomenon of innovation. From my own experience I know that the true colour flat screen display was invented by the early 1970s at the latest, and I expected it would be in widespread use (a Foresight term) in the early 1980s. My one-time company chairman disagreed, believing it would not be in widespread use until the 1990s. While his estimate was better than mine, these displays have only come to market in significant numbers since the late 1990s. So much for the uncertainties of the transition from scientific possibility to technological feasibility and thence to social desirability. More recently foresight has been in evidence in the debate about population growth in relation to food supply and other matters. The ‘modern’ Western debate began in 1761 when Robert Wallace (Wallace 1761) introduced the notion of wholeness when he posited that the perfection of society carried with it the seeds of its own destruction, in the stimulation of population growth such that the earth would become overpopulated and unable to support its population. In 1798 Malthus published his long celebrated and hotly debated pamphlet on population and food supply (Malthus 1798). Malthus’s original work was hastily written to refute the views of the Utopians. The pamphlet

Introduction  5

repeated many of Wallace’s arguments adding that in his (Malthus’) view, the ever present threat of population growth would inhibit the growth of a human society, free of coercive restraints. Malthus’ essay was cryptic and not well supported by empirical evidence, so his arguments were easily misrepresented, as his critics did routinely. Marx was one of Malthus’ most vehement critics since he shared the Utopian’s view that any number of people could be supported by a properly organised society (shades of Kahn a century later). Malthus’ ideas influenced public policy (such as reforms in the English Poor Laws) and the ideas of the classical and neo-classical economists, demographers and evolutionary biologists, led by Charles Darwin. The evidence and analyses that Malthus produced dominated scientific discussion of population during his lifetime. Many of his gloomy predictions have so far proved to be mistaken, but his later work introduced analytical methods that clearly anticipated the demographic techniques developed more than 100 years later. The debate started by Malthus continues to rage and has been reinforced recently by Hardin in his classic discussion of the tragedy of the commons (Hardin 1968), so that it is a strong element of the present all-embracing debate on sustainability. The current formulations of systemic thinking and of Foresight stem from the 1950s. For systemic thinking, von Bertalanffy was the moving spirit (more will be said about this in a later chapter). For Foresight, the small group of people who, in the 1950s and 1960s, created technology forecasting (Note 3) occupy a similar position. It is as well to ask why these people should have had so much influence, if indeed they have, bearing in mind the huge foresightful literature stemming from historians, science and other fiction writers, politicians, economists, social theorists, playwrights, artists and other scholars too numerous to mention. Perhaps the source of their influence lies in the ‘cold war’ years that saw the rise of the need to think the unthinkable in terms of weapons systems and politically inspired military action. Many of the successful methods of technology forecasting arose from just this source, as is reflected in Jantsch’s review (Jantsch 1967) which, after 40 years, remains a classic work. By the early 1970s at least some of the people involved felt able to extend the methods of technology forecasting into social forecasting, an area of much greater complication and uncertainty, where the notions of wholeness were acknowledged but not necessarily used. They were not the first to anticipate this development, as Whitehead did so in 1933, declaiming that ‘Science seeks the laws only, but Foresight requires in addition due emphasis on the relevant facts from which the future is to emerge. Of the two tasks required for Foresight, this selection amid the welter is the more difficult’ (Whitehead 1964:94 [1933]). Whitehead’s view, and those of the later technology-cum-social forecasters, then anchored foresight firmly to the relation between science and technology and social needs, a view that foresight retains today. The inference was for anticipation of what societies might expect of science and technology in achieving fulfilment of their expectations of life, whether they be reasonable or not. Emphasis was placed on the identification of concrete developments in

6  Introduction

science, on inventions and on the applications for technology in artefacts large and small, all derived from far hazier notions of social needs, or more often wants, which themselves were often born of the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) influences of advertising, the media and naked political ambition. It was the age of the ‘can do’ mentality which rarely questioned the advisability of what was done to assuage public demand (Loveridge 1983:498). For these reasons, it might reasonably be said that industry was in the vanguard of using foresight and the partial use of systemic thinking. In industry, the use of such hazy terms for activities that had been everyday practice in business development, from time immemorial, was averred as was reference to the haphazard and opportunistic character of its activities. Foresight or not, the bottom line had to be, and still is, one of a positive cash position, otherwise the tomorrow of foresight becomes irrelevant. Now this emphasis is shifting, albeit hazily, to include social responsibility as additions to the bottom line stretch further into the notions of wholeness. There is clearly a relationship between planning and foresight that needs an historical reference. From the time of Marx and the notions, however distorted, of the social control of the means of production, the idea of planning, especially ‘national’ planning, has had ideological overtones. Paradoxically, planning is ubiquitous though its implementations may be very different from company to company and nation to nation. For some time in the 1960s planning was seen as a Cartesian process made up of impartial frameworks and certainty of outcome; the reality of aggregations of overt and covert ambitions of myriads of people, with their own agendas, was not entertained. Aided by growing computer power, the belief in Cartesian approaches seemed sufficient to build operating models, of great complication and detail, of businesses and governments. In the culture of the 1950s and 1960s, for managers to admit uncertainty in making and taking decisions was to be branded ‘incompetent’ or ‘unprofessional’, a sentiment that has not died completely even today when the uncertainties facing decision makers and takers are much more evident. Events in the early 1970s brought the collapse of this era of pseudo-certainty and it has never returned. Often the key event is said to have been the oil crisis that followed the Yom Kippur war in the autumn of 1973, an event anticipated by several years by some oil company executives, but this was not the only event to topple the era of pseudo-certainty. The international merger boom of the late 1960s shattered long-held notions of loyalty; international terrorism strode onto the scene never to depart; single-issue groups reared their heads for the first time; student campus riots and their parallel in the wider community occurred in many countries; all these events helped in their own ways to destroy the ambience of stability and certainty so that, aided by the advent of post-modernist thought, planning went askew and became disreputable. New methods were sought and emerged during the mid-1970s in what became known as ‘scenario planning’ (Wack 1985a:73 and 1985b:139). At the same time computer modelling was turning to wider issues and yielded outcomes

Introduction  7

such as the Meadows World 3 (Note 4) and the early weather forecasting models that have matured into the current versions of Global Circulation Models (GCMs) (Note 5). The surface of these events can only be scratched here, so great has been the shift away from the certainties of the Cartesian era of modelling and management whether in business or governments. However, underlying all these shifts has been the perception of many trends and events that have and still are reshaping the world; that perception is the characteristic of systemic thinking and of foresight. It is the role of the agile mind to perceive and anticipate future events sometimes correctly, as it turns out, and sometimes to be wrong catastrophically! (Note 6) It must be made clear that foresight is not planning of the scenario or any other genus: foresight is anticipation and nothing more, but should be informed through systemic thinking; that will be its meaning throughout this book. The current tendency to mutate the label foresight unwittingly into something that sounds uncommonly like scenario planning, but without recognising the depth of that process and the effort it requires, is downright dangerous. Now at the dawn of the twenty-first century, formal Foresight has become frenetic and global as its ideas are adopted in ever more continents and countries. However, the related bureaucracy tends to direct its focus to established sets of concerns, including biotechnology, information technology and, more recently, nanotechnology and cognitive science. Whether these distinctly Western concerns are of universal importance must be questioned as must the possibility of developing countries by-passing the industrial era altogether, a possibility I, amongst others, first recognised 30 years ago. Foresight of the nonbureaucratic kind is ever present, and thankfully so, as the source of ideas and influences later taken up in formal Foresight programmes, but often ridiculed currently (the behavioural aspects of Foresight are conveniently not discussed by its proponents). The concerns of real foresight (Loveridge 2001:783) look beyond the obvious toward the new kinds of society that may emerge over the coming century from the dynamic situations that may describe the ‘problems of living’ not just for humankind but for the continuance of the Earth as a living system. I have been involved, in a minor way, in promoting the current frenetic Foresight activity. In industry, my home for most of my working life, foresight is ever present. It is the Japanese who, from 1971 onwards, through their fiveyearly ‘technology forecasts’, stoked the fire that has led to the current blaze of Foresight. However, the way the methodological fuel has evolved has left me uneasy. Its application is fragmented and punctuated to a degree that often has led to pedestrian outcomes that, if continued, may lead to extinction of the blaze. It is for this reason that a relationship between systemic thinking and Foresight is set out in a later chapter. For me this is a return to my roots. It remains to be seen whether systemic thinking can help to cope with the complexity of situations that foresight is now both creating and identifying, but it now seems obvious that the fragmented, punctuated and non-systemic bureaucratic processes of Foresight cannot serve their intended purpose for

8  Introduction

much longer, while wrestling simultaneously with the shifting balance of influence of modernist and post-modernist thought. Foresight is not new, only newly rediscovered after one of its periodic sojourns in the intellectual and political wilderness. In this brief contextual introduction, some of the topics that will be discussed in ensuing chapters are hinted at while others are not. Inevitably, where ideas here draw upon work by other authors there will be signposts to the originals. The task ahead is daunting, but it will not be shirked. It is time now to turn to what matters from here onwards.

Pa rt I

Syst em s a n d fo r e sight

Ch a p t e r 1

Fo re sigh t an d sys te ms t h i n ki n g An a ppre ciation

The more and deeper you think, the more there seems to be no real ‘answer’ to a situation. Denis Loveridge 2007

E x ploration A.A. Milne often used his much-loved creation Pooh Bear to deliver homilies to his readers, old and young alike. Pooh’s homespun thoughts have much to commend them, especially in the marriage of foresight and systems, if only for their illustration of the interconnections between all forms of life, the qualities of art and the situations they create. The words ‘foresight’ and ‘systems’ are common enough in human discourse; there is nothing remarkable about them. In English, the language I am most familiar with, foresight is referred to ubiquitously. Its occurrence in all manner of conversations and writings is one thing, but its difficulty has been acknowledged by Whitehead (1964); similarly for systems, a word that is scattered like confetti throughout normal discourse without paying much heed to its various meanings. In this chapter a system is regarded as an assemblage of interrelated elements comprising a unified whole with emergent properties. The interrelationships may or may not be fully specified or understood. Systems thinking when ‘… applied to human activity [is] based upon four basic ideas: emergence, hierarchy, communication and control as characteristics of systems … [in which] … the crucial characteristic is the emergent property[ies] of the whole’ (Checkland 1981: 318). However, the words foresight and systems hide massive debates and literature, not about their lexicographic meaning which the Oxford dictionary sets out simply, but about the concepts that both words mask. Unmasking this debate to remove some of the mystique that surrounds both is my purpose in this chapter, and in doing so to set the content of both in context. It is not my intention to review the immense literature relating to foresight and systems which show little, if any, interconnection between the two (Saritas 2006: 4) (Note 1). Nor is it my intention to describe methods used in foresight; these are mostly derived from technology forecasting and other kinds of forecasting, or in modelling systems that have been described elsewhere.

12  Systems and foresight

Fores ight Foresight is – and remains – essentially practical and qualitative anticipation; there is no comprehensive discussion of it in theoretical terms, though Chapter  2 will deal with some theoretical matters. However, that does not mean that I view foresight as some kind of ‘wild card’ guessing game, far from it. The Oxford dictionary attributes several characteristics to foresight that divide neatly into soft (the action of looking forward and caring for or provision for the future) and hard (the muzzle sight of a gun) connotations. These two attributes are interrelated, a matter that is often overlooked in anticipation of the future, where the unpleasant fact of human conflict, greed and war are often set aside. It is here that another unavoidable matter intrudes, that of the importance of, and fascination for, numbers with all their vagaries between information and misinformation. Numbers invoke notions of precision that are not characteristic of foresight nor of its close relative, forecasting. Confirmation of this lies in the Oxford dictionary which refers to forecasting, among other similar descriptions, as ‘to estimate or conjecture beforehand’, an ability that can only take place after foresight has marked out the subject for forecasting. The fascination for, and abuse of, numbers is a serious matter that Funtowicz and Ravetz (1990a: 28) discuss at length through their NUSAP scheme; more will be said about this in Chapter 2. Elsewhere (Loveridge 2001: 781) I have separated foresight, the individual or small group activity of anticipation, from Foresight as the formal process that is now popular in policy and planning circles. I forthrightly called the first real foresight and the second institutional Foresight, claiming that the first is separated from the second by random time intervals that may run into centuries (the latter claim arose from Leonardo da Vinci’s outpourings in the late 1400s, many of which came to fruition in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries); typically the time interval may be about 20 years with a spread from 10 to 40 years. Often real foresight occurs at a time when the polity either cannot recognise its importance or has a mindset that denies its implications. By contrast, institutional Foresight takes place later and in a different milieu in which the polity’s mindset has moved beyond denial and the institutional association makes the implications more acceptable and recognisable. If real foresight is original, institutional Foresight becomes a process of rediscovery and aggregation. Both serve their purpose, but it is not to be supposed that the institutional variant is or can be designed to have the characteristics of its real counterpart. These are not empty claims. It is now 30 years since I pointed out to the company I then worked for that the world’s population and its needs distributions were likely to alter world markets drastically in distribution and kind, pointing specifically to China and Asia, where India predominates. Equally, it was not difficult to recognise, at about the same time, from the UK’s Social Trends, the way the UK’s population had become locked into a cyclical pattern at a total fertility rate of around 1.7,

Foresight and systems thinking  13

less than the replacement rate. The consequences, in terms of the necessary future wealth-generating capability of the rising generations through the 1980s and onwards – dependency ratios, an ageing population, immigration and emigration, and other matters – were clear enough by the early 1980s to be indicated to the company and later to enable me to teach about them to an undergraduate course from 1992 onwards. There are many other examples where the centrepiece of institutional Foresight studies fail because, even in 2008, they are conducted on the basis of classic reductionism; the systemic interrelations are rarely made. In the Introduction I referred to institutional Foresight’s slow and unobtrusive mutation toward what is believed to be scenario planning. The shift has been real enough and in the UK Government’s Foresight group this emphasis is referred to directly. The words ‘visions’, ‘alternatives’ and the post-modern word ‘narrative’ have come onto the scene to the extent that the Foresight process is now referred to in much the same way as the planning process used to be. The extent to which this similarity has advanced can be gleaned from Miles and Keenan (2002: 15) in their ‘Practical Guide to Regional Foresight in the United Kingdom’ where they claim that: The term ‘Foresight’ [is understood] “to describe a range of approaches to improving decision making … Foresight involves bringing together key agents of change and sources of knowledge, in order to develop strategic visions and anticipatory intelligence. Of equal importance, Foresight is often explicitly intended to establish networks of knowledgeable agents”. (Note 2) However, this shift has not embraced the full context and content of scenario planning, leaving the Foresight process with both feet in mid-air, an expression used by Donald Michael in his reflections on thinking about the future (Michael 1985: 94). Foresight, real or institutional, enables visions of the future. While life is the present, anticipations of the future are an inevitable part of that present. The purpose of visions of the future is to attempt to identify, as far as one sensibly can, different kinds of futures in which life may take place. For example, in 2001 the argument in the UK about joining the single European currency and involvement in Europe’s further political integration ignored the 1974 report by Lord Kennet, a UK parliamentarian, that openly acknowledged that political union was Europe’s ultimate aim (Kennet 1976). If people in the UK did not know that, it was because the question was not asked. In 1956, Jan Monet and his associates’ vision was of an integrated Europe free from war. There are other visions for the future of Europe, some of them distinctly unpleasant. Visions of the future are there because they are inevitable; without them the polity can neither develop nor policy be created. However, one property a vision must have was neatly summed up by Al Haig, the one-time US Secretary

14  Systems and foresight

of State, that ‘… vision without discipline is daydream’ (Haig 1984). Foresight is an essential precursor to creating vision and is needed to prevent daydreaming; in that way foresight enables policy to be shaped. In its current context, the Foresight process is said to be systematic, within the often undefined boundaries of study. Within this frame, the reductionist overtones of systematic inquiry cannot be evaded. However, this creates an oxymoron as neither a systematic nor a reductionist way of caring or providing for the future is possible for something that does not yet exist. By contrast it is possible to anticipate possible future events that, when taken together, describe a set of perceptually bounded, imagined future situations; this is a systemic, not a systematic, way of proceeding because it is opinion centred, deals in uncertainty and alternatives, and relies on what Vickers means by comprehension (Vickers 1963), which will be discussed shortly. What can be concluded about foresight at this point? First, that the real variant identifies a series of either random or pseudo-random and specific future events, anticipated by individuals or groups often within well-defined boundaries, that are widely ignored or denied when first recognised. The interrelationships between these specific future events and the present are not always sought or displayed, though in the best circumstances they are. Although the notions of a paradigm and a paradigm shift (Kuhn 1962) are usually reserved for scientific theory, real foresight is closely allied to these events. Characteristically, the events described by real foresight, at their time of identification, are of low probability of occurrence, but of high information content describing highly unusual matters or patterns of them. Second, the institutional variant is mostly concerned with rediscovery of past real outpourings and aggregation of them into collections of ideas, often in an ad hoc way, that are perceived to be related to a problem, however broadly that may be described. Characteristically, these collections of ideas are of high probability of occurrence and low information content, because much more is known about the ideas involved.

Sy s tems th inking a nd i t s influen c e What then of systems and systems thinking? Systems thinking can touch every form of human and natural activity; it is this propensity that has, in the past, led to extravagant claims for its capabilities with the attendant risk of disrepute, typified by the highly critical papers by Phillips (1969: 3) and Lilienfeld (1978:   191) in which general systems theory is dissected closely (Phillips’ and Lilienfeld’s criticisms will be explored at greater length in Chapter 2). Other than simple lexicographic descriptions it should be obvious that formal definitions of ‘system’ robs the term of its depth and complexity. Flood (1999) attempted to clarify the position relating to systems thinking as follows: ‘Systemic thinking is then not something that can be explained easily and understood comprehensively … Very quickly we will lose touch with the

Foresight and systems thinking  15

notion of wholeness in a trivialised account of its so-called properties. Many textbooks … make this mistake … explain the world in terms of systems and subsystems, what a system is and how it behaves. An account in these terms … strips it [systemic thinking] of all essential meaning. Systemic thinking begins with an intuitive grasp of existence’ (Flood 1999: 82) Flood’s comment indicates the well-known systemic tenet that phenomena can never be wholly known for the very reason that we are part of them, a notion that stems from gestalt psychology and Smuts’ original writing on holism (Smuts 1926) and, more remotely, from a sociological adaptation (or corruption) of the uncertainty principle (Heisenberg 1927). Flood’s point is well made, giving more cause to avoid formal definitions of ideas that are shaped by the plasticity of the human mind. Von Bertalanffy (1929) set out the beginnings of systems and systems thinking especially to challenge reductionist thought that dominated science at the time and in many ways still does. For von Bertalanffy reduction was not a viable way to study living biological phenomena that needed to be set in the context of other phenomena with which they interacted, with increasing complication, and from which they gained their life support. What may loosely be called the systems movement sprang from von Bertalanffy’s original work and led to the formation of the Society for General Systems Research in the 1940s. Many times since attempts have been made to define systems thinking, particularly during the early post-World War II development of operational research (e.g. Churchman 1968); mostly, as Flood maintains, these efforts have been counter productive. Checkland sets out a chronology of the rise of systems thinking (Checkland 1981: 59), which I will not repeat here, in a way that also indicates problem areas that systems thinking faced at the time and mostly still does. In his review, Checkland claimed that Aristotle argued that the sum is greater than the parts in any set of interconnected elements, but it remains unclear when the modern notion of thinking about situations as a whole, systemic thinking, began to be used. Jan Smuts (1926) may be the person who marked out holism in its modern idiom. Dictionary descriptions indicate that systems are collections of items that are interconnected or interrelated. Checkland (1981) goes further to claim the nature of these collections, with their interconnections, to be a model, hierarchical in structure, with emergent properties and with communication and control aspects. With the passage of time, the focus of attention in systems research fragmented into many themes that are summarised in Figure 1.1 and not simply into hard and soft systems. Throughout the different streams of systems activity, interdependencies are prominent features; these become ever-more so as the differences between the traditional notions of hard and soft systems blur. Process control theory and its applications are the most easily recognised, though nowadays the term ‘process’

16  Systems and foresight

has to be interpreted more widely than its original intention. For example, the ever-growing use of algorithmic stock market trading is a far cry from manufacturing process control, but it is turning what was seen as a soft activity, based on human intuition and judgement, into a hard, if not mechanised process. Similarly, fly-by-wire aircraft represent an extreme development in control systems as do remotely controlled ‘drone’ weapons systems. There are also attempts, some successful some not, to manage recruitment and the flows of patients in health systems as a hard, mechanised process. At one time, hard systems would have been regarded as complicated, but well specified and understandable. These contentions have become less sustainable as processes have become ever more complicated, a feature exemplified by analyses of accidents (Perrow 1984) in many fields (e.g. Three Mile Island, Apollo 13 and forms of medical diagnosis) that indicate the presence of complexity that human operators find difficult to comprehend. ‘Situations’ are systems which may be characterised as ‘a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole’ (Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary) taking the form of ‘a social, economic, or political organisation or practice’. Checkland (1981: 317) takes these formal descriptions further, but in a different direction when describing a system as a model of a whole entity that ought to relate (this ought not to be a matter of choice!) to real-world activity that, in human made entities, have emergent properties as a crucial characteristic. Many of the notions laconically mentioned above recur in one form or another throughout this and later chapters. It is at this point

Structured

Hard

Soft

Closed

Open

18

Power Generation management

Self-diagnosing and selfrepairing machines

13

19

Visual languages

Intelligent prosthetics

14

20

Fly-by-wire systems

Gas grid management

15

Electricity grid management Banking systems

21

Propulsion system management 22 Bioinformatics

6

Networks/ boundaries

Unstructured/fuzzy

Monitoring 7 ecological systems

1

Neural networks

2

Artificial intelligence

Crime control

8

3

Robotics

Traffic control (all fields)

9

16

4

17

5

Remote diagnosis (medical) Retail systems monitoring Networks/ boundaries

6

Figure 1.1 Streams of systems thinking and applications

Crash 10 management systems Pattern 11 recognition Automatic 12 translation

Foresight and systems thinking  17

that the temptation to embark on a definition of systems thinking, is strong, but it is one that I will resist. Living systems are usually thought to be soft, by default. They can be of infinite variety. Here, though, there is a more subtle separation within soft systems thinking between natural systems and human societies, organisations and their management, and behaviour. The effort put into understanding these activities has been and remains immense, and has become the subject of major modelling work. However, the separation of systems into hard and soft variants is immediately seen as naive as science and technology and social thought continue to blur the separation between the two. It is here that the more contentious aspects of systems now lie. The claim for systems to have emergent properties that lie beyond the properties of an assemblage of wellunderstood components, the gestalt aspect of systems, leads inexorably toward an argument for what Sheldrake (1988) and others have called the presence of the past. The importance or otherwise of Sheldrake’s notions will be discussed further in Chapter 2. On occasions this has been dubbed a return to the notion of vitalism, of there being within a system some property that acts to glue component parts together so that there are emergent properties derived from the assemblage as a whole. These are deep arguments that lead towards Flood’s conclusion that systems thinking requires an intuitive grasp of existence. There have been some outstanding results from the systems movement; some have been indicated briefly in Figure 1.1. Similarly, the encroachment of systems thinking into what would otherwise be regarded as the territory of social studies has been considerable, but often unrecognised. Examples are too numerous to mention without being invidious. In parallel, theme-based professional societies have been created for which there are no parallels in the foresight world, though the act of foresight underlies the themes of the systems world. If there is an intertwining of foresight and systems thinking then there are no better places to look than in the writings of H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, Vannevar Bush, John von Neuman, Richard Feynman, Eric Drexler, Hans Moravec, Ray Kurzweil and many other authors. Similarly, every major paradigm shift (Kuhn 1962), whatever its field and consequent new theory, results from foresight, the act of anticipation. None of this prevents foresight as a generic activity being regarded as disreputable, a mere guessing game about the future that may or may not travel with the wholeness of systems thinking. In this association, the notion of systems, so well established elsewhere, can promote a sigh with the response ‘so what?’ when the claims to wholeness are seen to be vague and more of an obeisance to correctness. As will be seen in later chapters, the conjunction of foresight and systems thinking has considerable power. It is hard to know whether this conjunction should be regarded as symbiosis or symbiogenesis. By contrast, at present there is not a shred of evidence that any form of foresight is characterised by wholeness, but is fragmented into either single ideas or multiple sets of them with only the barest attempt to cope with

18  Systems and foresight

interrelationships with the makings of a representative model. Entrepreneurs, inventors, scientists, businessmen, committees and bureaucracies, including policy makers, are concerned mostly with specific ideas or issues that come into focus from time to time and are rarely concerned with the interrelationships that characterise wholeness. Multiple single and collective acts of foresight shape the world in which humankind exists; its saviour is the phenomenon of emergence in which self-organisation plays an immense part in creating the ‘safe-fail’ system identified by Holling (in Linstone and Simmonds 1977: 129). Perhaps this is the real source of Keynes’ invisible guiding hand rather than the fateful and insecure one of economics with its invocation of exogenous variables. Thinking of all kinds works with concepts, facts and values – a simple enough conclusion to reach. However, language enables many different interpretations of any concept; while facts are rarely what they seem and value judgements influence both the interpretation of concepts and the acceptance or otherwise of facts. Wilson sets out an approach to thinking with concepts (Wilson 1971), an important aspect of any act of anticipation and of systems thinking since both are concerned with the transformation of what was, into what is and then into what might be. An important adjunct to Wilson’s ideas is the use of six themes (Social, Technological, Economic, Ecological, Political and Values – acronym STEEPV) that pervade foresight and systems, and place their concepts, facts and values in context. It is now time to explore these laconic comments in greater depth.

Situation s a s proble ms of livin g Why situations and not problems? The answer is both theoretical and practical. The essential reason for my emphasis on situations and not problems is that the latter are always perceived as capable of ‘solution’. Problems are usually presented as being well structured or of becoming so given enough attention; this is typical of the reduction process used in much of conventional science. Reduction has been usurped into other endeavours, e.g. social studies, economics, politics, where it has never been appropriate even as its appropriateness in scientific inquiry has been modified. Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of reductionism in spheres outside science, where its past successes cannot be denied, lies in the assumption that a problem solved is a problem ‘done with’, a product of the application of compartmentalisation, typical of the organisation of science, teaching, government, companies and much of human societies: it is this defect that directs attention to situations and not problems. Situations are neither solvable nor well structured in the manner expected of problem solving. Instead situations can be recognised from their many elements and their interrelatedness, and their apparent lack of structure. Wellspecified causal relations may be present, but may not dominate, leaving many interrelationships to depend on the appreciative setting or behavioural pattern

Foresight and systems thinking  19

(see next section) of the appreciator. Furthermore, since the appreciator will lie within the situation, perception of its boundaries is a matter of uncertainty and debate. As a further characteristic, the insoluble nature of situations means they are dynamic, occur in cascades and are never ‘done with’ (cf. problem solving), but simply change their context and content after every intervention, appearing to become unrecognisable from their initial form over a period of time, though the initial form remains buried in the stream of new contexts. In a rather risky way this behaviour could be likened to that of a cellular automata that, with its original simple rules, produces highly complex patterns after many iterations or similarly of the behaviour of fractals. Cascades of situations, each of which might be said to have emergent properties, are analogous to the conditions described by Popper in his criticism of holism (Popper 1957: 79) and may, in hindsight, have traceable trajectories much like the path of a hurricane, sweeping in an ever growing context and content before finally dissipating. The emergent properties of each situation will be the input to the next, an ecological phenomenon, each embodying the question of how the interactions of agents in the situation produce an aggregate entity that is more flexible and adaptive than its component agents, a question that Holland regarded as difficult but not impossible (Holland 1998: 248). Much thought about systems invokes holism, that elusive way of allencompassing judgmental comprehension of the entirety of a situation. Popper’s (1957) criticism of holism concludes that it is an impossible way of studying a social system (a situation is one) and that gestalt properties are a particular example of holism that does not encompass the notion of totality. Similarly, Simon’s principle of bounded rationality (Simon 1947) makes it clear the that ‘The capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behaviour in the real world,’ replacing the maximising goal with satisficing, to obtain an outcome that is good enough. These two criticisms of holism, one direct the other by implication, need to be constantly in mind when working with situations. However, this is not the end of the matter. M’Pherson (1974: 238) attempted a rebuff to Popper that ends as a damp squib, by admitting that systems thinkers are aware of Popper’s criticism and of the imperfections of the notion of holistic models, but use models because they are expeditious when there are current urgent problems to be solved. Hardly a convincing rebuttal, particularly as M’Pherson later claims that the best systems thinkers use both reduction and holism in their work, a conclusion I would not dispute. Perhaps the biggest step in favour of the notion of situations rather than problems came from an unexpected direction in 1972 when Weinberg invoked trans-science to describe issues that arise in the interaction between science or technology and society (e.g. The UK’s BSE epidemic, supervision of the content of the World Wide Web, amelioration (if that’s possible) of global climate change, the AIDS pandemic and other situations: author’s replacement

20  Systems and foresight

of Weinberg’s more general statement) that hang on the answers to questions that can be asked of science and yet cannot be answered by science (Weinberg 1972: 209). Issues, or situations as they more properly are, of this kind are now a common feature of life and throw the activities of policy makers into sharp relief. As the situations cascade, positions taken up by agents and agencies shift as new theories and new data are preferred, arising perhaps from the Assessment and Pedigree categories of the NUSAP (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1990: 28) way of examining data. Situations frequently involve preference shifts among the people involved, appreciators in the following section, and may involve the equivalent of a Kuhnian (1962) paradigm shift in science, but these are unlikely to have the same depth of foundation as the arrival of a new theory in science. Throughout the holism debate there is a frequent recourse to the Aristotelian claim that the sum is greater than the parts. However, Buckminster Fuller’s idea of synergy, from the Greek synergos, working together, may be a more appropriate way to describe the claims of systems thinkers, if only because it is gradients between a system’s elements that drive the synergy between them in any situation. By an analogy with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, a system of ever-declining gradients is one of increasing entropy and rising disorder, notions that are important in situations. What of the practical characteristics of situations? M’Pherson’s rebuff of Popper’s criticism of holism had its roots visibly in the world of the systems practitioner, with a sense of exasperation over the philosophical debate concerning the validity or otherwise of holism. In a discourse about rational science, which many would call normal science, Maxwell expressed concerns for the way rational science passes real world problems by (Maxwell 1984: 65). Maxwell turned his attention toward how the practice of science could be changed to get closer to what he termed ‘the problems of living’ as characterised by what is of value to people in their lives. As an aside, Maxwell conducted his debate under the titles of the philosophy of knowledge (rational science) and the philosophy of wisdom, which is concerned with the problems of living. ‘Situations’ is the term I prefer to the ‘problems of living’ as it conjures in one word the theatrical nature of the problems of living in all their dimensions. Practically, situations need learning, judgmental comprehension and anticipation that, through synergy (or symbiosis?), create foresight and adaptation (or prepare for it) to changing circumstances. Throughout there is a necessity to combine reduction and holism together in the difficult process of fixing a situations boundaries, a matter Dempster (1998) discusses in an extension to Maturana and Varela’s theory of autopoiesis (1980). Simon’s (1957) strictures of bounded rationality, with its escape route via satisficing, always needs to be borne in mind, but without sacrificing the rigour and quality of the investigative process of inquiry into a cascade of situations. By their nature situations are rich in symbiosis where elements live together in a mutually supportive way. There will also be evidence of symbiogenesis

Foresight and systems thinking  21

(Margulis and Sagan 1995: xiii) in which elements of the situation are acquired totally by another, creating a new and more complex element in the evolution of the situation (symbiogenesis is probably more complete than merger and acquisition activity in human organisations, especially, but not exclusively, in business). The practical process of learning, anticipation and the judgmental compre­ hension of a situation is similar to that described later (Chapter 6) for scenario building; both can be aided through systems modelling, discussed later in this chapter, in any appropriate form, as this transforms the concepts and perceptions from abstract internal patterns into a form that can be worked with in the physical (practical) world. The need to learn poses questions about what to learn and how to go about it? Why are the themes chosen? Who to turn to for advice (which raises the political-cum-technical matter of expertise)? Where are advisors and information to be found? And when, in the life of the situation and its cascade, are particular forms of learning needed? The synergy of the learning process is through discriminating judgement of the appreciative kind which leads to anticipation and foresight concerning the situation, all of which is a complex process controlled through the combination of reduction and holism. Learning and discriminating judgement of the appreciative form are the key parts of working with situations. It is these that permit well-founded thought experiments on which anticipation of both further learning and foresight depend. It also raises the questions of personal learning, organisational learning and in extremis social learning by entire societies. These are subjects in their own right; all that can be done here is to indicate their presence while raising three particular issues: the need for reflexivity to constantly test what is being learned; the transition from information to knowledge, which is usually glossed over; and the necessary shift from broad to directed learning. Reflexivity is needed to ask whether what is being learned can be used without thinking through its use in the situation, what Argyris and Schon (1978) call theories-in-use. The addition of reflexivity transforms this into double-loop learning (ibid.) in which the premises of the theory are examined in relation to the situation. Throughout the use of reflexivity, the NUSAP way of examining data helps in its conversion to knowledge. The common ground in the process will be the transformation of information, which is currently related to problem solving. Even if this transformation is not well understood, it is an everyday practical occurrence and, to that extent, is familiar. By comparison the transformation of information into knowledge, and subsequently into wisdom, as in Maxwell’s (1984) argument, to ameliorate the problems of living has, perhaps, barely been considered in the foresight world. Problem solving remains a dominant feature of society, as does the fallacy that integration of individual problem-solving solutions can be a solution to a complex situation. Common ground is an important building block in the transformation of information into knowledge. It depends on successful sharing of information,

22  Systems and foresight

which is itself difficult and uncertain. Information itself has two parts (Devlin 1999: 14) as set out in an information equation as follows: information = representation + procedures for encoding/decoding Here representation is any kind of symbol or set of symbols, and the procedures are how the representation is encoded or decoded. The representation may take any form including numerical, linguistic, ideographic, drawings or pictures. How information becomes knowledge is likely to be along the following lines for the individual: [information] × [transfer function of unknown format] ⇒ [individual knowledge] [individual knowledge] × [appreciative setting function of unknown format] ⇒ [individual wisdom to act] Devlin (ibid.) prefers to interpret Davenport and Prusak’s (1998) definition of knowledge as a single step (knowledge = internalised information + ability to utilise the information). I believe the two steps indicated above are a better scheme since an individual may create personal knowledge unrelated to any need for action. Representation is a primary building block in the form of language in all its guises. Language is fundamental since it must meet demanding requirements in information sharing in and between all the elements of a situation. As things stand now, language, not simply differing national languages, but the immense spread of social, scientific/technical, economic, ecological, political and value ‘dialects’, is probably the greatest barrier toward amelioration of situations. As a building block, language puts ‘information technology’ into a very different perspective and requires processes very different to what is currently called information management. Language is also a vital part of the initial broad learning that proceeds in the first stages of appreciating a situation, as each tends to have a language of its own. The broad learning programme (illustrated later in Figure 6.3) needs to make every aspect of that language comprehensible to facilitate the deeper learning that follows in the directed phase. Determining when to make this shift is a fuzzy process that depends very much on how the interdependence between reduction and holism shapes boundary setting and the ever-shifting context of the situation. For the individuals involved, the greatest gift education can give them is knowing how the process of learning proceeds best for them because of its potent linkage to Vickers notion of appreciation (Vickers 1963) that has been termed judgmental comprehension earlier.

Foresight and systems thinking  23

F o r es ight, s yst ems a nd a ppreci a t io n Both foresight and systems thinking are influenced by the behavioural traits of those involved, an aspect that has largely been ignored but will be explored now. Foresight is intensely dependent on pattern recognition: it provokes and is provoked by the recognition of a new situation, itself composed of patterns of inter-linkage between elements, which is akin to sensing a new object or new idea. To be recognised the new situation has to have sufficient familiarity to be interpreted through old experience, a form of mental handshaking, otherwise it will be neither perceived nor comprehended; this process is similar to Jean’s (1943: 55) description of how communication occurs through perceptual space, which will be described shortly in developing the notion of an individual’s behavioural pattern. Dissolving (or absorbing) new experience into accumulated existing experience, is then more than assimilation and involves the more subtle process of appreciation (Vickers 1963). As already described, situations occur in cascades, each posing a new experience requiring a further shift in appreciation to what Vickers called a new appreciative setting (Figure 1.2). The notions of appreciation, appreciative setting and behavioural pattern are similar since the latter makes use of Vickers notions of values and norms (1973: 175), but makes more explicit use of simple aspects of brain science. Appreciation, or sensitive awareness, may seem to be an old fashioned idea but understanding what it involves is fundamental to anticipation or foresight. Situations, themselves systems, need appreciation that comes from being open to the reception and interpretation of signals of low probability but with high information content. Few people understood appreciation better than Geoffrey

Figure 1.2 Appreciation, learning, anticipations and foresight: adaptation to a cascade of situations of ever changing shape

24  Systems and foresight

Learning

Foresight

Anticipation

Appreciation

Figure 1.3 Evolution of learning, appreciation, anticipation and foresight

Vickers. His fundamental paper (1963) leads to the conclusion that appreciation has a circular relationship with anticipation and learning, with their internal feedback loops, all of which is fundamental to the assembly of coherent ideas about the future. (Figure 1.3) Vickers (ibid.) drew on conventional feedback control theory to describe, for soft systems, the combined process of deriving the information that describes the current state and its comparison with the norm to provide a signal for action; it is this process that Vickers called appreciation. In soft systems, the resulting appreciative behaviour, the control action, is not the same as regulation since regulations formulated by statute are not dynamic, only being altered at irregular or fixed intervals (in hard systems, these two mechanisms would coincide). Appreciative behaviour allows responses to vary according to the extent of the departure from the norm recognised by appreciation. In a living system, as opposed to a hard control system, appreciation may seek action, but there is no certainty that it will occur, whereas the enforcement of regulations will invoke action in a binary ‘go’ or ‘no-go’ fashion. Consequently, appreciation requires judgements of reality and value to assess first, the state of the system (referred to as judgements of fact) and second, to value these facts with respect to the individual and society. Vickers saw the two kinds of judgement as inseparable constituents of appreciation (this amounts to a form of soft gap analysis). To Vickers an individual’s appreciative judgement depends on: • Their relevant mental faculties • The materials available to the individual via memory or external sources or derivable from these through mental processes

Foresight and systems thinking  25

• The willingness to see and value alternative appreciations (appreciative setting which he thought depended on past experiences and associations). Similar ideas underlie the notion of an individual’s behavioural pattern (Loveridge 1977: 56); the entire scheme is shown below. The ideas incorporated into the individual’s behavioural pattern differ from Vickers’, being more explicit and incorporating some simple understandings from brain science. The left-right brain behaviour debate has largely remained intact since the 1970s, though more precise roles for different areas of the brain are now being revealed, not without argument, through the application of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. In Figure 1.4 the process of appreciation can readily be recognised through the loop that suggests the modification of an individual’s value-norm set and information store. The complex nature of the modification of values and norms, resulting from both internal and external experience, is derived from Jeans’ discussion of space and time (Jeans 1943), though only the former is relevant here. Jeans suggested four spaces – conceptual, perceptual, physical and absolute; the concern here is for the first three. Conceptual space is abstract and exists only in the mind of the individual; whatever the individual thinks in this space can be multidimensional, but it goes out of existence immediately the individual turns Ext ernal ex perience Perception in physical space shaped through current values, norms and information set

R Behaviour pattern made up of interaction between: exp ectation appreciativ e setting

L

Information Current Values and Norms

v alues norms

information genetic inheritance

physical content

biological drives

New set of v alues, norms and information become ' current'

Changed values andnorms resulting from experience (new information) largely logical change and a left hemisphere activity (matter heavy change) – physical-perceptual process. New v alues and norms resulting from internal ex perience ('internal' information synthesis – largely holistic and right hemisphere activit y) – conceptual space process.

Figure 1.4 Notional representation of ‘behavioural pattern’ and its components

26  Systems and foresight

his thinking elsewhere. Perceptual space is that of a conscious being experiencing or recording sensations in two or three dimensions; as before perceptual space goes out of existence when the sensations stop. Both conceptual and perceptual spaces are private to individuals, physical space is public. My conclusion in 1977 was that the content of conceptual and perceptual spaces can be and are recorded in physical space where the world of ideas exists, giving rise to values and norms which, in Vickers’ view, were respectively general and explicit, and specific and tacit. It is this interpretation that underlies the structure of value-norm shifts outlined in Figure 1.4 and that have potent influences on the way situations are described through systems thinking and foresight, with an obvious link to the evolution of mental models of them. It is necessary to dwell briefly on the synthesis between appreciation and behavioural pattern. Both acknowledge the mutual interconnections between the worlds of events and ideas which cannot be separated from the state of mind of the individuals involved. Often these many and subtle interconnections are not recognised with events and ideas being subsumed together, an unfortunate state of affairs as interconnections play an important part in any form of appreciation or value-norm shift. It means that individuals need to evaluate evidence of what may happen in the world of events into evidence of what is actually happening in the world of ideas (Vickers 1963), a key notion for foresight considering the diversity of material involved in reaching reality judgements, which are constantly reviewed under the pressure of: • Events (which require new appreciation) • Codifying alternative mental experiences, including particular ways of perceiving and responding to a complex situation or set of stimuli (these challenge or confirm an individual’s experiences which may need revision as a result) • The incompleteness and deficiencies revealed in an individual’s behavioural pattern that constantly call for its revision. Vickers concluded reasonably that everyone in society has a latent appreciative setting which remains hidden by his/her actual judgements even when they change (or help to change) public opinion. Revolutionary ideas, the outcome of real foresight, involving extended periods of change and uncertainty have large costs in all aspects of life, politics, science and individual life. Appreciation involves a clash between the value pair certainty-uncertainty of expectations relating to the future course of events. Reality judgements provide checks on whether events are providing confirmation or otherwise of expectations, a test that resembles soft gap analysis. Whether the event is disagreeable or otherwise is immaterial, its confirmation strengthens the validity of the reality judgement, whereas its falsification erodes confidence in the expectation, the reality judgement and the process by which it was reached. Thus, mismatch signals are significant in the appreciative process as behavioural

Foresight and systems thinking  27

patterns shift. Appreciation also contains the value of coherence-incoherence in the inner world of the appreciator as indicated in Figure 1.4. The individual’s internal mental codification of experience is largely coherent, but where it is not the mismatches are indicated by persistent discomfort. Some judgements cannot be embraced by the value pair coherence-incoherence, these Vickers (1963) calls fitness-unfitness, which seem to have connections with the idea of fitness for purpose (Loveridge 1997: 34) as that also involves valuations. The simplest of these valuations come from attitudes toward mental codifications of reality. For example, duty to a neighbour widens or shrinks with conceptions of who one’s neighbour is (Vickers 1963). Valuations have their own mental codifications developed through criteria of value that, like criteria of reality, are latent in the mind, appearing to guide and change as the need for appreciation arises. The key is how appreciative judgements temporarily and dynamically settle valuations that involve issues of good and bad (and all shades in between) that are not resolved by ranking norms or goals. It is customary to think of judgement in a dynamic context of weighing [evidence] and alternatives, but Vickers suggests this is inappropriate. What is needed is a way in which incoherence and unfitness in information can be minimised to benefit judgement. Resistance to new ideas is to be expected. In behavioural terms, it attempts to retain coherence in an individual’s existing patterns of ideas in the face of their possible disruption. In all studies involving systems and the future ‘what is important?’ is probably the most basic question after the nature of the situation has been set out in a preliminary way; it is also a deeply philosophical and psychological problem involving appreciation, anticipation, learning and judgement of reality and value. Vickers suggests that interest is the key factor, but this raises the question of ‘whose interest?’ In turn, this leads to the involvement of self-interest. Finally, there is the hidden question of measurement where the use of the terms ‘facts’ and ‘norms’ needs examination. Facts are rarely what they seem and are often associated with considerable uncertainty as confirmed by Wilson in teasing apart the meanings of fact, value and concept in a very instructive way (Wilson 1971). Reality judgements admit of the possibility of some facts being more acceptable than others due to selective seeing and listening, a feature of the idea of ‘pedigree’ in the NUSAP system. Vickers’ use of the phrase ‘actual and hypothetical’, the latter to cover reference to the future state of a system, is troublesome as facts about the future are restricted to a relatively narrow set, whereas both forms of judgement and the ‘state of the system’ are concepts capable of many different interpretations. The implied need for measurement of norms is a contentious matter. Any norm is characterised by a complex set of elements so that appreciation itself becomes complex and is inherently uncertain and risky. Vickers’ later careful distinction between values and norms (Vickers 1973) simply accentuated this complexity. The natural complement to appreciation then becomes learning, provided it leads towards understanding, in an endeavour to modify uncertainty and risk. Learning itself cannot afford to

28  Systems and foresight

be random so that anticipation of where to direct it becomes important, in this way completing the three pillars (Figure 1.3 ) that enable the export of foresight at irregular intervals. All the foregoing influence the nature of modelling which is a further neglected aspect of foresight, but is inherent in systems thinking.

Fores ight, syst ems a nd model l i ng I wonder how many sponsors of institutional Foresight take the trouble to model the task they are embarking on? Or understand the complexity of that task? Too often it seems that Wittgenstein’s dictum that ‘problem and methods pass one another by’ (Wittgenstein 1953: 232) is de facto as too frequently there seems to be a rapid departure into deciding whether this method or that one should be used before the scope of the situation is grappled with. Some indication of this latter task is described in Chapter 3; my purpose here is to describe the modelling processes that could be used in developing institutional Foresight. For the individual or small group engaged in the ‘skunk works’ of real foresight, similar strictures apply, except that I believe they are less likely to be enticed into the Wittgensteinian trap. But first some general comments on models as a genus. Creation of the future is the intention of any model; the term itself is another omnibus word used indiscriminately to describe an interrelated set of ideas, a system. The word model conveys ways of representing ideas that grow in private conceptual space before proceeding via perceptual space to physical space (Jeans 1943). The final representation of the set of ideas may range widely from aeroplanes and every kind of physical model, to high fashion and to abstruse mathematical models of anything from neurological systems to climate change and any other computable form; some are purely descriptive. Some models are concerned with what was or what has been (history); some with what is; others with what may be (futures thinking or foresight). The notion of continuity, in the sense of the inevitable progression from the past through the present to the future, is central to any modelling endeavour though this does not prevent modelling including discontinuities as exemplified by catastrophe models (Thom 1972). Model-making is an intrinsic feature of human cognitive life. It encodes knowledge in various forms, typified by signs, texts, codes, mathematical equations and various other representational forms; these are the direct outcomes of human model-making. Any model begins descriptively, in this way becoming part of the physical world. From then onwards its representation can take any appropriate form, as already indicated. The notion that the past and the present are understood well enough to eliminate uncertainty, to the extent that any model of them represents a universally accepted reality, is simply fallacious and has to be avoided. Research into history, to create models of the past, is uncertain enough without the overtones of ideology and culture that can be present. The rise of modernity, that did much to

Foresight and systems thinking  29

destroy the era of appearances from the 1400s onwards, illustrates the point and required a new model of human societies that is not yet complete, even while the disputed notions of post-modernity, with their denigration of expertise and much else, are gaining credence (see Chapter 2). The difficulty is that the descriptive model is likely to lean towards the current dominant sociological-cum-philosophical influences on discourse, which is currently a hodgepodge of modernist and post-modernist expression. How often are these influences incorporated into model building or recognised by the model builders? Is model building, the representation of the discourse, science or art? Many authors, for example Moravec (1988), Kurzweil (1990, 1999) and others suggest that increasing raw computer power will, over the next two decades, blur the distinction between art and science as artificial intelligence approaches (or exceeds?) the capabilities of the human brain. What is it that a model represents? Are they value free as many might claim? Do models stray into sophistry? What kind of model does a composer have in his mind as he creates a symphony? With the diversity of meanings and intentions in models the answer to these and many other questions may well be ‘who knows?’ After models enter physical space they are public and enter the continuity of ideas. Almost as an aside, the above underpins the notion of anticipation (foresight). Backward anticipation (hindsight) is no lesser tool than foresight, as, once enunciated in the physical world, ideas never die and can never be erased. Their influence past, present and future may be argued over interminably, with emergent outcomes that the initiators can never anticipate; they are truly complex. Once enunciated, even future related ideas become history. Systems thinking leads ineluctably to models, so how may it influence foresight of any form? From its formative moments, foresight of any kind is beset by the reduction versus holism argument, which is why M’Pherson was led to his comment about the practical world requiring their combination into a hybrid format. Foresight begins when an individual senses a mismatch between his or her appreciative setting (or behavioural pattern) and the situation being faced. Essentially this depends on mental modelling and pattern recognition to identify differences between an expectation and the likely reality, a form of gap analysis. The subsequent reformation of the mental model, through foresight and thought experiments leading to a new appreciative setting, then permits adaptation to new possibilities. Enlarged into the formal activity of institutional Foresight, closing the gap between expectation and reality becomes the purpose of the activity. The process involves organisation and structure appropriate to the situation, where organisation relates to time and functional hierarchies; structure to spatial distributions and part-whole interdependencies. Throughout these two hierarchies, the context and content of each level has to be established. Developing a model of an institutional Foresight programme in relation to the situation is then a process of inquiry that forestalls the rapid departure into the Wittgensteinian trap.

30  Systems and foresight

It is not my intention to describe the content of the modelling universe, which is populated with a diverse set of models making various claims to success or usefulness in the problems they claim to address. The evolution of models from those that are directed towards the solution of specific problems in hard systems towards those that attempt to cope with soft systems in a reductionist manner has now moved into the era where soft systems, situations in the terminology I have used, are the focus of attention. Typically, the pathway in hard systems has been into ways of controlling systems and processes that remove either the uncertainties of human intervention or human participation altogether: many of these are referred to in Figure 1.1 and increasingly, include aspects of war-fighting capability. Now, claims are also being made that there is sufficient understanding of human performance to include human beings more directly as an element in hard systems (e.g. Albus and Mystel 2001) forming a kind of hard-soft system. Modelling soft systems has proceeded very differently. A raft of qualitative descriptive models, scenarios for example (Chapter 6), survey methods, econometric and decision models have been developed, sometimes under the name of decision sciences or operational research or technology or some other variant of forecasting. In a different vein lie models for technology assessment, environmental impact assessment, life cycle analysis, energy analysis, ecological economics, behavioural economics and industrial ecology, and most wretchedly, cost/benefit analysis. The latter sometimes has ludicrous assumptions concerning the value of the unique and un-priceable artefact, a point made forcibly by Stafford Beer (1971) in ridiculing a value placed on Stewkley church, which dates from Saxon times, for the purposes of a public enquiry related to airport planning. From the 1940s onwards a new stream of models has appeared. Cellular automata appeared in 1941. Systems dynamics made its appearance in the early 1960s and the roots of climate models were set down in 1963. Fractals, which bridge the gap between science and art, catastrophe theory, dissipative structures, all of which have emergent properties, and genetic algorithms, each with their own unique modelling capability, all burst onto the scene during the 1970s. Much older, and still argued over, is the Kondratieff or long-cycle, a model of the interrelationship between the many facets of invention and subsequent innovation and the behaviour of capitalist economies. Ecology, both mathematical and descriptive, has often provided a rich source of models and ideas for them through analogy; these have come into their own in an increasing way and most recently through the notion of ‘panarchy’ (Gunderson and Holling 2002), a mixture of qualitative explanation, and quantitative modelling, that extends the notion of the ‘r’ and ‘K’ species behaviour into a powerful cyclic phenomena through the addition of two phases, release and reorganisation, as described in Chapter 5. The list of modelling processes is indeed a long one. The use of any of the forms of modelling indicated is rarely encountered in the foresight world.

Foresight and systems thinking  31

S y s tems thinking in rea l foresi ght a nd i ts i n s titutional count erpa rt A model of the future is someone’s vision of the future: to a starving man or woman the vision (or model) of the future may be bread, while to a NASA technologist it may be a space station or space travel. The basis of models may range from records of dreams to formal processes, such as simulation using special languages, including systems dynamics, econometrics or Monte Carlo simulations, through to interactive visual representations, as used in flight trainers or in virtual reality. As already indicated, models of the future begin as conceptual and later perceptual (Jeans 1943) thinking before being expressed as descriptions of mental constructs, often taking on or expressing some form of ideology, using that word in its broadest sense. An example is the current use of climate modelling. Models are not value-free as they draw strongly on their creators’ subjective expectations of the future which can encompass an enormous diversity of ideas. Any model of the future will be synthetic and will have the capability of synthesising many different, but possible futures, in this way influencing the future of the polity through communication of their content and output, as is happening currently with climate modelling. Figure 1.5 indicates that there are four aspects to models of the future, two that describe how they are created (Intentional and Accidental) and two that describe the nature of the model. Foresight plays a crucial part in creating any of these models, whether it is used unconsciously and informally or consciously and in formal processes, such as institutional Foresight programmes. There is a circular relationship between visions (or scenarios) and foresight as the creation of a vision requires content that foresight provides. Often there is a wish to prepare visions without explicitly acknowledging the role of foresight, while the creation of a vision will call for new foresight as new ideas evolve. Foresight and visions are interdependent and co-evolve once the initial content provided by foresight has been created.

Intentional

Formal

Informal

Accidental

Figure 1.5 Four types of models of the future

32  Systems and foresight Table 1.1  Nature of models of the future Intentional

Accidental

Formal

Informal

Created for specific purpose, the model has specified and communicable structure which is usually computable even if dealing with qualitative statements. Formal sponsorship. May use interactive real-time simulation, including virtual reality or other methods of visualisation and tactile sensation. Examples are systems dynamics, econometrics, Monte Carlo methods, cross impact in various formats

Scenarios of corporate or national futures nested in global scenarios developed by ad hoc groups or individuals, with or without sponsorship.

Unsponsored, but models developed in ‘skunk works’ through unstructured discussion. Examples are multiple scenarios that permit characterisation numerically using any appropriate formal modelling method

Serendipitous development and are unsponsored. Art form and difficult to communicate. Usually impressionistic and conceptual; not computable. Examples are dreams Utopian writing, all forms of fiction and plays

Examples are Books, pamphlets, etc. written by individuals or groups; no specified structure and not computable.

Table 1.1 illustrates the meaning of these terms. Models of the future (or visions or scenarios) are important because of their potential to disrupt conventional thought processes – indeed it is their purpose. They play a crucial role in the debate, perhaps battle, between competing ideas and between the long and the short view of the future, and hence influence policy formation strongly. While ‘… the future can only be reached through the present, the shape of the future will differ significantly if it is approached through a series of short, halting and apparently random steps by comparison with the brisker stride toward a long term vision’ (Loveridge 1988: 679). The battle in the polity is over whose vision and between competing visions; for this reason models and what they say have to be credible. To quote Al Haig (1984) ‘… vision without discipline is daydream’; on this criterion Accidental/ Informal models need translation into more structured information to become part of the competing visions. In the battle for changing ideas, Intentional models might be thought of as forming and consolidating future values, whereas the Accidental-Informal types tend to be less disciplined, often with the characteristics of dreaming, and through their exploratory and expansive nature, disturb values and lead towards value shifts. What are the characteristics of credible models of the future? All models of the future encounter the problem of boundary setting, of deciding what is important and what is not, and the interdependencies; this is a deeply

Foresight and systems thinking  33

philosophical matter. Boundary setting is to a degree undecidable (Gödel 1931 [Note 3]), since the future, by definition, cannot be cannot be perceived in its entirety. Too often the arbitrary basis of boundary setting is not made explicit in the background to the development of a model. What is embodied in a model is a subset of the perceived future that results from value judgments concerning the part of that future that has been judged important in the context of the situation. In this way a complicated situation is comprehended so that it is judged to be good enough for the outcome(s) to be used by protagonists (or antagonists) in the battle of ideas in the polity, a situation that conforms to Simon’s notion of bounded rationality. Credible models of the future will contain reasonable (defensible and explicable) extensions to present knowledge and beliefs, relevant to the time horizon embedded in the model assumptions and to the objective, and scope of the situation under study (Note 4). The formal structure of the model will need to be sufficiently robust to withstand criticism and should embody the essential feature of handshaking (Note 5). Most likely it will indicate seeds of the future in the past, emphasising the essential continuity of past, present and future, but also endeavouring to indicate likely discontinuities in the future and their roots. The limitations of models of the future lie in their partiality. While the notion of holism will often be referred to by those who create models of the future, the fallibility of the notion is readily apparent. Whatever the nature of the model, it can only be a subset of the entire set that makes up the future and that entire set cannot be determined. Models of the future will always fail at some point as will any policy. Given the foregoing, what reliance can be placed on models of the future? A quick response could be ‘none’, but that would be too harsh a judgment. It is better to regard models of the future as idea or possibility machines (Shackle 1952), capable of challenging or breaking established perspectives and modes of thought. The discipline needed to create such models helps to establish this role, as the information required for their construction, in the best instances, will have been carefully examined. The kinds of information needed and its sources, its reliability and the methods of validation used vary according to the position of a model in the taxonomy. The information needs of Formal/Intentional models are diametrically opposed to those that are in the Informal/Accidental category, the former needing much numerical data, whereas the latter may rely entirely on literary representation. The relationship between the methods used to create models, their purpose, information needs and the audience for whom they are intended may be represented as in the Figure 1.6. Visions of the future can be likened to maps prepared by explorers (Lipinski and Loveridge 1982: 206). All maps have an inherent uncertainty, which is heightened when mapping hitherto unknown territory; this leads to their frequent revision and occasionally to complete reconstruction. The information needed for the creation of models of the future is similar to that needed to draw maps. The terrain of the future will be made up of

34  Systems and foresight

Methods

Audience

Information Purpose

Figure 1.6 Needs of information and methods for models of the future

peaks, troughs and plains of behaviour of the polity; these will be formed by the underlying trends and discontinuities in the activities described broadly under the STEEPV acronym. The acronym then broadly defines the kinds of information needed to create models of the future in parallel with arduous, wide and deep learning programmes, to develop this kind of information. How reliable that information is then depends on the effort put into the learning programme, the interdisciplinary capability of the researchers and the use of the underlying tenets of the NUSAP system. The same comment applies to the numerical data used in models. It is a major task to create or derive that data and validate it, particularly for Intentional/Formal models that are data hungry. The relationship between the information needs and the taxonomy given earlier can best be described as a mapping process as illustrated in Figure 1.7. Put simply, foresight portrays anticipation of future possibilities as distinct from probabilities. The distinction is a fine one since the latter depends on there being people whom De Finetti (1962: 357) would describe as good probability assessors (Note 6) (Similarly, does it make sense to speak of good foresighters?). Possibilities identified by foresight are important ideas that help to shape models of the future. If these models admit the use of probability (not all do) then good probability assessors will come into their own whether or not they are the foresighters. Foresight then attempts to anticipate the features that may be encountered in the territory of the future which, in the hands of appreciative organisations, becomes a powerful tool in shaping the future they wish to create and their associated policies. For example, knowledge of the birth and death rate patterns in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries since 1900, but particularly of the spectacular peak in 1964, as I referred to earlier, should have informed governments of the impending multifaceted crisis they were likely to face now and well into the future with respect to social life and its organisation. Demographers and others were well aware of the possibilities in the early 1970s, possibilities that will be augmented by the likely birth rate cycle arising from a total fertility rate

Foresight and systems thinking  35 Methods

Information

Audience

Purpose

Intentional

Formal

Informal

Accidental

Figure 1.7 Matching the nature of models, their information and methods

remaining below the replacement rate (of 2 children per woman) as it already has in many OECD countries and elsewhere. From the way the earlier remarks have been set out it would be easy to jump to the conclusion that foresight alone is sufficient to create visions for policy making; this would be a mistake, particularly in view of the institutional versions’ current shortcomings mentioned earlier. Assessment has already been referred to and its two components – assessment methods (often technology assessment and environmental impact assessment) and evaluation – are necessary and close associates of foresight in policy work. Conceptual notions of the relationship between foresight, technology assessment and evaluation in the policy connection are suggested in Figure 1.8, which introduces the notion of monitoring as both a passive and an active function. The passive function of monitoring observes how, with hindsight, the models of the future have performed (the feedback linkage is not shown explicitly for simplicity) while the active function is that associated with foresight and involves scanning processes to detect early signals of change. In many ways the ‘telenomy’ concept developed in the Europe Plus Thirty report (Kennet 1976) brings together many of the notions of foresight and its role in policy. As originally conceived, the concept illustrated the definiteness of its time so that the notion is redeveloped in Figure 1.9 to embrace the notions of policy and its uncertainties described earlier.

36  Systems and foresight

Pre-event

Pre-event

TA/EIA

evaluation

Monitoring Actions to implement

Models of the future

chosen model

Foresight Hindsight Pre-event evaluation Pre-event Post-event

TA/EIA

Post-event TA

evaluation

Figure 1.8 Relationship between Foresight, Technology Assessment and Evaluation Distribution ofpossible endstatesat futuretime

Fuzyedges tochoicesof policyinstruments

Zonebelievedtobeimpossibleattimeofpolicy development

Rangesof policyinstrumentsfor timehorizon

Zonebelieved tobeimpossibleat timeofpolicydevelopment

Now

NxMyears

Myears N=1,23.(-) Notionaltimeintothefuture

Figure 1.9 The ‘telenomy’ concept redeveloped

Foresight and systems thinking  37 Table 1.2  Correspondence between the Jantsch–Loveridge policy hierarchy and the revised concept of telenomy Revised concept of telenomy

Policy hierarchy

Operational word

Perception of future situations at stated time intervals from the present

Policy planning

Ought to

Ranges of policy instruments available for time horizon

Strategic planning

Can

Here the correspondences with earlier notions of policy are as shown in Table 1.2. The notion of policy as enabling and constraining limits (discussed in Chapter 2) is also embodied in the revised version of the telenomy concept and expresses concisely the interactions between the possible cones of choice and the cones of means over different time horizons. However, cones of choice and means described by Kennet lack the fuzziness enforced by the shifting nature of situations as they cascade into the future. The cones of choice (policy intention) and means (policy instruments) then have to be thought of as distributions in which the three ‘R’s (reasonableness, relevance and robustness – especially the latter) play a dominant part. As time progresses, the boundaries to the cones are permeable to the arrival of new elements (from the STEEPV set) that reshape the division between what is believed to be feasible and desirable and what is not, the latter being tinged with the notion of impossibility at least at the time in question, but not necessarily for eternity. These latter elements fall into that category of being beyond the control of feasible policy instruments, which has a dynamic boundary. Foresight and systems thinking are interdependent, this is a point made strongly by Saritas in his development of systemic foresight (Saritas 2006). So far this interdependence has not been in evidence in institutional Foresight programmes where it would have been most obvious. Saritas illustrated this lack of connection through bibliographic research. Whether this state of affairs ought to be changed – should be and can be – will depend on how sponsors of institutional Foresight programmes view the limited evidence that systemic foresight will improve appreciation of the nature of situations; behavioural matters are deeply embedded in these decisions. The ‘marriage’ between foresight and systems thinking is not made easier by the relative lack of a theoretical basis for foresight by comparison with voluminous theoretical basis of systems thinking and multiplicity of its applications. Some of these issues will be looked at in the next chapter.

Chapter 2

Fo re sigh t an d s ys t e ms – e p iste m ol og y an d t h eo r y

Her beauty smoothed earth’s furrow’d face! She gave me tokens three: A look, a word of her winsome mouth, And a wild raspberry. Francis Thompson (1859–1907)

E x ploratio n Fretting about the epistemology of foresight and futures studies will not make much difference to what actually happens in the real world: in that respect I am reminded of a part of Louis MacNeice’s ‘Bagpipe Music’: The glass is falling by the hour, The glass may fall for ever, But if you break the bloody glass, You won’t hold up the weather There are serious reasons for taking an interest in the epistemology – the theory or science of method – of foresight, futures studies and systems thinking provided they do not impede the real work, an attitude that caused M’Pherson (1974) to erupt at Popper’s criticism of holism (Popper 1957). It is my purpose to examine why epistemology matters, if indeed it does, in foresight and systems thinking, and to describe some of the theory related to foresight especially. Theory abounds in systems thinking. Drawn initially from process control theory, it spread subsequently into all the themes of systems indicated in Figure 1.1. It should be said immediately that the notion of epistemology in foresight stems from the belief, that varies in intensity in different milieux, that science and its methods have some place in futures studies and foresight: this is a highly contentious matter, that, knowingly or unknowingly, is buried in some of the most fundamental arguments about the nature of science. The arcane processes through which deeply theoretical matters come to influence real world decisions, to which sociologists and economists have given so much time with dubious rewards, leads to the importance of epistemology to policy formation with its inevitable failures: these matters will form part of the discussion in this chapter.

Epistemology and theory  39

The notion that science and its methods should be associated with foresight, futures studies or forecasting probably grew from the small band of people who applied operational research to such good effect during World War II. Later some of this group mutated into technology forecasters (operational research went its own way) and others into systems thinkers, which was an already established endeavour with a considerable body of theory in both its hard and soft milieux. The mutation further established the wish, it could be no more, to employ the methods of science in problems that were far less structured than those selected by researchers in science. Ultimately, both streams reunited as their focus moved on to the complex problems posed by the interaction of the elements of the STEEPV set in any situation. In doing so theoretical bases spawned burgeoning theories relating to complexity, emergence and the behaviour of living systems. In Chapter 1, I abandoned the idea of problems in favour of situations that are complex; occur in cascades of an ever changing shape; are incapable of solution through reductionist methods; but can be ameliorated through systemic thought and intervention, though amelioration will lean heavily on the ‘safe-fail’ capabilities of living systems (Holling 1977: 129) for the successful continuity of humanity. The notion of situations characterises real world activity and underpins all that follows. It is far from being a new idea and I make no special claim otherwise; it is simply an ‘idea who’s idea has come (again!).’ As in other chapters it is not my intention to review or summarise established theory, which, for systems thinking, is extensive, but simply to use it as needed.

S cien ce, f or esi ght a nd syst ems: ro l e o f epis temology Is epistemology relevant to foresight and systems thinking? For foresight the response might well be Sam Goldwyn’s ‘I’ll give you a definite maybe.’ For systems thinking there is an affirmative response in its hard domains, with caveats for these once they shift from being complicated to becoming complex where unexpected forms of behaviour emerge. Once systems thinking enters the realm of living systems, including human societies, Sam Goldwyn’s definite maybe intrudes again as systems thinking ranks alongside other streams of thought in these situations. Wittgenstein claimed that ‘… problem and method pass one another by’ (Wittgenstein 1953). Whilst I prefer the word situation to problem, Wittgenstein’s message is clear: a hasty departure into formal methods or technique brings an early escape from thinking to grow an appreciation of a situation. I shall argue that epistemology is only relevant to foresight and systems thinking in as much as it has something, if anything, to say about the formal methods that are used in a subsidiary and optional way to the more fundamental thinking that foresight as a systemic activity, systemic foresight (Saritas 2006: 4) hereafter, involves. As hinted above, there are many disciplines that claim foresight abstractly; in truth it is simply people who indulge in foresight and have done so since

40  Systems and foresight

the dawn of history. Foresight has always been a shady activity practiced by soothsayers, prophets and clairvoyants. The variété ancien used entrails, witchcraft and other dubious methods to divine the prospects of the future for their clients. Prophets came and went, and played influential roles in the evolution of belief systems, particularly those that formed part of the world’s enduring religions. Methods became more ‘scientific’ as time passed. Perhaps the first major intrusion of science came in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries when Guttenberg’s printing press enabled widespread distribution of the Bible, a major social innovation. Soon Copernicus’s heliocentric theory destroyed Ptolemy’s theory of epicycles that placed the Earth at the centre of the universe, while Harvey’s demonstration of the human anatomy was a further blow to established authority in Western societies. These events, with their combination of foresight and systems thinking, did much to undermine the old order of authority by appearances and initiated, in Western societies, what later became the era of ‘modernity’, in which science, its methods and expert knowledge became touchstones. However, long before this, the ancient Greek philosophers laid the foundations for many themes in modern science, including Aristotle’s system of logic, Euclid’s geometry and other themes. Similarly, events in China had opened other themes in science, amongst which rocketry is well known, while various themes in mathematics blossomed in the Middle Eastern regions. The spectrum of events in science and their geographical disposition illustrate the way the poles of scientific excellence have wandered across the world in the past and persist today. Similarly, belief systems are distributed globally, but less obviously than is so for science. The foregoing digression is not an aimless one. Western culture, based on modernity with the pre-eminence it gives to science, its methods and expert knowledge, has grown to be a major world influence since the sixteenth century. But, from the early twentieth century, starting from the world of art and architecture, there has been an argument against the modern project with the introduction of the term post-modern. I can only indicate the growth of this essentially philosophical argument and its relevance to foresight and systems thinking which, in my view, has been considerable. A number of phenomena are claimed to distinguish post-modernity from modernity, including: • The rejection of the existing models that typified modernity which has been accompanied by an evolution of superficiality and a lack of depth in explanation • The objective world has undergone a ‘fundamental mutation’, and has ‘now become a set of texts or simulacra’ • The post-modern age lacks a particular kind of emotion and that the increasing unavailability of personal style leads to pastiche [hodgepodge or imitation] becoming a universal practice (Jameson 1993: 38).

Epistemology and theory  41

Giddens (1990: 17) argues that modern communications systems have abolished the importance of time, space and distance; the consequence in the new space of post-modernity is the creation of a global space in which individuals may lose their own sense of location, with accompanying changes in culture. Post-modernity focuses on the conditions of life in the late twentieth century in societies where mass media and mass production had occurred, creating conditions where manufacturing of artefacts (which includes all kinds of products and services) and their distribution and dissemination had become inexpensive, but basic human needs had become relatively more expensive, and increasingly so in terms of their carbon footprint. Is post-modernity then the natural reaction to mass broadcasting and a society conditioned to mass production, mass politics and mass consumerism, based on principles adumbrated by Toffler (1970)? Toffler described a condition of more rapid transportation, wider communication and the ability to abandon standardisation of mass production, leading to a system that values a wider range of artefacts than previously; he indicated these in his discussion of transience, novelty and diversity. Toffler’s identification of some of the artefacts of post-modernity (the dominance of television as a primary information source, the evolution of a popular or celebrity culture, the wide accessibility of information and mass communication via digitally based real-time video links and the World Wide Web, and the re-emergence of a technological backlash, partly represented by environmentalism) were extended in two further books (Toffler 1980, 1990). Toffler’s breezy descriptions of society then and in the future added to the deeper philosophical discussions of the social condition, but by the start of this millennium it was clear that industrialised societies had become mediadominated; highly dependent on consumerism and the attendant role of celebrities, where appearances mattered above all else. Culturally, these societies are pluralistic and are so interconnected globally that they do not have a single dominant centre of political power, communication or knowledge production. In the post-modern view inter-subjective knowledge, and not objective knowledge, dominates discussion and that copies of it are ubiquitous and their dissemination changes fundamentally the relationship between readers and what is read, between observer and the observed, between those who consume and those who produce. The rise of post-modernism cannot be divorced from coincident demographic changes and the influence of the international milieu from 1945 onwards, allied to the advance of television as the primary source of information, as already referred to. These changes enabled international events to be brought into the living space of all of the polity and often in real time. The influence of the latter is highly significant. It allowed the post-war generations to grow up with direct images, of the Vietnam war, rock music, the use of hallucinogenic and other drugs, drama, the politicisation of sport (as in the Munich Olympics), terrorism, the rise of television ‘soaps’, the increase in television violence and

42  Systems and foresight

much else besides, that presented a kaleidoscope of images that could blur the distinction between the real events of life and the synthetic ones of the small screen. The latter is accentuated by the virtual nature of a media where digital editing is simple and effective, and capable of destroying all trust in what is being presented as the real world. The depth and pervasiveness of the influence of this incredible virtual and ‘cardboard’ world, where the distinction between life and death, real and imaginary, is all too often blurred, has altered and continues to alter the behavioural pattern of millions of individuals with consequences for social life and organisation internationally. All of this, for the first 40 years after the end of World War II, took place against the background of global tensions, the Cold War and the possibility of thermonuclear war. However, it is probably the increasing use of digital communication systems that has had most influence on reshaping post-modern ways of thinking and its outcome in societies. Antagonists of post-modernity attack its notions as abandoning the idea of objective truth in favour of relativism and hedonism. Is post-modernity a growing influence or merely a fad that will die away? The extent to which post-modern language has entered political dialogue, as it certainly has, is no real guide. Given the events of the last 50 years (the immense political and economic changes in the collapse of the USSR; the rise of China, India, Japan, Russia and other countries in the Far East to become major players in the world economy; the possibility of significant climate change from whatever cause; the extensive elucidation of genetic phenomena [which is still far from complete] and the movement of science and technology into molecular and atomic scales the outcomes of which are far from understood) it would be surprising if bewilderment had not occurred. It is far from clear whether that bewilderment is expressed through the language and ideas of post-modernity. Habermas contends that ‘all responses to modernity abandon either the critical or rational element in philosophy, and that the post-modern condition is one of self-deception over the uncompleted nature of the modern project’ (Habermas 1984). If Habermas is right in his conclusion about the delusory nature of postmodernity, which may well be aided and abetted by the virtual nature of modern communications, then the desire to introduce the methods of science more deeply into foresight and systems thinking faces a fuzzy situation created by the potential or actual overlap of the traditions of modernity and postmodernity bringing with it implications for epistemology. Modern methods of communication are one of the most powerful forces at work in shaping the future of humanity; I suggest that a deep understanding of its methods is a role for epistemology that is closely related to foresight and systems thinking in their role in creating the future. At present, it seems likely that modern communication technologies are creating immediacy while their long-run underlying effects are being ignored as they accumulate, possibly to have unanticipated effects on social life and organisation when the accumulated

Epistemology and theory  43

potential is released at some unknowable point in the future. There are further hurdles to cross.

From abs tr ac t t o a ct ua l : subject i v e o p i ni o n i n f o res ight and syst ems t hinking There is a long-established desire to improve the pedigree of foresight. Often it is the nature of the methods involved that captures attention, but without enquiring into the nature of the activity; this is the next hurdle to jump and where epistemology may or may not have something to contribute. My response to the question ‘What is foresight?’ is that ‘Put bluntly, foresight is an art that requires much practice.’ The basis of foresight is ‘understanding by interpreting the welter of information that bombards the senses; that is a value laden process. Paradoxically then, foresight is not scientific, but determines the directions that science follows’ (Loveridge 2001: 782), an issue that Whitehead indicated in 1933 (Whitehead 1964: 94 [1933]). The idea that foresight is not scientific can be disturbing in some cultures, for example in Germany and some other countries, where the role of science is embodied in law. Nevertheless, contrary conclusions about the nature of foresight are not supportable even though the methods used may be drawn in from science to enliven and enlighten the activity. The influence of the modernity versus post-modernity argument intrudes at this point, through the way they hotly contest roles for science and expert knowledge, since one (modernity) is based on it while the other (postmodernity) rejects this view. The role of epistemology at this point has been discussed by Kuusi (2000: 16) and Nováky (2000: 39). Whatever the power of their arguments, most of which had been in evidence since the 1960s, they add little if anything to the debate about the methods of science in relation to foresight or systems thinking. Kuusi’s emphasis on truth seems misplaced in the realm of the modernity versus post-modernity argument and the dubious nature of a claim that something that has not happened (the future) can contain a ‘truth’. Faith or trust in the future does not amount to truth, but requires a set of beliefs; these vary widely across cultures. Nováky made a point of discussing the reliability of forecasts (ibid.: 49), but as both foresight and systems thinking precede forecasts, the reliability of forecasts cannot represent the reliability of foresight and systems thinking. However difficult the questions of the reliability of foresight and systems thinking are, given their inevitable uncertainties, these ask different questions than those posed by Kuusi and Nováky. The next hurdle for epistemology to jump lies in asking what the science of method can offer to foresight and systems thinking. Barrow has described a thought experiment that discusses a fundamental debate about the Laws of Nature that haunts science (Barrow 1990: 23). The experiment proposes that three entities (God (G), the Universe (U) and the Laws of Nature (L)) be given their traditional meanings of omnipotence (God), the entire material world of space and time (Universe) and the laws that govern

44  Systems and foresight

its working (Laws). At the risk of being accused of being selective to make a point, the focus here is what is revealed by simple set theory applied to U and L. There are five situations: 1 2 3 4 5

U is a subset of L L is a subset of U L is the same as U L is non-existent U is non-existent.

Of these my concern is with the arguments surrounding 1 and 2, and to a lesser extent with 3. If U is a subset of L then the natural Laws exist independently of the Universe and existed before the Universe was formed as one of their special cases. By contrast, if the Laws are a subset of the Universe ‘then we are nudged towards the view that the Laws of nature really possess some spatial or temporal dependence within the Universe’ (ibid.: 25). The implication of this is that the Laws may vary throughout a chaotic Universe, which runs counter to the experience of science. Finally, if L is the same as U then both came into existence at the same instant. As Barrow comments, option 2 is sometimes sceptically interpreted as meaning that the Laws may be regarded as ‘an invention of human minds, which have themselves emerged from the stuff of the Universe by natural processes’. These three situations, especially the first two, have deep implications for futures studies and, indirectly, for foresight and systems thinking. Bell thought he was exploring these implications in his two-volume treatise (Bell 1997, 1998). In the first volume Bell listed an entirely conventional set of nine conditions he claimed applied to futures studies (he claimed futures studies to be a ‘new field of enquiry’, a major surprise since they have been in evidence for centuries). He also listed three general assumptions: 1 People and their projects: claims that people are creative project pursuers; they are acting, purposeful and goal-directed beings 2 Society as expectation and decision: claims that society consists of persistent patterns of repetitive social interaction and the emergent routines of human behaviour that are organised by time and space, expectations, hopes and fears for the future, and decisions 3 The existence and knowledge of external reality: says that an external past reality did exist and a present reality does exist, apart from the human knowing of them, and in principle they can be objectively known by humans more or less accurately. Additionally, futurists assume that a future reality will exist, apart from the human consciousness of it, and that in principle assertions can be made about it that can be objectively warranted more or less accurately.

Epistemology and theory  45

In his discussion of epistemology Bell never returns to the subtleties of these three general assumptions, either because he does not recognise them or because they remained to be discussed in the second volume of the treatise (they are not). If Bell is serious in these statements, then they effectively demolish much of the rest of his discussion. The first, is generally acceptable: people are usually purposeful though their purposes may not be easy to discern. The second introduces the idea of emergence, the gestalt property of systems. While the concept of systems is not mentioned throughout the treatise, they are implied here since systems thinking is concerned with organisation and structure, coupled with the realisation that the behaviour of a whole system does not arise simply from a ‘sum of the parts’; it has a gestalt. The extension of systems thinking into futures studies has long been a difficult subject, largely achieved during the 1960s and 1970s with a current extension into systemic foresight (Saritas 2006), and not at all like Bell’s discussion. The third condition is hotly discussed in science, as indicated above in my reference to Barrow’s thought experiment, as the difference between the existence of a world of phenomena whether science has recognised them or not and the existence of a world created by science and nothing else. If, as Bell asserts, futurists assume that a future reality will exist, apart from the human consciousness of it, then the future is predetermined thus totally undermining the notion that futurists (or anyone else) can influence the future. All futures studies can do is to guess at what that predetermined future may be under the guise of serious endeavour to shape the future. The implications of such notions are severe and Bell simply ignores them! Whilst Bell claimed to be discussing futures studies and to be laying a ‘theoretical’ basis for them, the outcome is wide of the mark for what is, in any event, a specious claim. Foresight practitioners generally refrain from making claims of the kind Bell extols. If that leaves them and foresight activity open to criticism on the grounds of a lack of a sound theoretical base for their endeavours, so be it; but it also provokes eruptions like those of M’Pherson (1974: 238) and many like him who are trying to ameliorate real world situations. To them, the academic search for a theoretical base for an art form is merely an irritant. As Boettinger (1969) has explained, foresight, systems thinking (hard and soft) and their combination concern the gentle ‘art and craft of letting others see things your way’. The conclusion has to be that epistemology may have something to say about specific methods and techniques that either real or institutional foresight studies may use (Loveridge 2001: 782), but it has little to offer to foresight as an art form that may invoke any specific method or techniques in a subsidiary way. Earlier my response to the question ‘What is foresight?’ ought to have included living systems, especially human beings, as only they have foresight as we know it. Non-human living systems have great powers of adaptation, based on intelligence humanity tends to ignore, but the extent to which they have similar powers to anticipate is uncertain. If foresight and systems thinking are about understanding the welter of information perceived by human beings,

46  Systems and foresight

what characteristics is it necessary for them to possess? For activities that are intensely dependent on human thinking, capability, foresight, and especially its institutional variant, is doggedly presented in the abstract; systems thinking less so because of its huge range of activity (see Figure 1.1). The abstract presentation of foresight is not a mode I accept or will follow. All human beings possess foresight to a greater or lesser degree; an ordered life would not be possible without it. Individual foresight is then characterised by (Note 1): • Substantive knowledge in chosen spheres of interest • Assessing ability to relate how these chosen spheres may evolve in the future • Imagination, as this lies behind how the individual extends his or her substantive knowledge into the future and subsequently assesses it. These capabilities need to be read in conjunction with behavioural typologies, of which Mitchell’s original VALSTM1, referred to below as VALS 1, is my preference (Mitchell 1984). VALS 1 is a derivation from Maslow’s original motivational hierarchy (Maslow 1954) and is illustrated in Figure 2.1 with additional detail given in an appendix to this chapter. The importance of human behaviour is often ignored or not made explicit in foresight, systems thinking and systemic foresight, diminishing the understanding of its working and outcome. Maslow’s hierarchy was amongst the earliest behavioural typologies to be developed. At SRI International, Mitchell and others perceived deficiencies in Maslow’s hierarchy and extensions of it were developed into a bifurcated form (VALS 1) as illustrated in Figure 2.1. The VALS 1 hierarchy has subsequently been superseded by new systems, but these will not be described or used in the following discussion, as I believe VALS 1 has a robust clarity and simplicity. The current VALS is owned and operated by an SRI International spinout, SRI Consulting Business Intelligence (SRIC-BI). The bifurcation took place in the following way: Maslow indicated that esteem has many features, that led Mitchell to split the esteem level into two new categories, namely emulator and achiever. These two new categories emerge naturally from the characteristics of esteem; survey work confirmed the appropriateness of the separation. The surveys also revealed some discrepancies that led to the idea of a bifurcation above the Belonger level, with the two paths converging again at the highest level. The new arm introduced lifestyles that have no direct correspondence with Maslow’s work. Whilst the survey work was carried out in the USA, there is evidence, obtained during the 1980s by an international organisation concerned with social change (de Vulpian and Corry 1986: 33), that the VALS 1 typology may be applied widely (MacNulty 1981). Returning to individual capabilities, no one fits a VALS 1 stereotype exactly, but each one of us has a recognisable dominant trait or traits that locates him or her in the typology. It is known that an individual’s behaviour

Epistemology and theory  47

Integrated

Integrated Societally Conscious

Achiever

Experiental

OuterDirected

Emulator

InnerDirected

I-Am-Me Belonger

Sustainers NeedDriven

Survivors

Figure 2.1 Mitchell’s original VALSTM1 behavioural typology

moves around the typology with the passage of time and according to their economic circumstances, age and other personal characteristics. Individual capability, in terms of substantive knowledge, assessing ability and imagination may or may not change absolutely, but the way it is expressed and changes, relative to that of other people, depends on an individual’s position in the typology at any particular time. Consequently, the circumstances prevailing at the time influence the way an individual uses substantive knowledge, assessing ability and imagination in deciding his or her actions. None of this is surprising, being mostly in line with human experience. Confirmation comes from De Martino et al. (2006: 684) who have found that ‘[h]uman choices are remarkably susceptible to the manner in which options are presented. This so-called “effect” represents a striking violation of standard economic accounts of human rationality, although its underlying neurobiology is not understood’. The reported framing effect was ‘specifically associated with amygdala activity, suggesting a key role for an emotional system in mediating decision biases’, following Goleman’s association of emotional intelligence with the amygdala (Goleman 1995: 18). The findings of De Martino et al. (2006), based on fMRI scans highlight ‘the importance of emotional processes within models of human choice and suggests how the brain may modulate the effect of these biasing influences to approximate rationality.’ These are important findings for understanding an individual’s behaviour in relation to foresight and systems thinking, for example in growing an appreciation of a situation in terms of its

48  Systems and foresight

context and content, and its boundaries in particular, a conclusion informed by the findings of De Martino et al. (2006: 687) which they claim: suggest a model in which the framing bias reflects an affect heuristic by which individuals incorporate a potentially broad range of additional emotional information into the decision process. In evolutionary terms, this mechanism may confer a strong advantage, because such contextual cues may carry useful, if not critical, information. Neglecting such information may ignore the subtle social cues that communicate elements of (possibly unconscious) knowledge that allow optimal decisions to be made in a variety of environments. However, in modern society, which contains many symbolic artifacts and where optimal decision-making often requires skills of abstraction and decontextualization, such mechanisms may render human choices irrational. The latter is an issue attributed to Stanovich and West (2002). There are linkages here to Vickers’ notion of appreciative setting and my own of behavioural pattern described in Chapter 1, strengthening the well-known conclusion that human capabilities in foresight and in soft systems thinking are characterised by subjective opinion and all that implies. Subjective opinion has a large body of theory and its application, in its elicitation, is too large to be covered in a few short paragraphs. The fundamental question is always ‘who’s opinion?’ Should it be that of an ‘expert’? Or should it be sought from a broader church? These broad questions are influenced now by the argument between the modern and post-modern points of view, which cannot be separated from the reasons for seeking opinion and how the outcome ought to be used. If expert opinion is thought appropriate to the situation there are immediate questions about the nature of expertise. Who is an expert? How can such people be identified? How should they go about their work? And to whom ought they be responsible? All these essentially ‘political’ questions precede the technical work of eliciting expert opinion for which there is theory and practice in its implementation in, for example, nuclear safety, aircraft reliability, the erosion of dams and other major civil engineering structures, in climate-related matters, and in risk assessment. So far, applications set out to elicit an expert’s opinion about a specific event, in which there is uncertainty, to which the expert’s knowledge can be applied. The techniques used are drawn from subjective probability and rely on being able to elicit, from an expert, an expression of his or her opinion in the form of a subjective probability distribution. There are many deep technical matters involved in the use of subjective probability; Savage (1972) set these out by building an idealised theory of the behaviour of an individual when making decisions. He distinguishes three interpretations of probability: objectivistic (frequentist), personalistic (subjective regarding propositions), and necessary (measurement of the extent that a set of propositions ‘of necessity’ confirms the truth of another)

Epistemology and theory  49

(ibid.:  3). Savage’s theory is based on the individual, though he goes on to suggest that under some circumstances, organisations, from families upwards, may also behave in ways that his theory for the individual represents. Savage’s theory incorporates the influence of the world and states of the world; events as sets of states; consequences, acts and decisions; and the ordering of acts, and preferences. Unfortunately, discussions in the polity often muddle the different interpretations of probability, particularly those attached to the now common objectivistic (frequentist) and personalistic probabilities, to the general detriment of the outcome. For example, the frequentist interpretation relates only to the occurrence of repetitive events and cannot be used to decide between propositions. These matters have considerable influence on the claims of foresight, its outcomes and in systems thinking. Foresight is about invention, or ideas or hypothesis generation, and is in the nature of a proposition. The separation between real and institutional foresight simply describes who creates these propositions, how they do it and the dynamics of what is involved. Groups of propositions or sets of states, in Savage’s terms, create an event which elsewhere I have called a situation. To develop understanding, opinion has to be elicited concerning each of the propositions involved in the situation. There are several more or less severe implications here involving multiple propositions, their interdependencies, including causalities, and technically how the elicited opinions of ‘n’ respondents for each proposition can be combined into single joint opinions for each proposition, which up to that point have had to be regarded as independent of each other. From this complexity of multiple propositions, their interdependencies and opinions concerning them, policy makers are expected to propose sets of actions and to indicate their consequences with the expectation in the polity (including politicians) that the situation, if it is recognised for what it is, will be dissolved rather than ameliorated and reshaped, which is what the outcome will be. Systems thinking and foresight converge in the propositions, interdependencies, causalities and the inevitable boundaries to them whether or not they are made explicit. There are further issues to consider. Much of the work on subjective opinion reflects its role in science and tacitly assumes it is expert opinion that is being sought. However, foresight and systems thinking are concerned with each of the six themes of the STEEPV acronym so the question re-emerges concerning whether the opinion sought ought to be that of an expert or from broader church. Inevitably this raises the controversy over the relative worth of expert opinion versus that of a layperson. Here there are strong differences between the post-modern view that all opinion is valuable and that expertise ought not to be given preference, and the modern view that expert opinion is more valuable, sometimes very much so, than that of the lay-person in the general public. The outcome of this debate is ambiguous. Amara and Lipinski (1983) indicate that experience shows how corporate decision-makers tend to weight expertise in a highly nonlinear way attaching a relative weight to the highest level of expertise up to

50  Systems and foresight

16 times that of the lowest ranked non-expert (ibid.: 57). Others argue for an equal weighting for all opinion, an argument that prevailed in the UK’s 1994–5 Technology Foresight Programme, so that weighting was not used in that programme’s Delphi survey (Loveridge et al. 1995). The use of weighting factors to differentiate between expert and lay opinion remains one of the most argued-over factors when subjective opinion is sought. It has also emerged in the wish to make participation in public institutional foresight programmes more inclusive. The German Futur programme attempted to do this (Cuhls et al. 2004) while Loveridge and Street. have drawn up schemes for how inclusivity might be achieved, indicating some of the management issues that will need to be dealt with (Loveridge and Street. 2005: 44). Weighting of opinions imputes the need to calibrate the opinion givers. In the three characteristics needed for foresight and systems thinking (substantive knowledge, assessing ability and imagination) calibration procedures of greater or lesser complication exist for the first two characteristics (Anon 1978: 1, Lipinski and Loveridge 1982: 214, Amara and Lipinski 1983: 57, Cooke 1991); how imaginative a participant is can only be assessed by direct interviewing. It is important that the potential participant-cum-advisor assesses his or her own level of expertise according to some simple but well-defined rules as a further part of the procedure. Lipinski and Loveridge (1982) used their self-evaluation of expertise criteria extensively, and a similar set, modified to take account of spheres outside science and technology, was used in the 1994–5 UK Technology Foresight Programme (TFP) Delphi Survey (Loveridge et al. 1995: 68). It is important to make any calibration test acceptable and non-threatening to an expert participant; this is the characteristic of the ‘assessing ability’ test used by Lipinski and Loveridge (1982). The unravelling of the experts’ substantive knowledge, which forms the core of the elicitation process, has similarly to be acceptable and non-threatening. It is also necessary to observe or deduce how the expert uses his assessing ability and imagination, in conjunction with his substantive knowledge in formulating his opinion about the future of the proposition under consideration. The magnitude of the endeavour of interviewing ‘n’ participants about each proposition that makes up a complex situation is clear. Three further issues arise: kinds of expertise; identification of expert participants; and testing information. ‘Kinds of expertise’ are related to the participant’s role in the community, however narrow or broad that may be. Broadly, experts can be generalists, people of thought and people of present and future action (Lipinski and Loveridge 1982: 214). Generalists have a wide variety of interests; a high level of perception and awareness of the relevant component propositions. Persons of thought are the conventional experts who have deep knowledge of matters relating to a particular proposition or set of tightly related propositions. People of present and/or future action are those people whose present or possible future position means that they are able now to affect the amelioration of a situation or will be in a position to do so at some time in the future. Seeking subjective

Epistemology and theory  51

opinion on a situation and its future from these three types of expert has to be tailored carefully to each and the elicitations carried out sensitively, but within the general principles already outlined. Identification of expert participants is another highly ambiguous activity where objectivity is hard to achieve. Throughout history personal recommendation has been used to point towards particular people. When allied to the notion that several recommendations pointing to a particular person are better than one recommendation, the process takes a step forward, but it remains open to all kinds of patronage and sycophancy. However, personal recommendation remains the most common process of identifying people for appointment to committees of all kinds. Two other steps are possible. The first is available only in science and technology and relies on the veracity of databases and peer-reviewed journals from which it is possible to identify people who have consistently published substantial papers (Katz et al. 2001: 2). The method depends strongly on the upkeep of any databases, but especially on the peer-review process. The latter, together with the journal’s publishing policy, may prevent unusual papers of importance being published (e.g. Einstein’s 1905 paper on relativity). It is also assumed that frequent publications imply substantial expertise, a questionable assumption, but since frequent publication is likely to be biased towards academia, significant other sources of expertise may be missed. There is also the question of scientific fraud which has become more frequent in recent years. Katz’s approach has not been used outside the science and technology themes of the STEEPV acronym so that its wider application is untested, limiting its application in the amelioration of situations. The second step is to the ‘co-nomination’ process which, when combined with appropriate mapping tools, has enabled bibliometrics to be used to classify clusters of researchers or to identify networks of academic-industrial researchers (Georghiou et al. 1988). At this point it is as well to look back to the characteristics of an expert, set out in the earlier discussion of subjective opinion. With these and the accompanying self-assessment criteria in mind, co-nomination fares better than its competitors in finding expert participants from whom to elicit opinion, particularly as the search process should, as far as possible, find a slice through the demographic variables of age, gender and occupational position. While the co-nomination procedure enables these criteria to be met, it can be thwarted by the difficult step of identifying an initial group from which to grow the population of experts and, later in the process, by political machinations. Co-nomination has not been widely used so that here the text is based on how and why it was used in the UK TFP. The reasons were: • Political advice that the TFP should seek advice from people beyond those already advising government, especially as this was the first nationwide study of its kind to be held in the UK • Many study working groups were to be formed for which members would be needed

52  Systems and foresight

• The planned Delphi survey would require a correspondingly large number of potential respondents with known characteristics. The group could not be identified in any time-honoured way; this had been demonstrated by experience in Germany. Co-nomination uses a questionnaire in repeated surveys, which leads to the notion of ‘snowball’ sampling. The underlying principle of co-nomination lies in the generation of a network based on recurring pairs of names (revealed from the questionnaire). It is assumed that similarities in the nominated persons work and that of the co-nominees implies a cognitive link (Nedeva et al. 1996). The process is outwardly straightforward, but, as ever, requires much attention to the detail of questionnaire design and survey management, particularly in the management of the databases of participants that the process creates. The outcome of the co-nomination process has clear benefits in determining appointments to working groups and advisory committees, as it has the potential to reveal who is an accepted expert, while diminishing patronage by those in whose hands the power to appoint lies. As Cooke remarks ‘[a]n expert who knows more about a particular subject than anyone else may be able to talk an opponent under the table. This does not mean that his opinions are more likely to be true’ (Cooke 1991: 17). There is one further twist to be concerned about. Elicitation of subjective opinion about a proposition will be characterised by a distribution. What do the numbers in that distribution convey? Characteristically, there will be a numeral or some other way of expressing magnitude (N). Associated with the magnitude will be the units of measure (U) and some measure of simple statistical uncertainty (S) that goes with any measure; these three elements are commonly known and form the first three elements of the NUSAP scheme of examining the meaning and uncertainties in quantitative data (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1990a: 28). The A and P in this scheme are the unusual elements. Assessment allows a judgement of the reliability of N, U and S in some appropriate format, which may be a statistical convention or a more qualitative form. Pedigree is complex and is intended to express concerns about how the data were produced and who produced them. Funtowicz and Ravetz claim that the NUSAP scheme of assessing quantitative data is basically epistemological. The process of eliciting a subjective probability distribution, as an expression of opinion, must then recognise not only how it produces the numerical distribution that is its intent, but also how each of the elements of that distribution was produced by the participant. As De Martino et al. (2006) indicate there are some deep matters of science involved in how a participant responds during elicitation and how he or she produces that response. Epistemology could play a significant role in developing two methods used frequently in all foresight: scenario writing and the Delphi process. Wherever scenario construction is discussed scenarios are said to be ‘logical sequences of events’. In his discussion of subjective opinion, Savage (1972) indicates the

Epistemology and theory  53

impossibility of claiming that events, characterised through subjective opinion, can still be arranged according to a logical ordering. The reason lies in the probability distribution that characterises the event. Ordering of the events then becomes one of causation based on belief and not logic. Too often it is forgotten how scenarios are a product of the theatre, ballet and opera, and should be the skeleton of a play, describing the scenes, the actors and everything that makes a play what it is; the playwright, choreographer or composer does not necessarily follow logical sequences, often making dramatic and unexpected changes in direction. The playwright, choreographer or composer is able to create only a limited number of alternative versions of the drama before deciding which one to follow, but he/she is not inhibited by notions of logic relying on the audience’s imagination to fill in the changes in direction each in their own way. The major difference for scenario writing in systems thinking and foresight is the ability to propose many different scenarios that respond to an identifiable situation and its possible futures; this capability raises a major issue relating to the probability of each scenario. Often in sets of scenarios used in the evolution of policy one is selected as ‘preferred’, either as a simple matter of qualitative belief or by the attachment of a higher probability than any of its competitors; both steps are fallacious. The way a situation will develop into the future is unknowable so that foresight and systems thinking are concerned with exploring the unknown landscape of the ‘territory of the future’ (Lipinski and Loveridge 1982: 205) (a fantasia Figure 2.2).

Points sampling future terrain Horizon: Time Tn: Distance Sn

Unknown terrain of the future Time T2: Distance S2 Time T1: Distance S1 Understanding the present Figure 2.2 Notional ‘picture’ of the territory of the future

54  Systems and foresight

Scenarios can then be viewed as samples of the probabilistic outcome space, which is equivalent to the territory of the future, which is then a continuum of individual improbable scenarios residing in parallel, an idea similar to the notion of the multiverse and the anthropic principle used in cosmology. The present is somewhat riskily represented as a single point, which assumes it is well understood, from which the set of scenarios describing the possible futures diverge increasingly, due to uncertainty increasing as the distance into the future increases. Even within the uncertainly defined boundaries of the situation, the number of scenarios in the set is very large, imputing a small probability of occurrence to any one scenario. Within the entire distribution of scenarios that characterise the territory of the future their probabilities must sum to unity. However, any single scenario of very low probability is not a useful operational tool for policy makers. For that reason Lipinski and Loveridge (1982) proposed the use of meta-scenarios that were composed of bundles of individual scenarios aggregated on well-established principles. In this way, an uncertain future can be presented in a series of equally valid meta-scenarios (Figure 2.3). (Numbers and dashed lines indicate averages of each segment: p = probability)

Basic information Scenario 1

N futures f1, f2, . . . Fn, where p(f1) = p(f2) =p(fn) =1/N

Cumulative probability 3

2

1 A Arbitrary allocation of futures to three scenarios

Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Scenario 3 2

1 B Arbitrary allocation of futures to two scenarios Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Figure 2.3 Equally valid means of presenting an uncertain future

Epistemology and theory  55

Each meta-scenario can then be exchanged for a corresponding segment of the entire probability domain and has a deeper significance for policy makers with a probability based firmly on theory. It is for these reasons that the haphazard notions of attaching probabilities to a few scenarios needs to be avoided, since it is not known whether scenarios prepared in this way are metascenarios or simply one of a multiverse of individual scenarios of negligible probability of occurrence. The latter ought to have negligible significance for policy makers and business managers alike. How then is the benighted policy maker to proceed when faced immediately with a wall of uncertainty in the form of a near infinity of scenarios of which only a few have been described? A hypothesis runs as follows: • Succumb to the temptation to assume that the present will persist for a finite but short time into the future • Create policy, strategy and tactics on this basis but acknowledge that these short-term, fast-moving actions, common to human activity, will fail quickly while being embedded in longer term, slower moving biogeo-ecological trends that are likely to create unanticipated crises at unexpected moments • Use short-term monitoring of events in combination with ‘over the horizon’ scanning to provide feedback from emerging situations and to compare these with the scenarios available, preferably of the meta- variety, preparing new scenarios if necessary along with new policy. If the foregoing sounds distinctly like old fashioned reactive planning so be it. However, creating policy in the knowledge of the range of scenarios means that some information about a situation is being rejected knowingly allowing contingencies to be prepared to cope with the new shape of the situation if its influence emerges later; this is not typical of reactive planning nor of the Macmillan comment that ‘events, dear boy’ are what drives government and governance (Note 2). There is no doubt that immense human effort goes into attempting to keep up with tricks and surprises that the Earth, as a living system, has for humanity, and that keeps humanity in its thrall rather than the reverse. In this field there is a need for epistemological study to place a better understanding of the process which is called scenario planning (Chapter 6). The Delphi process is often used to survey opinion regarding the likely occurrence on given propositions; it cannot create propositions that are not included in its structure, an obvious but not always understood point, unless specially constructed provisions are included to allow this. The purpose of the Delphi survey is usually described as the creation of consensus among the participants concerning the likely occurrence of each of the listed propositions. However, this is not what it does. Instead, the Delphi survey provides a way of sampling opinion about the unknown landscape of the ‘territory of the future’.

56  Systems and foresight

Delphi survey questionnaires are most often created as lists of independent propositions, interrelations between the propositions being ignored or at least not emphasised, meaning that how a participant makes or avoids these interrelationships remains a ‘black box’. Sampling the territory of the future is then at best incoherent and at the worst pseudo-random, allowing what seem to be illogical causations between propositions if the set is assumed to be expressing the sponsor’s and the participant’s ‘model’ or perception of the territory of the future. There have been some unfortunate episodes where authors have fallen into this trap (Saritas and Oner 2004: 27) by applying the pseudorandom output from a Delphi survey in a highly structured way, for example in road-mapping, to achieve defined outcomes. If there is an epistemological explanation of the behaviour exhibited by participants in Delphi surveys then it has yet to be made. Furthermore, it is fallacious to present the outcome of a Delphi survey as the responses to a set of propositions about which there is unanimous consensus for each. It is confirmed by experience that there is dissent among responses by participants to all of the propositions leading to distributions of opinion, not consensus, which is assumed if the distribution is normal. However, the presence of dissent may lead to multimodal distributions of opinion as illustrated in Figure 2.4. Representing divided opinion as consensus by any means is bad practice that results in a significant loss of important knowledge for policy makers and should make a recipient of the study wary. All foresight and system studies, perhaps more so in their soft variant, eventually become political instruments in the process of argument involved in creating policy. At this point, a practitioner’s wishes for deeper understanding have to be subsumed into a world that sets different criteria and has less patience. The best the practitioner can do is to infect this different world with the ideas of the nature of opinion, expert or otherwise, so that they spread to influence the use of the insights that elicitation and subjective opinion can offer in decision making.

A policy hi era rchy: some t heory a bo ut a ro l e f or f or es ig ht a nd syst ems t hinking ‘What is “policy”?’ is a frequently asked question and deservedly so. The two quotations below are instructive in as much as they portray some typically blurred notions. A course of action adopted and pursued by a government, party, ruler, statesman, etc.; any course of action adopted as advantageous or expedient Oxford English Dictionary A pseudo-logical statement used to create unachievable expectations Anon, 2001

Epistemology and theory  57

Conventionalconcensus

Multi-modaldistributionno concensusstronglydivided opinion

Noconcensusmany dif ferentopinions,none dominant

Dif fuseopinionswith noclearconcensus

Figure 2.4 Examples of consensus and multimodal distributions

The mysterious nature of policy making and the obfuscations that surround it is simply a way in which policy makers endeavour to protect their ‘craft’. However, to the public at large there is nothing more public than policy and its failures. Here, an attempt is made to make the nature of policy and policy making explicit while indicating how, in a general way, it depends on foresight, visions of the future and the notion of situations that require systemic thought, not reductionism, for their amelioration. Foresight, as the act of looking forward, is an inherent human activity used in daily life by individuals throughout society and business. Recently, public institutions and many governments and international organisations, the UN and others, have claimed a formalised or institutionalised version of foresight to be an essential component of their policy processes with an emphasis on technology; that arises from foresight’s historical roots. Inclusivity, to spread

58  Systems and foresight

the role of institutional Foresight into policy, related to every theme of the STEEPV acronym, is already beginning to happen in minor ways, but there is much to learn from other spheres to complete the change in emphasis. Barker and Peters (1993: 2) have proposed a taxonomy of problems that can face policy makers. Originally conceived for science, but of wider significance, the taxonomy has six levels of cognitive difficulty that face all policy makers in terms of the character of the policy fields, as follows: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Elaborate but not difficult detail Situations involving complicated (but not complex) matters Situations with [technical] difficulty but that are amenable to non-expert study Situations [problems] with [technical] difficulty, complication and complexity requiring expert training for their comprehension [Technical] situations bordering on the [scientifically] unknown and involving competing and conflicting [scientific] opinions Situations where [science has nothing to offer;] the subject is unknown to [science] and there are no claims from experts.

Deleting the words technical, science, scientifically and scientific, and replacing the word ‘problems’ in 4 above with ‘situations,’ does not change the intent of the six levels, but the level of cognitive difficulty is likely to rise. The first three have characteristics that make them amenable to study by policy and decision makers, but do not need special expertise. Thereafter the situations become increasingly incomprehensible to the polity in general and in many senses to policy makers, too (4). To even touch on the next field (5) it is likely that an expert may be better at conjecturing about increasingly uncertain futures, but the non-expert’s view about their desirability may be as important. The last of Barker and Peters’ fields (6) is clearly inaccessible even to the expert community who make up the committees that advise policy makers; the general public are now acutely aware of these situations that are typified by Weinberg’s notion of trans-science (Weinberg 1972). In a revision of Barker and Peters’ taxonomy I have added three important questions that influence policy namely: • What is possible? • What is feasible? • What is desirable? The revision can be pictured as a matrix illustrated in Figure 2.5 that serves to emphasise the increasing degree of complexity of the policy maker’s task. The policy hypotheses put forward here are probably not generally known nor well supported. Nevertheless I have found them helpful in situations that have varied from convivial to downright obstructive. In some senses, the steps

Epistemology and theory  59 Policymakersbeliefsabout theirabilitytocontrol Uniquely unknown Barelypossible muchunknowable Dificulteven forexperts

Situa

g sin s ma xity ri mople rsdile Dificultbut ke non-expertscope c a m y n c tio Poli Recognisable complication

Elaborated indetail

Controllable

Partialcontrol

Nocontrol

What's possible?

&

n

nts l trume ntro tuio s o n licyi lofc itua po toleve ficultyofs e l b a tifi ng Iden cordi of dif ac ree deg

What's feasible? What's desirable?

Primaryassessmentofsituationelements

Figure 2.5 Notional policy matrix

and visions needed in policy making are neatly described in the phrase ‘the art and craft of letting others see things your way’ (Boettinger 1969). The elements of a policy hierarchy were proposed by Jantsch (1975: 206) and are embellished by my additions (Loveridge 1977: 61) as illustrated in Figure 2.6. The hierarchy needs to be interpreted in the following way: (i) Policy is concerned with sensing the expectations of the polity or a chosen subset of it. Expectations concern individual values and norms, and it is hypothesised they aggregate, as illustrated in Figure 2.7 Sensing the maelstrom of behavioural activity that takes place in the uppermost region, between values and norms (Figure 2.6), and anticipating, the act of foresight, its future directions is a form of intelligence gathering similar to that undertaken by R.V. Jones during World War II (Jones 1978). The characteristics of the ‘Jones method’, which are fundamental to all ‘over the horizon scanning’, are summarised and rewritten for policy processes in Table 2.1. Sensing the maelstrom between values and norms is difficult but highly necessary. The aggregation of the output of this maelstrom ultimately represents perceptions of the polity’s present and future expectations, and is taken into account in policy formulation (operational phrase ‘ought to’) either by acknowledging their implications for policy or by formulating policy to influence (or less likely), shape the value-norm maelstrom to take

60  Systems and foresight Values

Norms

Policy Planning

Policy Goals

Strategic Planning

Strategic Objectives

Tactical Planning

Targets

"ought"

c " an "

"will" Resources

Figure 2.6 Elements of a policy hierarchy

Value/normspanfor anyoneindividual

Value/normsetforfirstindividual

Value/normsetforsecondindividual Value/normsetforthirdindividual Value/normsetfor fourthindividual

Entiresetofvalues/norms forNindividuals

Value/normsetfor (N-1)thindividual Value/normsetforNthindividual

Spanofvalue/normset sharedbyallNindividuals

Figure 2.7 Aggregation of individual value/norm sets and negotiation into group values/ norms

Epistemology and theory  61 Table 2.1  Criteria of the ‘Jones method’ of intelligence gathering • Intelligence that does not lead to informed action is of little use • Intelligence is gathered from sources and output by subject, a transformation that requires observation, memory, criticism and correlation of widely different types of information that are synthesized in the output • The larger the organisation the more difficult it becomes to perform the above task: a small staff with great ability in the above tasks, particularly inference and synthesis is best suited to meet these demands • The principle of thinking simply, with frequent application of Occam’s razor, is the key to good intelligence work, especially when dealing with experts whose view tend to be narrow and overoptimistic, sometimes wildly so • Recognise that your opponents, competitors and others are not omniscient and ‘all seeing:’ do not fall into the trap of believing otherwise

a particular direction (this is a highly uncertain process). Aggregation of the value-norm set leads to two conclusions: • The aggregate value-norm set for an organisation or wider polity may be the ‘lowest common denominator’ since this the aggregate set shared by all (the narrow vertical slice shown in Figure 2.7) • Particularly powerful or charismatic individuals may impose distortions onto the aggregate value-norm set that others acquiesce to but do not support. These are important hypotheses for foresight and systems thinking to recognise. Both may well find themselves at odds with powerful forces especially when either real or institutional Foresight and systems thinking lead to proposals or scenarios that are at odds with or dissent from the ‘lowest common denominator’ exploited by powerful and charismatic individuals. (ii) The policy instruments can be said to have three characteristics: • Some that can be under complete control of the policy makers and their agents • Others where control is indifferent; some control can be exercised, but it is not complete, and unexpected events and outcomes are likely to occur • Yet others where control cannot be exercised and unexpected events and outcomes will be inevitable. The instruments identified then form the basis of the strategy (operational word ‘can’) for implementing policy where the concern is for the general disposition of resources at the appropriate time; those dispositions for implementation need to be formulated along with appropriate contingencies.

62  Systems and foresight

(iii) At the tactical level, where the operational word is ‘will’, lies the detailed allocation of resources to day-to-day management of the implementation of the strategy. The gap between policy formulation (ought to) and its ‘street level’ implementation is immense and often contradictory. Epistemology has a role to play in understanding how this policy hierarchy works. For companies and organisations of all kinds, this is an important issue as foresight has to answer some hard and specific questions, including trying to orient the directions of policy when faced with the cascade of situations that typify the modern world. For that reason, promotion of a future-oriented culture within an organisation or nation is a very important step that systemic foresight (Saritas 2006) studies assist and where epistemology has a role to play.

Policy and ‘ cri t ica l i t y ’ The connection between the notion of ‘criticality’, foresight (of any kind) and systems thinking may be ‘felt’ immediately but it may not be ‘obvious’ in ways that are easily expressed in Jean’s physical space: it will emerge during the following discussion. ‘Criticality’ is an idea most often associated with defence technology, but is an important aspect of policy making. The term evolved from US ‘strategic’ planning between the two world wars. It was brought into formal and sharp focus when the US Congress passed the Strategic and Critical Materials Act in 1939. What is meant by ‘critical’ has been vague and elusive, and the notion of criticality has proved a difficult one to make explicit, as hinted at above. In a thoughtful hypothesis, Bimber and Popper (1994) identified three essential criteria indicating how criticality relates to policy: (i) Policy relevance; the criteria should not leave policy makers asking the question ‘Critical to what?’ (ii) Discriminating unequivocally between what is critical and what is not (iii) Likely to yield reproducible results in the sense of being functional enough to enable user panels or agencies to develop ‘… tests and methods that will prove functional, robust and accessible to (or understandable by) those not directly participating in the effort [the end user].’ Bimber and Popper (ibid.) also proposed four alternative definitions of criticality which, when applied to technology, mean the technology is: 1 2

Generic and pre-competitive; useful in many applications; likely to produce a wide array of returns not tied to any specific application and likely to have a synergistic or catalytic effect elsewhere The rate determining factor for specific applications that connects the technology directly to some process or product; criticality is then not inherent in the technology itself, but relates to the output from the system

Epistemology and theory  63

3

4

and the enabling role of the technology. The response to the question ‘Critical to what?’ and similar questions is explicit. The definition is not without its problems of measurement, but it can be useful in many prospective instances, but is not, according to Bimber and Popper. ‘… universally applicable’ Viewed as a component of national (or company) self-sufficiency treating the technology in a wider context, relating especially to ‘competitiveness’. The underlying theme here is control over the technology which, in any business system, is uncertain and has many strands. For this reason this definition does not lead to clarity and its application is not straightforward The ‘state-of-the-art’; this equates ‘critical’ with ‘advanced’ and by implication high technology. However, this definition relates only to judgements about the technology itself without reference to applications or objectives. Consequently, it passes the third requirement for a definition of criticality, but not the first.

Of these definitions only 1 and 2 satisfy the three essential criteria for criticality. Definition 3 is particularly seductive to policy makers as it is associated with national, company or organisational self-sufficiency, but because it draws so heavily on notions of control, in the context of knowledge or intelligence, that go beyond that available in free societies, it has to be rejected. Even in situations where a company can secure protection for its technology through patents, it may not be able to retain complete control over the wider use of the technology because of anti-trust law or simply through commercial pressures that encourage licensing the technology to competitors. The reasons for the rejection of definition 4 are self-evident and need no further comment. Other empirical notions of ‘criticality’ have been used in studies in France and Germany. Mostly their focus has been on the notion of ‘state-of-the-art’ (Bimber and Popper’s definition 4) and lacks a relationship to objectives; for that reason they fail to answer the question ‘Critical to what?’ (Bimber and Popper’s condition (i)). In France and Germany the focus was on prioritisation following the notions embodied in the CSIRO procedure (CSIRO 1991), with is use of attractiveness and feasibility (Appendix 2.2) measures. In France and Germany ‘critical technology’ lists have been drawn up from the results of specific studies. In Japan and the UK similar lists were drawn up from their Delphi surveys again for prioritisation purposes. The method used in the UK was based on a simple combined index derived from the study’s objective functions of wealth creation and the quality of life (Loveridge et al. 1995: 23). In Japan an ‘index of importance to Japan’ was calculated for each topic using a simple weighted average based on respondents’ views about the importance to Japan of each topic. All of these procedures really relate to Bimber and Popper’s (1994) definition 4 and focus on judgements about individual technologies; they do not answer the question ‘Critical to what?’

64  Systems and foresight

In Germany, critical technology lists emerged from a series of ‘brainstorming’ meetings attended by experts from large scientific facilities, clinical research and industrial research and development, amongst others. The following criteria used in deciding which basic research fields should be supported from those identified were: • The need for long-term continuity • Originality and quality should be given more weight than immediate applications • Special attention should be focused on new combinations of fields (or on the boundaries between fields) • The main criterion was ‘Where are the best scientists working?’ None of these criteria relate to Bimber and Popper’s notions of criticality, but approximate a process of prioritisation. In a separate relevance tree study carried out in 1993, assessment criteria were devised that considered both technical and scientific factors, as well as economic, ecological, social, legal and ethical factors relating to the selected technologies. Two separate sets of criteria were considered important: 1

Those relating to basic the infrastructure and financial requirements; this set of criteria was specified in the national context and aimed to determine what makes the development of a given technology important for Germany. These criteria were: • • • • • • • •

2

Research and development infrastructure Development risks Human capital Expenditure on innovation Commitment of industry National competitive position (initial position) State support International division of labour.

Those relating to the problem-solving capacity or potential of a given technology, i.e. its ability to contribute to economic, ecological or social problems. These were: • • • • • •

Key nature (technological) Penetration (economic) Economic structure (role of SMEs) Market size (future competitive position) European cohesion World economic dependency

Epistemology and theory  65

• Health • Social progress • Environmental improvement. Here there are some similarities to Bimber and Popper’s (1994) three essential criteria. However, in keeping with the relevance tree method, this approach amounts to a problem analysis (or a ‘mini technology assessment’). In France ‘key technologies’ studies were carried out 1995 and again in 2000. The development of criteria for selecting technologies focused on the importance of a technology (Bimber and Popper’s definition 4). Creation of a consensus among a large number of people, from different professional backgrounds and with different horizons, was thought to be important, rather than to simply make some general judgements. It was considered necessary to understand why respondents thought that command of a particular technology was critical. Nine criteria were finally adopted: • • • • • • • •

Current and potential benchmark markets involved in the competition Direct impact on foreign trade Social and cultural acceptability or stimulus Interest for obtaining or maintaining a competitive position of the product Vulnerability and risk of industrial dependence Contribution to national needs in defence, energy, environment, health and culture Relationship with national industry Capacity for the technology to spread throughout national industry together with an overall appreciation of the global impact of competitiveness.

These are essentially ‘attraction’ criteria, as in the CSIRO method, that indicate the technology’s potential for an industry; they do not include value judgements about France’s position in the technology in question. There was a desire to include an ‘impact on employment’ criterion, but this was not thought amenable to evaluation. In critical technology studies there remains a tendency to focus on Bimber and Popper’s definition 4 when the final lists are drawn up; this is assisted by the use of prioritisation methods, such as traffic light analysis. It is only subsequently that the first two of Bimber and Popper’s conditions for criticality are addressed (this is not always done) to clarify what the technology is critical to and to provide a clear discrimination between those technologies that are critical and those that are not. Though the history of the idea of criticality was not overtly technological, Bimber and Popper’s (1994) three essential criteria for criticality were, but their formulation was more general. Extending these criteria into the much broader

66  Systems and foresight

realm of situations ought to assist policy making and associated prioritisation of policies.

Policy and pri ori t isa t ion In my view, prioritisation is the bridge between the worlds of foresight of any genus, systems thinking and the political world. The use or otherwise of prioritisation poses acute dilemmas by introducing more empirical complication, political confusion and friction than any other matter. Yet, its benefits can be considerable provided time is given to the considerable effort and patience needed to complete the process. Paradoxically, prioritisation may be both relevant and irrelevant to foresight. It is also the point at which the outcome of foresight of any form and of systems thinking can be reduced easily to farce. Different approaches have been used to set priorities, but fundamentally it involves the direct application of Likert-type scales (Likert 1932) to an identified set of topics. There are several variants to these scoring methods which will not be discussed here. All the processes of prioritisation beg the question of the level of expertise of the participants in the process by assuming that all the participants have equal expertise in the process and in the policy matters (objectives, strategies and tactics and their components) being prioritised. How flawed this assumption is becomes clear from Barker and Peters’ (1993) taxonomy of the degrees of difficulty of the problems that policy makers face. Introduction of self-assessed levels of expertise, as a weighting factor, can be done, but it has not been attempted to date. However, prioritisation, in institutional studies of situations, does assume explicitly that a body of people, having special attributes but whose claims to expertise are often unclear, are capable of recognising, through some process of uncertain theoretical probity and practical efficacy, those issues that are critical to a polity’s future, stressing the importance of Bimber and Popper’s (1994) criteria. For real foresight the notion of prioritisation does not arise because of its relatively sharp focus. The theory of prioritisation is paradoxical, being both well and poorly developed. The reason for this paradox lies in the immense literature devoted to choice or decision making under uncertainty, which includes utility, game theory and many other methods, and the empirical methods based on voting that have been used in most institutional foresight activity where prioritisation has been a feature. The latter will be discussed here, but the reader’s attention is drawn to the immense literature relating to decision making under uncertainty simply to prevent it being ignored. It is hypothesised that the methods of the latter have not been used in prioritising the outcome of institutional foresight programmes because they all require deeper exploration of each topic to compute matters like utility or payoffs as needed in game theory; this has as often been precluded by programme time schedules as by other implementation matters. In practice the primary questions are ‘should prioritisation be carried out at all and if so by whom? And when?’ The response to these questions refers

Epistemology and theory  67

to institutional Foresight (prioritisation does not apply to real foresight) and is examined through a series of options (Note 3). Option 1 is not to attempt overt prioritisation at any point; this is not really an option for a critical technologies exercise, since the aim is to generate a list of technologies critical to the future of the polity, although these need not be prioritised. The task of prioritisation would then reside with user organisations which could judge for themselves the best opportunities to follow. PROS: • The approach acknowledges the ‘reality’ of implementation associated with critical and key technology lists, namely that technologies identified in such lists are not supported by stakeholders in a rational way and without question, but merely constitute inputs into ongoing bargaining games between the various policy actors • Programme managers do not have to worry about the implementation of prioritisation procedures CONS: • The absence of prioritisation (selection) criteria throughout the exercise will probably lead to a relative loss of discipline in thinking about the technologies to be included. In other words, there is the danger that an ‘anything goes’ philosophy could pervade the programme • The large amount of data collected in the programme requires some form of synthesis to make it digestible. Lack of prioritisation offers little indication or guidance as to how this might be done and may therefore represent a ‘false economy’ in terms of the time saved. The question remains as to where prioritisation should take place, an essentially political question, to which policy makers must direct attention. However, the following options point out some of the pros and cons attendant on certain eventualities. An important caveat to them is that they deal only with prioritisation as a principle; this should be borne in mind throughout, since the pros and cons of a particular option are likely to shift in accordance with the practical procedures employed. Moreover, these procedures are likely to be employed – explicitly and implicitly – and are intertwined with processes of aggregation and disaggregation of technological areas as distinct entities. Option 2 can be used when an appointed group, deemed to be expert, carries out prioritisation. The lists of important technologies produced require a procedure to limit the number of topics to go forward for prioritisation. Here a simple rule of thumb might be for the appointed group to be asked to select from the list a preferred set of N technologies or topics where N can be determined by negotiation with policy makers. Suppose for the present that N=20. The technology or topic lists will then have a maximum of 20M items, where M

68  Systems and foresight

is the number of themes within the boundaries of the situation. Final, further reduced lists could be agreed later with policy makers to contain, say 6–10, preferred items in each of the M themes to give a final list (say 100) items overall which is believed to be a suitable length for later prioritisation. PROS: • Removes the problem of finding a way to prioritise across the whole situation which can be a daunting and controversial task • Prioritisation is carried out only by an appointed group of experts in a given area, lending the results more credibility, at least with the science and technology communities CONS: • Interrelationships within a situation are likely to be missed • It can be difficult to ensure that the appointed groups of experts have applied the prioritisation criteria consistently • Working groups must aggregate technologies as they are asked to select fewer and fewer items for inclusion in their report; this will be a natural tendency to avoid deleting anything regarded as important. The problem is that aggregated topics or technologies tend to provide fewer directions for policy makers. Option 3, prioritisation takes place at the situation level. The study working groups are not asked to apply any formal prioritisation procedure, although some informal criteria will have been applied implicitly in arriving at their output list of technologies. These lists would then be clustered and aggregated into a list of technologies for prioritisation by a senior appointed group of policy makers. PROS: • Aggregation procedures will not be applied normally until after the initial working group reports have been written; this means that details will not be lost early in the process enabling synergies to be identified • Inconsistent and even indifferent use of the prioritisation criteria across the situation will be avoided CONS: • Some informal and undeclared selection will have been carried out at the working group level • Leaving priority-setting in the hands of a relatively small number of policy makers runs the risk of policy outcomes lacking legitimacy and, ultimately, authority. The available expertise will be under-utilised and the capacity for a relatively small number of people to make judgements on the whole range of technologies and topics could be questioned • The appointment of a ‘suitable’ group to carry out the overall prioritisation task will be fraught with political problems (see Barker and Peters 1993).

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Option 4, prioritisation is carried out by the study working group at situation level (1). However, the situation is likely to contain more subtlety and nuance than the two earlier options can cope with. For example, it is likely that situation-level prioritisation will lessen the demands on working groups to provide only a few technologies and topics as in option (2), although they would still have to be more proactive in their selections than in option (3). The task at the overall situation level (2) is to detect synergies, conduct some limited aggregation and to identify obvious gaps, a task that could be performed by the group set up specifically to conduct situation-level prioritisation. The dual process of aggregation and prioritisation might go through a further iteration before a final list of critical technologies and topics is obtained. PROS: • Aggregation tendencies will be lessened, which would allow detail to be retained for longer CONS: • It is possible that two different sets of prioritisation criteria will be required for the two levels • The deployment of prioritisation procedures at two levels adds to demands on management. Moreover, the problem remains over who should conduct the overall programme level prioritisation. There are several criteria that any method needs to fulfil; these cannot be divorced from the boundaries of the situation – however fuzzy or unclear these may be – or the objective functions on which the prioritisation – however it is done – ought to be based. For example, while most methods resort to some form of voting procedure these can become more or less complicated depending on the inclusion of multidimensional factors to be considered during voting. Choices can be made from the methods, listed in Table 2.2, that have been widely used. In practice, the extent to which any group appointed to carry out prioritisation will actually follow any of the procedures remains unknown. Anecdotal evidence from elsewhere (Keenan 2000) indicates that complicated procedures, however attractive they may seem, tend to be abandoned in practice in favour of an ad hoc procedure which remains a black box, the reasons for how individual votes are cast remaining unknown. There is a degree of inevitability about this, as faced with say, the need to reduce 100 topics to 20 in the space of a few hours will almost certainly lead to some angst followed by drastic measures to alleviate it by ‘getting the job done’. For that reason, it will be helpful if the initial prioritisation, however it is done, can be done by individuals in their own time and before meeting as a group when the topic list will be reduced to the final output required by policy makers. E-mail can help, a procedure that was first used in the 1970s (Lipinski et al. 1973: 3), as can a dedicated website containing a structured pro forma. For this stage, the simplicity of the ‘traffic light’ method or a simple informal arrangement of topic lists, which amounts to much the same thing but without direct expression of choice, has much to

70  Systems and foresight Table 2.2  Some frequently used methods of prioritisation Procedure

Pro

Con

• Well structured

• Complicated definitions lead to ad hoc responses

Formal CSIRO

• Individual works at own pace

• Fatigue factor

• Graphical presentation PREST

• Well structured • Allows simple numerical ranking

‘Traffic light’

• Requires agreed definitions of Quality of Life and Wealth Creation

• Individual works at own pace

• Complication may lead to fatigue

• Graphical presentation

• Tends to be ‘quick and dirty’

• Quick response

• Tends to be ‘quick and dirty’

Informal Voting, e.g. show of hands

• Virtually a ‘black box’

• Pace set by Chairman or Facilitator

offer. The outcome of this phase should be processed before the final meeting so that the final reduced list can be agreed by the application of some simple cut-off criterion. While the final selection process ought to be conducted by a soundly based process, the caveat remains that none of the processes imply any greater depth of understanding of why an individual votes one way or another. Essentially, the group of prioritisers remains a ‘black box’. One possibility for alleviating this tendency is to present the results of prioritisation in real time, which, at least in theory, can provide opportunities for those applying the selection criteria to be challenged on their choices by their cohorts. In conclusion, it needs to be said again that prioritisation is the step that links a foresight practitioner’s world to their political counterpart’s. It is the bridge between the two worlds and it is also the point where all pretence that institutional foresight is logical and conducted according to rational principles can be abandoned to their perpetual discredit. It is the point where strong opinions and simple power broking can determine more about the formal outcome than all the previous painstaking work. Only strong management and total mastery of the procedures will have any hope of prevailing against these circumstances. Whatever the outcome of prioritisation, its implementation cannot be left to chance if it is to have any influence in the political world. Equally, implementation is not an add-on to be considered after the hurly-burly of the programme, addressing a situation itself, is past.

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Prioritisation is the least satisfactory part of any institutional Foresight programme; this is the reason for my earlier criticism that it is the point where the whole show can be reduced to a farce. The further the programme moves away from the relative simplicities of technology foresight or the production of critical technology lists towards much wider situations, the more unreliable any form of prioritisation becomes. There is a need for serious study of the entire process of prioritisation, its place and its role in the institutional Foresight world; this is a place where epistemology has a role to play.

S y s tems an d not ions of poli cy Systems thinking has a history rich in theory; that does not mean that it is free of criticism, which is a convenient starting point. Phillips (1969) examined general systems theory (GST) through five of its features: • • • •

Lack of appreciation of the history of GST Imprecision over the definition of ‘system’ Vagueness over what systems theory embraces Weakness of the criticism of the reductionist (analytic or mechanistic) methods of science • Failure of GST as a scientific theory. Through a long philosophical discussion Phillips concluded that the inability of GST to make predications in the manner of normal science, repeating Popper’s (1957) criticism, denied it the accolade of a scientific theory (Phillips 1969: 15). Later Lilienfeld claimed that ‘Systems thinkers exhibit a fascination for definitions, conceptualisations, and programmatic statements of vaguely benevolent, vaguely moralising nature…’ and that there was ‘No evidence that systems theory has been used to achieve the solution of any substantive problem in any field whatsoever has appeared’ (Lilienfeld 1978: 191). Together with Popper’s (1957) criticism of the notions of holism, these criticisms by Phillips and Lilienfeld encapsulate the most common devastating criticisms of GST and systems thinking: all three require some care in their rebuttal. First, situations exist and, as M’Pherson (1974) has pointed out, they have to be ameliorated by practical means whether or not these observe the niceties of philosophical argument. In simple practical terms, humanity cannot, and does not, stand still while awaiting the outcome of a philosophical argument. As deep and as essential as philosophy undoubtedly is, there are times when there seems that depth of thought leads to the conclusion that there is no real answer, a philosophical attitude that also needs to be accepted in the amelioration of situations. Second, the role of GST and systems thinking in policy making is precisely not to make predictions, in the scientific sense allotted to them by Phillips, but it is to inform the multiple directions of thinking that are needed to explore the territory of the future with all the uncertainties

72  Systems and foresight

that involves. Lilienfeld’s initial claim of the systems thinker’s fascination for definitions is well founded; paradoxically Phillips displays just this fascination in his attack on systems thinking! Flood (1999: 82) also acknowledges this fascination (a trap he also claims many authors fall into) and attempts to rebut it by claiming that a grasp of the notion of ‘existence’ is essential for systems thinkers. Lilienfeld’s second criticism can be rebutted only partially by reference to hard systems (see Figure 1.1) from which the notion of feedback had emerged decades before his criticism; it remains a concept of great power and is as fundamental to understanding systems as the wheel is to engineering. The understanding of living systems has been advanced considerably by the application of systems thinking to phenomena like homeostasis, homeorrhesis, cell behaviour, neurological systems and many other aspects of life. In respects of von Bertalanffy’s hopes for GST as a logico-mathematical field, a new realm of science (von Bertalanffy 1960: 199), Capra claims that Lilienfeld’s criticism is valid (Capra 1997: 78). As with other theories, is it simply a matter of time before its ‘time will come’? With rebuttals set out, it is time to turn briefly to the work of Geoffrey Vickers, the acknowledged doyen of systems thinking and policy making, much of which has already been referred to in Chapter 1. Few people in the ‘systems world’ will demur from the conclusion that Vickers’ prolific writings were of an essentially practical-cum-philosophical kind; they were not epistemological. Indeed, the word did not appear very often in his papers and books which were focussed strongly on governance and regulation. I had the pleasure of meeting ‘Sir Geoffrey’, as he was known, only once for a long discussion of one of his favourite topics: human values and norms. His papers were astonishingly creative and a model of clarity, I might almost call them ‘bewitching’ in their exposition, though anyone born after the 1960s might find the English ‘difficult’. Perhaps one of the shortest papers Vickers wrote (Vickers 1972: 265) remains the most creative and relevant in the present context. The paper, written in response to a request from the editor of Policy Science to outline the future ‘aims and directions for the policy sciences’ does just that (in two pages) through five themes, which I have attempted to summarise below using my current terminology: • Major policies are concerned with the maintenance of relations through time, not with once-and-for-all goals • Inherently, there is conflict between social norms some for resources and for many other factors: no policy can completely reconcile these conflicts • Policy problems are solved by modifying the thresholds of what is deemed to be acceptable under each norm, where this value adjustment is an important part of value creation. Here I would demur from Vickers’ use of the term ‘problem’ and the notion of problem solving with its reductionist overtones, preferring ‘situations’ and amelioration • Policy making tries to regulate irreversible time-dependent and nonrepetitive situations. To do this the policy maker uses a mental model to

Epistemology and theory  73

draw tentative conclusions about the causes of the situation under study; the associated uncertainties of the territory of the future and the probable effect of any possible interventions. The policy maker’s model cannot be predictive or validated by prediction in the way that models of processes can be • The situation that policy makers seek to regulate arises from human intervention in the living world and often has very unexpected outcomes. For this reason, human futures are partly predictable, partly controllable and partly neither predictable nor controllable by policy makers. It was humbling to find this paper only recently in which so many of my own conclusions, expressed in these pages, had been expressed so cogently at about the time I became aware of Vickers’ work in the early 1970s! It is striking how Phillips’ criticism of GST’s lack of predictive ability was rebutted unknowingly (I suspect), while Lilienfeld’s similar criticism was rebutted even before it had been written! Be that as it may, the Vickers’ paper closed by commenting that, to him, much of his response was a restatement of familiar facts that presented a theoretical and practical challenge to people concerned with the scientific study and practice of policy making. Vickers maintained that understanding the nature of the mental processes involved in policy making ought to produce a more serviceable epistemology than existed at that time or even now; a matter of opinion. The practical challenge was to improve the working process without distorting or oversimplifying it. Has much changed since 1972? Probably not, as the notion of problems and reductionist thought seem to continue to dominate the policy maker’s mind despite an abundance of theory and practice that points in other directions, such as the role of systems thinking in policy making.

C r itiqu e of exist ing ‘ t heori es’ Many authors have set out to claim that foresight has a theoretical basis, but its artistic heritage means that meeting that claim requires stretching the notion of theory to its limits. Nevertheless, there are many matters that enter into foresight activity that do have some theoretical notions; these have been explored earlier. At times, metaphors derived from science seem to make foresight ‘scientific’, but using them to explain or assist foresight of any form is risky. I have done so, as have most people who have ‘lived in the foresight world’ for any length of time, but the difference between a metaphor and reality has to be in mind constantly. More pernicious is confusion of methods or technique, simple or elegant, with theories of foresight, which they are not. To quote Wittgenstein (1953), ‘… though problem [situation] and method pass one another by.’ The thorny question of expertise and the notion of ‘experts’ in uncertainty leads towards systems thinking, which has been discussed necessarily in a highly abridged way since there is voluminous literature on both expert opinion

74  Systems and foresight

and systems thinking. In many ways this is the most important field, since all foresight, real or institutional, depends on opinion, expert or otherwise, while systems thinking necessarily concerns itself with the clear or unclear boundaries of situations. Here there are two highly polarised claims to be recognised. The first stems from Weinberg’s contention about trans-science as describing situations where science cannot answer the questions the polity expects answers to, simply because science’s response is hedged by uncertainties, qualifications and alternatives or simply ignorance (Weinberg 1972). The second simply assumes that all opinions are of equal value and that expertise does not count, a view that stems from the claims of post-modernity. These two claims are met with frequently, and not only when foresight and systems thinking crosses the threshold into the political world and policy making. Systems thinking is not a universal panacea and has not been free of trenchant criticism from Popper (1957) and others. Those by Phillips (1969) and Lilienfeld (1978) were discussed earlier; the latter was refuted by Capra (1996) and, by association, the first can also be refuted by Capra’s refutation. Nevertheless, the claims for systems thinking, advanced mostly by people outside the practicing community, have, in times past, verged on hype. As Saritas (2006) found, there is little evidence of systems thinking being used in any kind of foresight; this finding will be very much in mind during the next two chapters that are concerned with foresight studies in the public sphere and in industry. The critique begun here will be extended in Chapter 5. Appendix 2.1

A s ummar y of t he VAL S T M 1 L ifes ty l e H i e ra rc h y (With acknowledgements to Arnold Mitchell and SRI Consulting Business Intelligence (SRIC‑BI)) Mitchell’s original VALS 1 (1984) hierarchy was created at SRI International during the 1970s and has evolved since into its modern VALSTM format that is now owned and operated by SRI Consulting Business Intelligence (SRI-BC). VALS is a consumer psychographic segmentation system based on psychological characteristics and several demographic factors that correlate with consumer behaviour (i.e. products, activities and media), hence the word psychographics. VALS development, conducted in 1987–9, included a two-stage, two-survey process. The first survey was used to develop the basic segmentation and was composed of psychological dimensions and a set of product and behaviour items. The second survey cross-validated the segmentation. From that work, the VALS questionnaire was developed to enable marketers to identify the VALStype of individual consumer. Today, the VALS questionnaire is integrated into custom and syndicated surveys (such as Mediamark Research, Inc’s Survey of

Epistemology and theory  75

American Consumers) so that survey data can be analysed by VALS-type, as well as by demographics. A short VALS booklet and other information about US VALS can be found at www.sric-bi.com/VALS. JapanVALS™ and UK VALS™ are also available. The original VALS (acronym for Values and Lifestyles) hierarchy is the version I have used and is summarised below. The original Mitchell VALS 1 Hierarchy (see Figure 2.1) Need-driven people have very limited in resources (especially money and focus on survival. They are: • Survivors – the most disadvantaged people in modern society; very poor, poorly educated, often old and have little hope of moving up the hierarchy, and are often caught in the culture of poverty • Sustainers – struggle at the edge of poverty; better off and younger than Survivors; have abandoned depression and hopelessness to express anger at the system and have become ‘street wise’ in their determination to move up the hierarchy. Outer-directed people live their lives in response to real or imagined signals perceived from others. Outer-directedness is a major psychological advance over being need-driven. The group includes: • Belongers – ‘fit in’ rather than ‘stand out’ and are generally comfortable middle class; the main stabilisers of society who defend and preserve the moral status quo. They stick to the rules • Emulators – try to break into the higher levels by emulating an Achiever not realising that they do not have the physical or psychological make up to become one. They remain too imbued with the Belonger traits but are psychologically more advanced, assuming more personal responsibility and being less inclined to ‘fit in’, but not able to ‘stand out’ in a substantive way • Achievers – affluent people; many leaders in business, the professions and government; competent, self-reliant and efficient, but tend to be materialistic, hard working, oriented toward fame and success. They defend the status quo of the economic system. For Inner-directeds, inner growth is a cardinal characteristic; these people lead their lives in accord with private needs and desires (inner values). It is hard to be Inner-directed without having internalised Outer-directedness, through exposure to it during childhood, adolescence or adulthood. Inner-directed people tend not to come from Need-driven or Inner-directed backgrounds. It seems that some degree of satiation, with the pleasures of external things,

76  Systems and foresight

is necessary before the less visible attractions of inner development become attractive. The group includes: • I-Am-Me’s – a short-lived phase in changing from Outer- to Innerdirectedness. Mostly, people at this stage are young and very individualistic to the point of being narcissistic and exhibitionistic. Full of confusion and emotions they do not understand, people in this group tend to define themselves by their actions rather than their statements • Experientials – psychologically mature I-Am-Me’s; earlier egocentricity fades to include other people and many social issues. Direct experience and vigorous involvement are strongly desired in all their activities. Dramatic shifts in moods between the real and the mystical are also likely. The exotic and the strange attract, as do natural activities; probably the most highly Inner-directed in the hierarchy and the most artistic and passionately involved with other people • Societally-conscious people have concerns beyond the self and others, to society as a whole; sometimes to include global issues, leading to a profound sense of responsibility; support conservation, environmentalism and the consumer movement, often becoming impassioned and knowledgeable activists about the world as they see it. The Integrated people are a small, rare group at the highest point in the hierarchy who contrive to meld Outer-directed power with Inner-directed sensitivity. Mature psychologically, they are able to see the many sides of an issue and lead it if necessary, or equally easily play a secondary role when that is appropriate in their perception; usually possess a deep sense of the fittingness of things, a rare sense of judgement, that leads to self-assurance, self-actualisation, self-expression and a keen awareness of issues and sentiments, often with a world perspective. These are very unusual people. Appendix 2.2

Pr ior ity s e t t i ng ba sed on attrac t i v e ne s s a nd feasibilit y A summary of the CSIRO procedure In their first foresight programme in 1991, CSIRO developed a procedure for priority setting based on two indexes, namely Attractiveness and Feasibility. The steps outlined here are similar to the process used by CSIRO. The first stage is to carry out two independent rankings, using Likert-type scales. One scale is topic Attractiveness and the second is topic Feasibility. The definitions of the choices are shown on the appropriate axis in (Figure A2.2.1).

Epistemology and theory  77

Attractiv eness

I m perativ e

V ery attractiv e M od eratel y attractiv e Ba arrel y attractiv e N ot attractiv e N ev er

U nl ik el y

U ncertain

Po osssib l e

C anb b e d one

Feasib il ity

Figure A2.2.1  Illustration of Attractiveness vs. Feasibility matrix

7 0 6 0

Attractiv eness ind ex

5 0 4 0 3 0 2 0 1 0 0 0

1 0

2 0

3 0

4 0

Feasib il ity ind ex Figure A2.2.2  Illustration of Attractiveness vs. Feasibility plot

5 0

6 0

7 0

78  Systems and foresight

Attractiv eness

I m perativ e

S tro ong em phasis s

V ery attractiv e M od eratel y attractiv e

I nc creased sel ec ctivv itty

B arel y attractiv e

Lim ited su pport

N ot attractiv e N ev er

U nl ik el y

U ncertain

P ossib l e

C an b e d one

Feasib il ity

Figure A2.2.3  Interpretation of Attractiveness vs. Feasibility

Once these two independent rankings have been completed they are entered in the matrix shown giving a graphical representation of the two rankings: an example of this presentation is given in Figure A2.2.2. The interpretation of the matrix and the graphical presentation is displayed in Figure A2.2.3, which is self-explanatory. A procedure similar to this was used in the 1993–4 UK programme to rank important topic areas during the process of prioritisation.

Ch a p t e r 3

Ins tituti on al f ore s i g h t Pra ctice and p ract icalities

The apparent jumble of unrelated information that now bombards our senses makes for the feeling of an exceedingly turbulent world … indeed a justifiable deduction (for example, the average duration of a TV news-clip is about 90 seconds and comes complete with full colour sensory stimulation … frequent changes of picture and voice commentary). Making sense of this unrelated information is another task … Denis Loveridge lecturing on ‘Black Monday’ as the world’s stock markets crashed in unison, October 1987 Open reports from public foresight programmes are the largest body of literature about the practice and procedures in use at the present time. These reports are the basis of this chapter in which there are three parts: the first discusses the nature of public foresight programmes (institutional Foresight); the second is devoted to operational aspects of institutional Foresight; the chapter ends with a critique of these programmes.

T he nature and practice of public p rogr ammes Institutional Foresight is claimed to inform government activity, implying intervention, either direct or indirect, in almost every sphere of life. The trend toward increasing government intervention, through what is effectively the management of society, has been present for centuries, but has become more obvious as industrialisation has advanced. Government intervention takes a myriad of forms, but behind the scenes some means of anticipating a need for government action persists. Early in this long-term trend, interventions were ad hoc, often being conducted through capricious procurement programmes, though more often, interventions seemed like reactions to events. Whatever their manifestations, interventions were constructed by policy makers who believed they were omniscient in their understanding of the world in which they lived. Formal processes, if there were any of substance, were shrouded in secrecy with no overt way of informing those people involved about events and trends that ought to be taken into account in the formulation of policy. None

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of this was helped by the compartmentalisation of government activity that took on the form of independent silos. Interventions in one compartment often created undesirable and sometimes destructive situations in others, giving the justifiable perception of governments in disarray, a feature that remains evident. As polities throughout the world became more complicated, if not complex, in their structures and organisation, the notion of the omniscient policy maker became absurd. Clearly, policy making, a difficult art at the best of times, needed to be informed by access to wider sources of opinion and information, and to be more transparent in polities that were themselves becoming ever better informed, often leading government policy maker’s perceptions by many years, if not decades, and making their actions seem inept. It is into this situation that foresight has ridden, rather like a ‘shining knight on a white horse’. Foresight is an art form with its roots in influencing the polity: its intentions are ultimately political. Consequently, the advisory nature of institutional Foresight sits well with government and policy making, the absence of the notion of precision, perceptually associated with forecasting and prediction, conveniently being absent. The latter, prediction, implies that a particular event or idea can be identified exactly including when and how it will happen. As there is nothing precise about the future of living systems, predictions are always wrong. The benefits expected from institutional Foresight are a major motivation for its conduct. What benefits can governments expect? Institutional Foresight claims two broad beneficial outcomes namely to: 1 2

Stretch the time horizon for policy development and to assist in identifying opportunities and threats, the advisory indications or warnings that are one of the functions of foresight Promote the formation of ‘networks’ of contacts between companies, governments and any other interested party that help the development of business, government and society as a whole.

It is perfectly legitimate to query the usefulness of foresight activity. For many managers in the public sector, foresight activity is a time-consuming diversion largely because of an underlying mind set in political circles, where what is termed ‘action’ is in reality ‘reaction’. Peering into the future, as senior executives sometimes call foresight, is not seen as a worthwhile activity. It may be considered a waste of resources, because the benefits are not immediate and are likely to be beyond the time horizon of many ministers and government bureaucrats. The denigration of foresight activity involves the long debate about the long term versus the short term that is revisited in Chapters 5 and 7. The benefit of foresight takes at least ten years to become obvious and by that time how the benefit was created has often been lost sight of. For that reason, foresight studies are difficult to evaluate within a political time horizon, which means that their promotion within a government is an act of either political

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faith or folly depending on how such studies are viewed. The British politician Enoch Powell wrote cogently on the political view of forecasters and forecasting (Powell 1979: 338). The arguments he used indicated that foresight, which implies looking at least five if not ten or more years ahead to identify what may become important, is not the ‘stuff that politicians work with’. Often, the follower mentality is perceived to be better than anticipation, and it is many times, because the expenditure needed ‘to get there first’ is avoided. The costs are borne by someone else whose efforts can be copied or adapted with greater certainty, a decided political benefit. Consequently, foresight can be regarded as a distraction from what is important, which is getting through today and making sure you are in a fit state to tackle tomorrow, a considerable survival motivation. At one time institutional Foresight programmes would have been worthy of individual remark because of their rarity; this is no longer true. The spread of activity started in 1971 when the Japanese began their long-running series of technology forecasts. These have since been conducted at five-year intervals using the Delphi process. The outcomes have influenced (uncertainly) Japanese policy for technology, providing the indications and warnings referred to above: the warnings may be double edged, pointing to things to do and to avoid doing. Acceleration in the use of institutional Foresight programmes followed from the mid-1980s until the habit spread to every continent in a frenzy of activity, especially over the decade from 1995 onwards. It remains to be seen how long the current ferment of global activity will continue. Indeed, institutional Foresight has almost assumed the character of a commodity, with all the vagaries these face in other situations. It is not my intention to illustrate this growth by any kind of taxonomy, but rather to draw out essential features that embody the nature of institutional Foresight in its various manifestations, an important aspect for a newcomer and seasoned practitioner alike. The European Foresight Monitoring Network (www.efmn.info) maintains one of the most comprehensive records of global foresight activity; readers are referred to it for an historical perspective, as well as for references to current institutional activity.

T he practice of na t iona l Foresi ght p rogr ammes Sometimes institutional Foresight programmes have been created in the image of the long-running series of Japanese technology forecasts; sometimes not. Previous attempts to draw lessons from these diverse studies (Martin 1996) have followed a well-trodden path based on recording their public face; often this did not reveal important steps and ingredients that promoted their success or caused failure. The deficiencies of these earlier analyses of foresight studies led Nedeva et al. to develop a robust framework to enable analysis of existing experience (Nedeva et al. 2001: 6).

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The purpose of Nedeva et al.’s analytical framework is to: • ‘Get behind’ the public face of national foresight programmes to enable newcomers to gain insights into the essential steps toward creating successful programmes • Enable seasoned practitioners to adopt new procedures if and when necessary. Nedeva et al. (ibid.) set out ten elements that characterise the creation of any institutional Foresight programme: 1

2

Coalition building refers to the process through which alliances are forged to influence decisions regarding the inception of a programme; to persuade potential sponsors to become involved; and to influence their participation. Coalition building is a complex social process, involving a wide variety of interest groups Sponsorship involves three issues of particular relevance, namely: • Who decides on action for a programme? • Who provides the budget? • How is the budget formed and administered?

3 4

5

6

7

8

Objectives are necessarily linked with issues and problems in the national research or innovation system Scope of the programme covers most of the issues relating to the number of areas involved; whether these are social, technical, economic, ecological, political or values/norms or a mixture of all six; the breadth of consultation, the use of panels, the time horizon and the time schedule Research elements and methods to be used usually incorporate some research or problem-solving elements; these vary significantly depending on the objectives of the exercise, its scope and the nature of the indigenous research activity that requires the identification, within the country, of research units that have the competence and the ability to carry out the research work Reflexivity refers to making provisions from the outset for inbuilt mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation of a programme. Achieving reflexivity requires a particular type of social organisation, as well as explicit milestones and criteria for assessment Resources cover the provision of a budget and ways to account for money, time, personnel, provision and organisation of personnel. Sometimes existing social structures do not allow or even prevent some people from participating Level of the programme recognises that institutional Foresight programmes can be carried out internationally, nationally, regionally or locally.

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Programmes can target only particular sectors of the economy or areas of social life and/or particular institutions   9 Type of intervention envisaged, as the outcomes of a programme can be ‘interventionist’ or ‘non-interventionist’ 10 Outcomes cover the intended and unintended outcomes of a programme. These may include priorities for research and industry, official reports, databases, papers and recommendations, networks, culture of negotiation and information about the research, and innovation system. The depth of questioning involved in this part of the analytical framework is illustrated in Table 3.1. The content of the Associated Questions column is not definitive, as other questions often arise during discussions relating to each step in the process.

Table 3.1  Questioning involved in revealing the elements of an institutional Foresight programme Nature of step Explanation

Associated questions

Step 1

Coalition building

Most major public programmes grow from support by a range of different organisations, departments and influential people – to create coalitions to support a proposal

How did the initial idea of a foresight programme emerge? How was it promoted? Who were the participants in the process? How did they interact? What were the arguments used to convince the powers in the relevance and timeliness of a Foresight Programme? Were there any feasibility studies? If so, who paid for them?

Step 2

Sponsorship

Proposals for public programmes not only require verbal support they also need financial sponsors who may be government departments or private industry

How was the decision to start a Programme taken? Who decided? How was the sponsorship arranged? Who paid for the programme? Who held the budget?

Step 3

Objectives

Every programme needs How were these set and clear objectives defined as justified? Who set the part of its terms of reference objectives? Why select Foresight? What were the links with the national system of research and of innovation? continued…

84  Systems and foresight Table 3.1  continued Nature of step Explanation

Associated questions

Step 4

Scope

The scope of the programme How were the decisions has to be defined in terms made? Who made the final of the fields of activity to be decision on the scope? included

Step 5

Research elements

The research elements must include the methods to be used in the programme and their interpretation

How were the elements selected? Who decided? Who commissioned the research? Through what process?

Step 6

Reflexivity

All programmes need methods to monitor their progress, to control expenditure and to make corrections to the programme when needed

Were there any inbuilt mechanisms for control, monitoring and evaluation? Were there any milestones? Who set these?

Step 7

Resources

Successful management of the programme needs careful preparation of the people involved in its execution to maintain motivation and competent management

How was the programme team staffed? By temporary or permanent people? What arrangements were made to manage temporary secondments? Was the coordinating unit temporary or permanent? How did they deal with structural limitations?

Step 8

Programme level

How were decisions Whether the programme justified? And who decided? was intended to be local, national or international in its focus and whether its focus was government activity or industry based

Step 9

Type of intervention

How were options and Was the programme intended to be used to direct decisions justified? And who decided? public spending or not?

Step 10

Outcomes

The expected outcomes of a programme and methods of implementation need to be set out in principle at the start of the programme

Whose expectations were these to meet? Were there any unexpected (or unpredictable) outcomes?

The kind of questioning involved in the analytical framework, its breadth and its limitations created an understanding of how influences were brought to bear on differing parties in past programmes and gave insights into why a country decided to embark on foresight activity. The way in which activities

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within an institutional Foresight programme change with the passage of time is recognised in the context of its initiation, execution and the implementation of the results. How a programme is organised depends on who is involved and the patterns of relationships between them. Allocation of responsibilities or functions, and the capability of the groups involved to enact these, is highly dependent on their position in the organisation of the programme. It is these issues that implicitly underpin all aspects of a foresight programme. Application of the analytical framework to programmes up to 2001 has yielded two ways of viewing them. From parallels in art, the dynamics of the steps leading to an institutional Foresight programme can be regarded as a portrait in which the artists, those people who shape the decision to start a programme, continually shape the painting until the desired effects are achieved. As with all portraits there are eccentricities that relate to the artist’s intentions; their parallel in the discussion lies in the detail, such as it is known, of how the individual programmes were created and what inferences can be drawn from what is revealed. The second view regards each programme as a photograph. The information is a snapshot of events at a particular point in time that does not portray what lies behind the façade presented by the appearance of the programme; photographs are judged to provide fewer insights of relevance to newcomers and figure less prominently in the discussion here. The portraits are based on interpretations of the institutional Foresight programmes of Austria, Germany, Hungary, Japan, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Similarly, the photographs draw on programmes in New Zealand and South Africa. The broad lessons will be set out first since they will enable the reader to follow the detailed information given in an Appendix more easily. The relation between the broad lessons and the details in the Appendix is indicated numerically. The broad lessons are: • The role of the sponsor (or sponsoring institution) is vitally important for the successful conduct of a programme. Support from the top echelons of the political administration is as important as that from other important stakeholders (A1–15) • Clear statement of the objectives of a programme is essential, remembering that foresight is the act of anticipation as an initial step toward the formulation of national policy and strategy. However, foresight is not scenario planning, but is an essential input to scenario building in an iterative fashion (A16–28) • To confuse foresight with scenario planning is potentially disastrous, leading to muddled objectives, muddled management, confused expectations without comparable outcomes, and the possibility of programme overruns in time and expenditure; these features were found in many of the programmes described • Programme managers must exhibit mastery of all the processes employed. Nothing destroys commitment to a programme, by all its participants and

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stakeholders, more quickly than an apparent lack of mastery of the process (A22–28) • The methods to be used in a programme need to: • Take account of the situations the country faces • Be adapted to the questions that need to be asked • Be matched to the objectives of the programme (A29–32) • Consultation lies at the heart of all institutional Foresight programmes, but how it is carried out is a matter of choice. Expert panels often form the core of consultative procedures (A29–32) • Management of the consultative procedure or procedures is an important matter. Programmes generally need to have a well-defined framework, including the time scale for achieving particular milestones. If panels are used and are left to conduct their consultations and their work programme in a loose framework, then it is as well to note the strictures that emerged from the evaluation of the Netherlands Foresight Committee’s programme (Anon 1996). Similarly, if tighter frameworks are used, involving structured questionnaires like the Delphi process, then the extent of a panel’s commitment to the process needs careful monitoring, a factor that emerged from the partial evaluation of the UK programme (A29–41) • Expectations of the outcomes need to be carefully managed to avoid expectations becoming too high. Contrary to the frequently peddled belief about the importance of the process, concrete outcomes that can be taken up by interested parties are more important than the less tangible outcomes that involve the creation of networks of contacts that did not exist before, as there is no guarantee these will produce any concrete outcomes (A33–41) • Implementation of the outcomes is very much a matter for local circumstances. Much can be learned from experience elsewhere but this will always have to be adapted. However, it is very important to settle some of the major issues about implementation in advance, as far as that is possible. For example, prioritisation of the outcomes and its purposes, which bridges from the world of the practitioner into the world of politics, needs to be clearly understood (A47–57) • Repetition of the process in the future also needs to be discussed in advance of the first programme and criteria set out for the possibility of further programmes at some time in the future (A47–57). Institutional Foresight studies are complex activities. All that has been attempted, by using a particular analytical approach, is the identification of many of the matters that have to be dealt with in developing a national programme.

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Practical ste ps in organising a For e s i g h t s t u dy : comm on st eps Coalition building Some early high-level decisions determine the shape of an institutional Foresight programme; these must be part of the initial discussions and agreement must be reached, in principle, during the coalition building that leads to sponsorship and before a programme is embarked upon. These decisions have major influences on the organisation, cost and likely success of any programme. It is not sufficient simply to obtain a sponsor who will set the terms of reference and context of the programme. It is important to sensitise and obtain the implicit support of the community of people who are likely to be consulted or otherwise involved. In this respect, it is immaterial how the study is carried out. Sponsorship and legitimisation Legitimisation of an institutional Foresight programme is a local process. Quick acceptance by a sponsor (or sponsors) should not be expected, even when the climate for such studies seems to be favourable. The clear and public identification of the sponsor(s) and the intended audience is important; clarity in these matters is essential. When international collaboration is featured formal agreements are most likely to be needed as multiple sponsors will bring together partners with different expectations of the collaboration embedded in different political and cultural systems. There can be subtle differences between the sponsors’ intentions and the audiences’ expectations; the two are not necessarily the same. Practically, legitimisation (see Chapter 7, Figure 7.1) involves sensitisation of a community of participants (Note 1). It is their right to be approached in advance and here there are three steps that are generally regarded as essential: • Holding a number of ‘open’ meetings or other forms of open consultation, to allow potential participants to become aware of what is proposed and to comment • Never seek to involve a participant without first asking him or her to take part in the study and giving the reasons why; this applies to all forms of consultation, wide or narrow • Inform the potential participants who the sponsor is, indicating the level from which that support comes. In institutional Foresight programmes, the sponsor(s) are most likely to be a governmental or some similar public organisation.

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Objectives The objectives of the programme form a bridge between the sponsors and legitimisation of the programme; whether it is to cover the STEEPV set or limited parts of it is an important issue and needs to be decided with the sponsor(s) at the outset; this decision has major influences throughout. Equally important is the decision whether or not to make use of material from programmes carried out elsewhere. The purpose of the programme may be to promote debate about its underlying theme for use in more formal policy-making processes. Alternatively, a consensus about a range of topics may be sought among the expert population to enable their prioritisation in formal processes. These choices indicate that the programme is intended to be either interventionist (used to direct resource allocation) or non-interventionist, the outcome simply being placed ‘on the table’ for anyone to use as they think fit. Institutional Foresight programmes generally have a few distinctive objectives. The first and most obvious, is consultation to identify events within the STEEPV set and to seek opinion concerning their likely importance, and time of occurrence. The natural outcome is to prioritise responses to these events, so providing opinion to influence public policy. Initially prioritisation was mostly related to science and technology, but has spread to other fields as institutional Foresight studies have broadened their range of interest. Another important aspect of these programmes is the promotion of cooperation between the various actors in the polity, but particularly between industry, academe and publicly funded institutions. Depending on which objective is stressed, prioritisation and cooperation may require choices in how a programme is conducted; it is not self-evident that they can be met simultaneously. The terms of reference need to be set out clearly to include the main thrusts of the programme by stating the: • Focus: whether the programme will be broad and will include the polity as a whole and all elements of the STEEPV set or a subset of both • Objective functions which might include, for example: • Wealth creation • Quality of life • Network building: promotion of interaction between interested parties. The eventual success of institutional Foresight depends crucially on how the terms of reference are set out and how the programme is designed subsequently. If the terms of reference specify boundaries that limit the programme to technology and any one, or combinations, of basic, applied or strategic research, the design and the output must match these specifications. Similar comments

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apply to wider studies relating to the polity as a whole where design becomes more complex (Cuhls et al. 2004; Loveridge and Street. 2005: 31).

Pr ocedures and out put An institutional Foresight programme needs to be substantial if it is to be a source of guidance for policy making in a particular area, while the acceptance of the outcome by different constituencies will reflect its credibility. For an ‘expert’ committee its terms of reference are of fundamental importance, and their scope and their credibility are unique concerns. In the end, the committee has to sell the output on the basis of personal credentials and of the relevance, reasonableness and robustness (Loveridge 1981: 46) of what will be an idiosyncratic report, created by processes that may be opaque or semiopaque. By contrast, acceptance of the output of a widespread consultation, survey based or otherwise, depends on the credibility of the managing group and the processes they use. Demonstrable competence, in every aspect of the task, is the only way the managing group can become credible in the eyes of the respondent population. Process and procedural competence must be aligned and the sponsor(s) need to set out these requirements in the managing group’s terms of reference. The procedures used in institutional Foresight may seem decentralised, but in reality management of any public programme calls for a strong central team to ensure its completion, whatever methodological processes are used. The outcome of any public programme is a series of ‘products’ usable by its sponsor(s), government or otherwise, in formulating policies and programmes relating to social life and its organisation; this may include products, processes and many other aspects that affect the well-being of society, as well as creating networks of collaborators, as only these can lead to implementation of policies and programmes. Occasionally, the value of foresight as a procedure-cumprocess is emphasised, but this has an element of fantasy about it as programme sponsors look for concrete outcomes.

C on s u ltation a s a resea rch met hod The choice between broad or narrow consultation and the methods used in an institutional Foresight programme is a fundamental decision; the former is exemplified by the use of survey methods (as used in France, Germany, Japan, the UK and elsewhere) and workshops, while the latter is typified by most ‘expert’ committee studies as exemplified by the American ‘critical technologies’ programmes and the work of many ‘advisory committees’. Broad consultation has research elements in its own right. By comparison, narrow consultation is typified by the ‘expert’ committee that relies entirely on its own resources and does not seek to consult outside itself. The latter description may be a parody of the circumstances, but in extreme cases it is a possibility.

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The two forms of consultation can be mixed by using broad consultation in parallel with ‘expert’ committees, as was done in the UK in 1994–5 and has featured in other studies; this decision needs to be set down in the terms of reference at the outset. The research element of the work of panels and ‘expert’ committees lies in the adoption of investigative processes, similar to those available in judicial processes and ‘due diligence’ in investment programmes, but without the force of ‘discovery’ that is mandatory in legal proceedings. The choice of the extent of consultation leads to distinct implementation paths and management structures and procedures as illustrated in Figure 3.1.

Broad, survey based consultation Appointmentof ManagementGroup

Narrow consultation Appointmentof 'expert'committee

Locatingparticipants e.g.co-nomination process

Programmeof awarenessseminars

Identificationof sectorsandissues

Identificationof sectors

Initialconsultation survey(trends,issues, markets,products, processes&technologies)

Informationinputs rf omdeskresearch andscenariobuilding

Derivationoftopics forwide consultation

Consultationthrough 'Delphi'survey

Report,dissemination andimplementation

Informationinputs rf omdeskresearch andscenariobuilding

Workshopsandother directconsultations

Report,dissemination andimplementation

Figure 3.1 Influence of choice between broad or narrow consultation

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Res ou r ces and ma na gement The management and organisation structure of any public programme needs to be agreed with the sponsor(s) at the outset; in collaborative programmes this is of paramount importance. There is relatively little experience anywhere to indicate the most appropriate form of the management and organisation structure, which has to be evolved on a case by case basis. The management team’s single most important characteristic must be demonstrable competence in every aspect of the programme to create empathy with all the people taking part in the various activities; while this is easy to say it is not straightforward to achieve. Members of the management team will face tasks of varying complication. For an expert committee the management team may only need to ensure that the committee’s proceedings are transparent, kept on schedule, within budget and kept under review by the sponsors. For widespread consultation, involving surveys and all that goes with them, the programme schedule will be more complicated, as illustrated in Figure 3.1, in addition to the straightforward tasks already referred to for expert committees. The task becomes yet more complicated if electronic methods are used. It is helpful, but not necessary, for the management team to have experience in breadth of the fields being covered by the programme, since this will enable a common ability of discourse with participants. Training for the management team needs to ensure that they are perceived to be cohesive, competent and to exhibit mastery of their procedures and methodological processes from the public beginning of the programme. The team will need essential IT skills including the use of spreadsheets, word processing, databases, email, videoconferencing and computer-mediated conferences, backed by great working flexibility. The team should know how to design and use questionnaires, and how to manage the corresponding databases. Careful specification of the management tasks and identification of who will carry them out is essential. Again this may seem an unnecessary stricture, but in complicated programmes it is a matter that needs attention. The team simply must know what tasks are going on in every part of the programme and who is responsible for them; else the casual enquiry from a participant will quickly snowball into a major issue if the enquirer cannot get a satisfactory response. The relationship with any consultants is even more important as they will need to be managed within the terms of their contract and the tasks it specifies. Programme schedules are often driven by needs to meet formal reviews elsewhere for the allocation of resources in a government’s planning cycle. Since these have their own idiosyncrasies, scheduling needs careful negotiation and the outcome needs to be written into any agreement to prevent contention, especially in a collaborative programme. Contingency planning is needed since a major programme is unlikely to be trouble free. Most institutional Foresight programmes have been or are organised hierarchically, with a Steering Group taking final responsibility for the programme

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and its outcome. Commonly, the Steering Group oversees the progress of the programme and prepares a final report, but is not, and should not be, involved in the day-to-day management of the programme. The management team should be the executive arm of the Steering Group and should be responsible for the day-to-day management of the entire programme. Panels should know that they have a dual ladder of reporting first, to the Programme Manager with respect to day-to-day execution of their function within the programme, and second, to provide a report of the outcome of their work to the Steering Group and simultaneously to the Programme Manager. Thereafter, the work of the Panels needs to be subject to general guidelines derived from the programme specification; the latter will repay careful examination. The way the programme is to be conducted needs to be clear to all participants enabling them to know unambiguously: • How they are expected to take part • When their participation will be expected • What their role will be (i.e. panel member, survey respondent, workshop participant, expert witness or information provider) • Who will keep them informed of the above three matters. The structure will depend on the choice of management procedures, as already indicated. If a multiple-Panel structure is to be used this should be specified in the terms of reference along with procedures to ensure consistency of methodological processes between Panels. Without the latter, the work of the Panels may result in highly individual reports that make cross-panel synthesis difficult or even impossible. It should not be forgotten that the sponsor(s) have the ultimate right (or duty), in consultation with the Steering Group, Management Team and any advisors they choose, to specify compulsory tasks and processes for the Panels to ensure the programme outcome is acceptable to the audience for whom it is intended. Customer satisfaction should be the guiding principle, not caveat emptor (‘let the buyer beware’). Granting complete freedom of action to the Panels to perform their work as they see fit, is an abdication of responsibility by the sponsor(s), the Steering Group and their Management Team. Finding participants for a programme is another essential management task. The time-honoured ways of identifying participants for panels, workshops and surveys, such as personal recommendation and using lists of names supplied by professional institutions, are now largely discredited as they give little indication of a potential participant’s interests and expertise. Mundane matters, like address lists, are not always up to date for many reasons. The state of confusion that can result from using these sources is highly damaging to the credibility of the programme. There are other options that endeavour to overcome the deficiencies of the time-honoured processes mentioned above; these use:

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• A conventional statistical sample of the whole population, with circumscribed boundaries, such as age limits, as is done in public opinion surveys • An electoral procedure • A structured process, such as co-nomination as used in the 1994–5 UK foresight programme. The first of these two options is not entirely suitable for a foresight programme that involves a degree of specialism that a random sample of the population might overlook; consequently it has not been used in any programme so far. An electoral procedure is not appropriate. The possible electoral roll is undefined so the outcome would not produce a representative sample of potential participants, let alone balanced membership of working panels. The use of peer-reviewed databases, as described in Chapter 2, is possible in programmes restricted to science and technology matters. Conomination remains the other process and has been used in the UK and South Africa where it was successful within the time constraints imposed by the programme schedules. Co-nomination was described briefly in Chapter 2 and that description is extended here. In institutional Foresight programmes employing widespread consultation, the procedure begins with the selection of an initial group of respondents, each of whom is asked to identify further individuals who meet a defined set of criteria. The second, and larger group, is then asked to repeat the process, giving the appearance of ‘snowball’ sampling, with further iterations until closure becomes apparent (signs of closure often occur after the third iteration). The approach places identification of the community of potential participants into the hands of the community itself, which is of considerable benefit in generating commitment and transparency. The objective of the conomination survey is then to: • Build a database of people with relevant credentials who can be consulted by the Panels or become respondents in any survey or other procedure during the stages of a programme • Identify key people to become panel members in the various matters to be covered by the programme. The questionnaire can be administered either by post or electronically (because it is well structured) and is designed to elicit two main types of information: • The names and contact details of potential respondents and panel members, as already described • A description of each respondent’s areas of interest and his or her level of expertise in these areas.

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The ‘expertise questionnaire’ used in the UK programme sought the information listed below. An introductory note, written by the programme sponsor indicating their commitment to the programme and degree of importance attached to participation, is essential. The note should also outline the way the ‘expertise questionnaire’ fits into the programme as a whole, and that the respondent should be able to complete the questionnaire in about 10 to 15 minutes. Both of these explanatory notes are fundamental to obtaining a good response rate on which the success of the procedure depends. The remainder of the questionnaire asks for seven kinds of information: 1 2 3 4 5

6 7

Address details including an email address Main job function chosen from defined categories To indicate, from a defined set of fields of human activity, those where the respondent has expertise as defined by a given set of criteria, and whether that expertise lies in technology, markets or both A succinct description of the respondent’s recent past and current areas of special expertise in relation to the fields indicated in 3 A list of up to six people whose activities have had or are likely to have a significant influence on or to be useful to the respondent’s own work, indicating whether that influence is mainly in technology, markets or both A list of up to three workplace colleagues who have not been named in 5 List one highly original thinker in any field of expertise who could make a significant contribution to the programme and its outcome.

By choosing from a set of criteria, modified as needed from that developed by Lipinski and Loveridge for the self-assessment of expertise (Lipinski and Loveridge. 1982: 215), respondents can assess their own level of expertise. Selection of the representative fields for inclusion in section 3 is problematic; all that can be done is to learn from the programme’s terms of reference and experience elsewhere. Creation of the initial list of people to whom the questionnaire will be sent is a crucial step; if it is not well balanced the outcome of the survey can jeopardised. Care must be taken not to allow any one source of names to dominate the choices made. However the survey is conducted there needs to be an easily accessed ‘help desk’. Because of the ‘snowball’ structure of the survey it is vital to have rigorous control to minimise (preferably avoid) respondents nominated more than once receiving duplicate survey forms. If control is not effective, the credibility of the entire survey is placed in jeopardy and the whole programme will be damaged. Photocopied returns must be disallowed without question. Encoding the data from postal returns will be labour intensive, it cannot be otherwise, and complications such as incomplete addresses, misspelling of names, muddled initials and titles, all of which will need verification, must be expected. Conducting the survey electronically does not overcome many of

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these problems, but may partially reduce the labour intensity of the encoding process. Lessons from the use of co-nomination show that: • The use of the procedure provides a level of information about the participants, whatever their role, with more certainty than any other procedure; this information is a valuable resource but the work involved is considerable • There is an added benefit in that it introduces participants to what follows in the later stages of the programme and often strengthens commitment to these stages • Much attention must be paid to the construction of the initial list of respondents to avoid bias in the later stages • The programme schedule needs to allow time for the questionnaire to be circulated three times at least. Higher frequencies of nomination and clearer network maps will result • Criteria for panel membership needs to be decided early in the programme and made public, and needs to include age and gender factors. The co-nomination process comes into its own when structured question­ naire processes are used in widespread consultation. However, as has already been stressed, there are no circumstances when expertise should be taken on trust or for granted. Self-assessment of expertise used alone can be a powerful gatekeeper, placing a small but significant hurdle to qualifying to become a participant even in an unstructured programme of discussion groups and the like. Appointments to committees or panels are contentious matters that ought to be assisted by the outcome of the co-nomination procedure. Packing panels with people of similar backgrounds, interests and opinions needs to be avoided. Foresight is not the gift of a consenting group nor is it the gift of a special individual, though some individuals exhibit remarkable aptitudes for what might be called ‘real foresight’ rather than its institutional counterpart. Foresight is often an emergent property of small group debate where there is contention but not aggravation, between people with knowledge and those who are able to speculate from that knowledge in a gestalt fashion. The debate will lead to constraint on the more extreme ideas and opinions without discarding them; this ability among panel or committee members is vital. The expertise of individual potential panel or committee members ought to be assessed by the appointee, using self-assessment criteria similar to those employed in the first UK foresight programme (Loveridge et al. 1995: 10), so that the sponsors and the managing team can create a group with balanced levels of expertise. The text and numerical databases created are further vital resources that require careful management. Text databases typically arise from the transcripts of workshops, discussion groups and electronic conferencing,

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while numerical databases arise from structured surveys or from the use of public information sources. The two kinds of databases require distinct treatments. There is little prescriptive advice that can be given on how to work with text databases, which are mostly unstructured; content analysis of them requires appropriate procedures and software, preferably chosen before the basic transcripts have been created to limit the potential influence of software capability on the outcome of the analysis to identify important themes and ideas. Identification of themes and ideas can be difficult enough, but important associations, inferences and interdependencies are yet more difficult to locate. Development of appropriate search strategies, as required by systemic foresight, is not a standard process, but needs considerable insight, intuition and knowledge of the subject area. It is not too much to say that it requires a good deal of real foresight and systemic thinking to follow what can be a series of faint indications of important interdependencies that lead toward deep insights into future possibilities, possibly beyond those of the participants in the original dialogue. The relational text databases are used to manage demographic and similar information relating to programme participants. Wherever this kind of database is employed, legal requirements of data protection relating to individuals must be observed; similar comments apply to freedom of information legislation. These databases include address lists, occupation and other kinds of personal demographic information. All survey work needs an underlying structure that enables the progress of the survey to be tracked to prevent respondents receiving multiple questionnaires, or the wrong questionnaire in a multi-sector survey to prevent distortion of the survey outcome. Numerical survey data requires careful management to ensure that it is: • Correctly coded • Structured so as to be easily understood by more than one person • Easily searched and used for many different purposes. Coding the survey responses is not a simple matter; its procedures must have the necessary checks to eliminate mistakes in entries; these are commonplace in experienced survey companies. Coding is therefore best done by those who are experienced in the process; subsequent analysis can then be done with reasonable peace of mind. Cost-saving measures, such as using inexpensive and inexperienced staff for coding work, should not be encouraged. It should not be assumed that electronically based surveys will be free of coding problems.

Geographic brea dt h of pa rt ici pa ti o n Institutional Foresight programmes can be carried out internationally, nationally, regionally and locally. Much of the earlier discussion covers the execution of the latter three levels, but the rarity of international programmes

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or international participation in national, regional or local programmes needs further comment. Historically, participation in institutional Foresight studies has been constrained by national considerations; this is unnecessary and counter­productive. Elsewhere I have proclaimed the death of this practice (Loveridge 2001: 789) but it remains a dominant feature of the organisation of institutional Foresight. Collaborative studies across international times zones has long been possible using a mix of computer-based conferencing, which I first used in the early 1970s, the Internet, voice-over-IP and videoconferencing, in addition to other time-honoured procedures. Any impediments to the internationalisation of institutional Foresight are now due to either lack of will or lack of knowledge. The question is why ought these studies to be internationalised? There is neither a unique answer nor is there an imperative to do so. There can be obvious benefits, including access to wider sources of expertise and knowledge, the sharing of experiences of the processes to the advantage of newcomers and established practitioners alike, and drawbacks – what follows has these in mind. Internationalisation ought to reveal the extent to which foresight agendas are really common or whether only parts are shared universally, revealing how individual countries selected, or might wish to select, fields for study in expectation of an economic or some other form of return. None of this openness can ignore the undoubted wish by national and international companies to retain knowledge for their own benefit with implications for the freedom or control of how some respondents participate and contribute their expertise in institutional programmes. The feasibility of international programmes will raise concerns that go with any international activity. Among the concerns will be ownership of intellectual property, copyright and similar issues relating to international relations, if not law. Intellectual property rights will need to be dealt with, however unlikely their invocation might seem, as there is a real possibility of patentable ideas arising from foresight programmes; after all, creation of knowledge and ideas for the future is their raison d’être. There is also the near certainty that the outcome of foresight activity will be taken up by activist groups with unexpected intentions. The foregoing are some the reasons for the growing internationalisation of foresight programmes; there are others concerning their feasibility and implementation that may be thought of as modes of cooperation that can be described in a simple taxonomy (Cameron et al. 1996: 47) as: • Interaction • Coordination • Orchestration. Interaction is typified by the exchange of experience; this mode is already being institutionalised through informal international networks of practitioners.

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Interaction does not require actual working together in a foresight programme, but results in a steady accretion of codified information on operational matters that becomes more valuable with time, permitting the steady evolution of foresight processes. There is also a growing understanding of issues, perceived to be important across the STEEPV spectrum, that will be influential in developing policy. The existence of databases of these issues mitigates the effort required by new entrants to the field. Coordination recognises that countries intending to conduct foresight programmes will be using similar ways of going about their programmes. Sponsors may be from similar organisations or government departments, so that coordination between them may be of mutual benefit in setting the terms of reference, time schedules, developing notional budgets, methods of reporting, prioritisation and implementation. Actively working together can mean that the comparison of outcomes becomes feasible and mutually beneficial. What may begin as participation in the interactive network, may well develop into a desire to share some of the ‘risks’ of a foresight programme, whether these are real, in terms of resources, or psychological, with political implications. Orchestration requires direct formal or informal collaboration. The potential partners wish to use common methods in conducting their programmes and also wish to share a common infrastructure, and input and output information. The German–Japanese experience (Breiner et al. 1994) has some of these characteristics, but stops short of having a common management team that may be anticipated with full orchestration. There is an additional possibility: all the potential partners might wish the management team to come from an external source, giving a sense of independence and impartiality to the programme. While these three modes represent some of the more wide-ranging issues involved in international foresight activity, there is a sense in which the modes are interdependent, if not actually nested one within the other. If that is the case the outer skin is likely to be the Interaction mode, while Orchestration may be the inner core. Some important lessons can already be highlighted from international collaboration: • Multiple languages bring their own hazards, some of which can be severe, especially where different alphabets are involved. Translation may then call for several iterative steps, with discussions between experts and translators to remove ambiguities (Loveridge et al. 2003) • Adoption of processes created in one country and culture may not succeed in another, as it means the adoption of the perspectives and culture of the first by the second. The main advantages of international collaboration seem to outweigh the disadvantages and include:

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• The collation of international expertise with the possibility of making international comparisons • Accessible knowledge increases, so that reliability and validity increase • Mutual learning about doing studies grows • Exchange of foresight experiences helps to develop the procedures. However, the outcome of foresight programmes requires implementation, a crucial last step that has to be taken by each sponsor on their own; this is, perhaps, the Achilles heel of all foresight programmes, collaborative ones included. The limitations inherent in international collaboration include: • Matters of national security may limit the participation by some individuals and companies • Companies that are in direct competition may either not wish to contribute or actually be barred by law from being seen to collaborate • Managing intellectual property rights may require particular attention. Other limitations come from foresight processes themselves, most notably arising from the inevitable need to use widespread consultation employing survey methods. Much patience is needed to negotiate agreement to the structure of the consultative process (Loveridge et al. 2003), or to any questionnaire and common set of questions (devoid of misunderstandings arising from the nuances of language). Given that there are partners and sponsors who wish to collaborate, the possibilities of success are then likely to depend on how they define their mutual and individual benefits, and how these are presented in the public domain, especially to the media. The process of creating expectations of mutual benefits, as well as individual non-conflicting ones, needs careful attention, as it is a process fraught with the possibility of misunderstanding. Adverse publicity or reactions from a significant body of people, on whom the successful conduct of the programme will depend, can be very damaging. Complementarity should be seen as a way to balance relationships between the multiple sponsors. So far, participation by individuals of international stature in any programme has been limited, but is tending to increase and raises a number of specific issues: • How can people of international repute be identified and located? It is crucially important to obtain well-founded, up-to-date information concerning any individual’s expertise • How can their agreement to take part be achieved? • How can their participation be made simple, effective and timely? • Are there risks to both the potential respondent and the sponsor of the programme that may arise from the respondent’s participation?

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It is already possible to conduct many kinds of consultation on an inter­ national basis using IT services; the motives for doing so have already been alluded to, and these services can now play a central role in conducting in any programme. However, the introduction of IT needs careful planning and an appreciation of what is being planned, attending to the following: • All the material gathered electronically will be stored on a medium that permits rapid processing and easy editing • Consequently, audit trails need to be used to control the processing of the data collected, where ‘data’ is both numeric and textual, quantitative or narrative • The veracity of the raw data and its continuity cannot be guaranteed, and without audit trails illicit access to, and use of, the raw data can become commonplace • Anonymity is always guaranteed to respondents to survey questionnaires; this can be jeopardised by poor management of the raw data, with a consequent loss of credibility in the study and its management team. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, several software systems existed for electronic information exchange, as it was then called. Each was based on dedicated software designed for the purpose. Software available via the Internet has now largely superseded these systems and has simplified international consultation while making it more effective. Some impediments remain: how to make electronic consultation replicate, to an appropriate extent, a face-to-face discussion. An Internet-based discussion will generally need to be based on a closed user group, well specified in advance, with significant barriers to entry, to prevent ‘gate crashing’. If a closed user group cannot be specified in advance, then an open discussion is likely to attract a wide variety of contributions, from the substantial to the outrageously unhelpful. The real problem then becomes one of winnowing, to enable an appropriate closed user group discussion to be created. Retrieval of the exchanged information from its record to enable interpretation, is the key step, whatever the format and the nature of the record. Retrieval must then be able to cope with all forms of information and in ways that the searcher wishes to specify. Search engines meet these requirements minimally, but in 2007 the requirement of Boolean searching is not always available. There have been considerable advances in text analysis software and further advances can be expected in all forms of search engines. The deficiencies of current search engines have a profound effect on the viability of Internet-based consultation. How does this come about? Consultation that proceeds via a well-structured process, employing a closed user group, has frontiers to the dialogue that can be specified within reason, limiting the extent of the search process. If the consultation is organised around an open structure, even initially, the frontiers to the dialogue are likely to become unbounded, making the search process unspecifiable, if not undecidable in a mode similar

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to Gödel’s notion of undecidability (Gödel 1931). The resulting effort needed to even identify the respondents to be invited to join a closed user group can destroy the entire foresight programme, yet without some process of selection the consultation cannot proceed! The presentation of questionnaires of various kinds in electronic format is not a problem; working with them is for many people. Much thought needs to be given to the layout of a questionnaire if it is to be ‘user friendly’ when the respondent works with it on a screen (Loveridge et al. 2003). Direct entry of responses into the database, via a buffer that allows respondents to alter their response before it is lodged in the database finally, is good practice.

I nterv entions a nd out comes i n use The broad features of the outcome of an institutional Foresight programme and the processes for their implementation ought to be framed during the programme’s formative (policy) stages. All programmes will produce a mix of intended and unintended outcomes, the implementation of which will call for a new range of skills if the bridge from the foresight practitioners’ world to the political world of the sponsor is to be built constructively. The purposes of a programme, either interventionist or non-interventionist, are associated with distinct forms of governance. When foresight is intended to support intervention, the sponsor will require its outcomes to include priority setting, as this will be part of the sponsor’s implementation route; prioritisation then becomes a keystone in the bridge building referred to earlier. By contrast nonintervention requires little effort by the sponsor, as ‘implementation’ requires little more than placing the programme’s outcomes in the public domain for others to pursue if they wish. These are two extreme limits to the forms of implementation that are evident in the welter of foresight programmes in recent decades. Generally implementation is an Ackoffian mess (Ackoff 1974: 21), a set of interacting problems which in itself is conventionally attacked through the bluntest of tools, prioritisation (Chapter 2). It is at this point that an institutional Foresight programme can seem to be a competitor, or a threat, to the ongoing and long-established work of advisors, so the outcome needs to be presented in a non-threatening way. Once prioritisation begins, political implications and influences become inescapable. Reports are the commonest way that the outcomes from an institutional Foresight programme are made known; their effectiveness depends partly on the initial coalition building during the formative stages of the programme. The format of the programme also plays an important part. Reports from ‘expert’ committees are idiosyncratic; they are likely to be direct. Their recommendations may come nearer to direct intervention in the political process because of: • The way ‘expert’ committees are created • Their line of responsibility, which is direct to the sponsor

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• Their terms of reference, which are often highly specific. By contrast, the findings from a programme based on widespread consultation will be more diffuse, more arduous to present, and will have to represent: • The spread of opinions arising from a large number of people and organisations • Caveats to the findings that make them seem less direct • The inclusion of a prioritisation of topics as the view taken by the management team according to the criteria they set. The major outcome of widespread consultation is the database of opinions expressed during the programme sampled, either through the topics in a survey or by some other consultative process; this is not a major feature (if it is a feature at all) in an ‘expert’ report. If a survey is constructed in consultation with any parallel ‘expert’ committee, but independently of that committee, then the outcomes of parallel reports may differ significantly and this should be anticipated by the programme sponsor. Government-initiated institutional Foresight programmes are expected to inform policy making. At first the focus tended to be on policy for science and technology. Recently, wider fields affecting the polity in general have been drawn into the foresight net. The responsible ministries are usually the motors for these programmes. From international experience, successful implementation of foresight activity requires: • People able to implement the results (obviously) • Decision makers, able to distinguish between different areas of the polity and policy needs, who have discretion large enough for national strategies to be developed across the boundaries of these areas as needed • The criteria used in prioritisation must be well founded and the outcome of their use needs to be the basis for action • Priorities that emerge from local decisions need to recognise that: • Some strongly independent groups, with a lot of basic funding, will have little incentive to pick up the results of a foresight programme. In the past, information from their scientific networks was sufficient to enable them to perform well, and in the future it will continue to do so • Users with little possibility to look beyond 2–3 years when making investments, are likely to have little use for the outcomes of a foresight programme • Both of these comments fly in the face of persistent attempts by government to direct the attention of these two groups of organisations toward the outcomes of government-sponsored foresight programmes and particularly toward SMEs where government has little practical involvement or experience.

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There are other less obvious matters involved in implementation. One of these is the declaration of existing business or financial interest of any person in privileged position to exploit any of the outcomes for financial gain; this is particularly important when appointments to ‘expert’ committees are being considered and made. There have been examples where this has not occurred with unfortunate consequences for the credibility of the outcome of the committee’s work. Where widespread consultation is used, and managed by an independent agency, the opportunity for direct benefit to or from business or financial interests, by any individual respondent, is much reduced. However, this does not overcome the complicated matter of competing claims to intellectual property rights that may arise, directly or indirectly, from the questions contained in a Delphi questionnaire or ideas generated at a consultative workshop.

C r itiqu e Foresight creates controversy – that is its intention. So what benefits can governments expect from institutional foresight? There is a tradition now to make two broad claims for beneficial outcomes, namely to: • Aid the development of a longer time horizon for policy development and to assist in identifying opportunities and threats – the advisory indications or warnings referred to earlier • Promote the formation of ‘networks’ of contacts between companies, governments and any other interested party that help the development of business, government and society as a whole. Both of these claimed outcomes have a wishful characteristic. Indeed, it is hard to imagine that the more exaggerated claims made for the second are more than promotional hyperbole. Making contacts, or ‘networking’ as it is now called in smart circles, does not guarantee any concrete outcomes for anyone. In the end, to quote my colleague John Parry, the ‘world belongs to practical men and women’. Institutional Foresight’s real attraction for governments must lie in the first claim. Institutional Foresight has been practiced in many different ways, but through the 1990s the precedents set by the Japanese technology forecasts were widely adopted. The core parts of many studies were enshrined in a Delphi survey and while these varied in detail, the single most important context was technology. Only in the mid- to late-1990s was there a general recognition that wider issues from the STEEPV set needed to be involved. Many had been included in a minor way in some of the programmes, but only one, by the Netherlands Foresight Steering Committee (Anon 1996), included the entire STEEPV set. In addition, a more traditionally organised study in Austria included a considerable measure of social factors. In the new millennium it has been mostly business as usual with technology continuing fortissimo with the rest of

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the set increasingly diminuendo. The German Futur programme (www.bmbf. de/en/1317.php) is an exception that used an open enquiry system. Loveridge and Street (2005: 41) proposed ways to widen the base of people involved in foresight programmes, but this has not proceeded further. All institutional Foresight programmes have, so far, been conducted monolithically with their outcomes presented as an institutional view. Summation of the individual participants’ opinions is a non-trivial matter (Loveridge and Street 2005: 46). How this is done is a behavioural matter, and understanding the possibly profound influence this has on the outcome has not been given much attention in any programme to date. The three issues of narrowness of participation, of modelling of the procedure and of behavioural influences are probably the most difficult concerns facing institutional Foresight programmes, and they are interrelated themselves. These and other detailed concerns are dealt with in Chapter 5 and will not be taken further here. Appendix 3.1

Specific points arising from the a p p l i c a t i o n o f the an aly ti ca l fra mew ork t o na t i o na l f o re s i g h t exercis es The purpose here is to exhibit specific information that leads to the broad lessons set out above; these points offer particular insights for the newcomer and should help in the development of foresight activity. Naturally, the interpretation of the information collected is idiosyncratic and other interpretations are possible; the reader should note this point and use his or her own judgement in interpreting both the detailed information and broad lessons for use in their situation. What has already been set out in the broad lessons and what follows is intended to give guidance; it is not in any sense prescriptive. The information is derived from both the notions of a portrait and a photograph. The pattern follows that of the analytical framework. Step 1 – Coalition building 1

2

Coalition building is crucial to starting a national foresight exercise but is, in most instances, hidden and quickly forgotten once a programme has started. Tracing the actors involved and their influence is difficult, particularly so for programmes that evolve within government ministries where secrecy may be evident and may lead to multiple histories of events It was revealed that the need to employ ‘new’ policy instruments for what are perceived to be ‘new’ policy challenges was the main reason for embarking on a foresight programme. For example, in Japan a policy was

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3

4 5 6

7

8 9

adopted in the 1970s to promote a change from a dependence on importing technology to developing innovative technologies internally. The same reasoning was employed in Austria more than 20 years later. In Germany, reunification led to severe budget restraints that required a more efficient way of financing research programmes. Budget constraints partially drove the creation of the first UK programme, where foresight was viewed as one instrument for achieving better coordination of the country’s considerable public expenditure on R&D. In Hungary, the transition to a market economy saw experts and policy makers increasingly involved in studying various approaches to innovation policy ‘Foresight champions’ within government ministries were important in getting programmes launched. These people gained awareness of foresight through international forums and through advisers in their own countries (the latter is exemplified in Germany, where one or two people in the FhGISI had considerable influence in persuading the BMFT and its successor of the merits of foresight) Foresight champions often met resistance from others in their ministries and from other government departments Opposition has waned and foresight champions now need to keep ‘unrealistic’ expectations in check Foresight champions commonly use a feasibility study to convince others of the merits of a foresight programme; the study often uses ‘experts’ from other countries to conduct the programme. For example, US pioneers of technology forecasting gave invited lectures in Japan during the late 1960s convincing senior industrialists that a comprehensive Delphi exercise would identify fields of research relevant to Japan’s technological future. Later, in Germany cooperation with Japan was an important factor in persuading ministers of the benefits of a similar study employing Japanese experience. Later, in the UK, a foresight scoping study, conducted by UK experts assisted by their German counterparts, was important in persuading ministers to include reference to a foresight programme in the 1993 White Paper relating to science and technology. Where a formal feasibility study has not been conducted, e.g. Austria and Hungary, informal advice was sought from foreign experts, which shaped the nature of these programmes Newcomers to national foresight programmes have much experience to draw on from other countries, e.g. Japan where the five-year STA forecasts are now conducted as a matter of course. The forecasts have, in a sense, become ‘routine’ The explosion in national Foresight activities during the mid-1990s means that a number of countries have now acquired considerable experience in the area and this is shaping their subsequent activities The role of experts in designing programmes and in participation, has diminished, as more people have sought to own these exercises. In Germany,

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criticism that the early programmes were restricted to ‘experts’ has led to the new Futur programme which was designed to broaden participation through innovations in the approach taken. Similarly, the wealth creation and quality of life rationale of the first UK Foresight Programme has been succeeded by a greater emphasis on quality of life and sustainability issues; the problem-oriented approach now in use is an attempt to move away from disciplinary science and industrial sector panels. Step 2 – Sponsorship 10 Sponsors tend to be government departments where the programme originated though they may not perform it. Often the work is contracted out to national academies, industry groups, private consultants and academic groups 11 Sponsors are invariably represented on steering committees so as to keep a watchful eye on progress 12 The extent of contracting out, and its associated costs, depends upon the methods to be employed 13 Sometimes government departments or agencies are not the main sponsoring organisations. For example, in Portugal, Sweden and Finland, industrial federations and learned societies have been the sponsors 14 Spreading the costs and effort has become more popular. In both the German Futur programme and the current UK Foresight Programme other agencies have become co-sponsors. For instance, in the second round of the UK programme, the Home Office, with its law and order brief, has provided the resources for a Crime Prevention Panel. Recently (2007) the UK’s OSI continues to use a department-sponsored, problem-oriented, pseudo-interdisciplinary approach that inevitably becomes reductionist. In other countries, such as France, Finland and the Netherlands, more than one government agency has sponsored separate exercises, sometimes at the same time 15 Official sponsors are only part of the story. Programmes usually require underwriting by hundreds of organisations that provide human resources for panels, workshops, answering questionnaires and other tasks, while if a proactive implementation strategy is pursued then participation becomes a long-term undertaking. Put simply, many organisations effectively sponsor national foresight studies, usually over an indefinite time period. For example, officials estimate the 1994–5 UK programme to have cost around £1.5 million per annum since 1994 yet informal contributions from other Programme participants have probably been ten times this amount.

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Step 3 – Objectives 16 Objectives range from the catch-all goals of improvements in wealth creation and quality of life to day-to-day milestones set by programme managers. The latter are essential to ensure the exercise has both credibility and legitimacy with its audience but are rarely made explicit by the programme managers 17 Objectives tend to be set with little thought about verification; typically they are more specific than those mentioned in 16 above 18 Three key objectives that underpin most national exercises are to: • Inform national science, technology and innovation policy planning by providing guidelines that can be used for priority setting. The expectation is that these guidelines will arise from increased awareness of future trends or forces shaping the long-term future in markets, science and technology (S&T), and national strengths and weaknesses in S&T and business. Recommendations may identify areas where national expertise needs to be built or where national economic competitiveness needs to be improved, reflecting governments’ ‘new’ reasons for public support of S&T and industrial innovation • Encourage long-term strategic thinking amongst a wide range of actors, drawing upon an assessment of strengths and weaknesses, and opportunities and threats, to provide enterprises with guidelines for activities in S&T, as well as the strategic intelligence to respond flexibly to changes • Encourage the development of better innovation systems, by improving cooperation and strengthening relationships and partnerships through the development of networks between business, science and government officials. Expansive claims are made for the importance of networks as foresight process benefits, that programme managers seek to exploit, but these claims should be regarded with caution as concrete outcomes are not assured. 19 Other objectives may be specific to a country. For example, the Hungarians viewed their programme as a support to accession to the EU. The Spanish hoped that foresight would help them to improve their presence in European research programmes and institutions. Some exercises have been overtly experimental and have sought to learn from experience, so as to develop foresight ‘capabilities’, e.g. the German and French uses of the Japanese Delphi, while the Spanish ‘preliminary’ exercise, conducted in 1994–5, would also seem to fall into this category. Finally, in a move from learning to innovation, the 1998 German Delphi had as one of its stated objectives the development of foresight methodology 20 Foresight objectives are mostly concerned with S&T issues, reflecting the position of programme sponsors in governments. Engagement with companies reflects the ‘new’ rationale for the public support of S&T

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21 Recommendations from foresight studies in non-S&T matters pose a challenge to policy makers in S&T and other ministries. The Netherlands, Sweden and Austria have broadened the scope of their studies by setting more socially oriented objectives, a step followed in the 1999–2000 UK Programme and its successor, which has opted for a more problem-oriented (as opposed to a technology- or market-driven) approach 22 Widespread adoption of foresight studies promotes the co-evolution of social and technological themes as they become more complicated in what they set out to achieve. Step 4 – Scope Foresight studies should: 23 Question whether their orientation should be mainly toward S&T or whether they should have a techno-economic or socio-technical orientation. In the latest German and UK programmes, the shift toward problem-oriented programmes and workshops is symptomatic of a tendency toward matters relating to the wider polity 24 Create a number of distinct sectors of study (this is a management feature). While this is a highly political decision, interested parties will lobby programme managers or any steering committee to ensure inclusion of their particular interests 25 Be organised around a limited number of expert/stakeholder panels. In more recent exercises, the number and identity of fields is not fixed but emerges as the programme evolves. The German Futur programme is planned this way. The 1999–2000 UK Programme contained similar elements with panels able to create ‘task forces’ to extend their reach and to capture cross-sector issues. I have already referred to the most recent shift in the UK towards problem-oriented studies 26 Time horizons are important: the average seems to be around 10–15 years, but may be as long as 30 or as short as 5 years. Those programmes that include an explicit post-consultation and implementation phase, have a 5–10 year time horizon, even if the stated time horizon is significantly longer (5–10 years is at the edge of political and company time horizons) 27 Enable participation from a wide spectrum of people and organisations; this is a central concern of programme managers, because of a perceived need to produce results that are widely considered to be robust and capable of implementation. Experience focuses on the relative role of experts and broader stakeholders (many of the latter are considered non-expert if only scientific or market criteria of expertise are included). Experts in these terms tend to be white, middle-class, middle-aged men, so that other ages, classes, races and gender are often excluded. The

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evidence indicates that use of the Delphi process may unwittingly have reinforced this discrimination, which is properly laid at the door of the participant-seeking process and not the subsequent one of seeking opinion. The Austrian programme circumvented this problem by incorporating multidimensional concepts of expertise, relating to scientific-technological knowledge, socio-cultural matters, economics, politics, administration, area-specific practical knowledge, user-perspectives, interest organisations and NGOs. The German Futur programme is similar in scope. Foresight is not a scientific activity but it is important for it to be seen to be free from prejudice to engender widespread credibility 28 Participation is linked to the target audience for a particular foresight exercise. St ep 5 – Research elements and the methods employed 29 The choice of methods ultimately resides with the sponsor, as advised by steering groups and external contractors as necessary. Changes are afoot; the Futur programme involved different organisers responsible for selecting the research elements and methods in what has been described as a selflearning exercise; final decisions resided with the BMBF. An evaluation of the programme has been made (Cuhls and Georghiou 2004) 30 Earlier foresight processes employed by the Dutch Ministry of Education gave panels the discretion to choose their own methods, a path followed in the 1999–2000 UK Programme. The change in the UK approach can be traced, in part, to the political criticisms levelled at the methods, such as the Delphi, employed in the first round, even though it remained one of the most frequently consulted documents six years later in 2001, as well as a belief in the power of the Internet driven ‘Knowledge Pool’, which proved subsequently to be of dubious value, except as a notice board 31 The main limitation of giving panels too much autonomy lies in the integration of the outcomes and later in priority setting 32 In brief, the methods most commonly used in foresight programmes, according to the tasks each perform are: (i)

Scoping studies tend to get ‘experts’ (whether foreign or homegrown) to (a) review foresight experiences elsewhere, (b) provide an overview of the national research system, and (c) arrive at possible options for a national foresight exercise. Sensitive choice of methods is needed because of the role played by scoping studies (see Step 1). The methods used include desk-based literature searches, visits to other countries and interviews with key actors in the research system. For repeat programmes, a scoping study is often carried out to make use of growing internal and external experience

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(ii) Identification of participants is not straightforward; much depends on the extent and nature of the consultation process to be used later. For example, all survey methods require a large a body of ‘expert’ respondents. Creation of expert panels has many pitfalls and requires much care for success. In both situations, the reliability of the conventional process of recommendation by key organisations, such as professional societies, industry associations and government departments or the use of pre-existing databases, is questionable. The most rigorous and ambitious method of participant identification is co-nomination, first used in the 1994–5 UK programme and later in South Africa and Austria. The German Futur and 1999–2000 UK programmes rely to a large extent on web-based participation; the success of neither programme is known yet. Theoretically, the Internet allows anyone to participate, although its effectiveness in eliciting responses remains largely to be tested (iii) Raising awareness is particularly important for those exercises where a number of people are required to complete questionnaires, such as in survey methods. In the German, Hungarian and 1994–5 UK Programmes, open seminars were held to raise awareness of what was going on, as well as to elicit feedback on and commitment to the planned processes. All public programmes ensure that key actors are kept informed of progress through verbal briefings or newsletters (iv) Bench marking assesses existing national strengths and weaknesses in a given area. The data for this assessment can be qualitative, relying on the opinions of key figures in a particular area through a Delphi, or it can be quantitative, relying on bibliometrics or comparative GERD statistics, in the case of S&T, and on any number of competitiveness measures in the case of industry. A combination of the two is not uncommon, with this decision often being left to the discretion of panels (v) Constructing scenarios and Delphi topics has nearly always been done within panels, although the French and first German Delphi exercises directly translated the topic statements from the Japanese. In South Africa macro-scenarios were used to guide panels in their deliberations while the Austrian and 1998 German Delphi exercises sought opinions on Megatrends (vi) Wide consultation led to the adoption of the Delphi method in Japan, Germany, France, the UK, South Africa, Austria, Hungary and Spain. Workshops and seminars, as used in Australia and elsewhere, are a common form of consultation in the wider community; scenarios and brainstorming are the dominant methods used. Use of the Internet in the 1999–2000 UK and German programmes is intended to increase the involvement of the wider community

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(vii) Priority setting involves complex judgements that lead panels into voting procedures to rank possible activities. While there is an appearance of method, this is not often applied rigorously because of the complicated nature of the ranking criteria which have a similarity to SWOT analysis. The desirability of weighting these criteria, whilst recognised, is rarely, if ever, carried out (viii) Dissemination by written reports, workshops and presentations can be assisted by the awareness strategy ((iii) above) and wide consultation, since these create a receptive audience for a programme’s outcome. Experience shows that dissemination, in even well-publicised programmes, enjoys only limited recognition so that it becomes a long-term activity involving a different brand of ‘foresight champion’. Step 6 – Reflexivity: evaluation and monitoring 33 Very few traditional evaluations have been carried out on national foresight studies. In most countries foresight was a new policy tool and its influence was not well understood 34 Programme managers have difficulty in modelling foresight’s impact trails so evaluation has been considered impractical and the attitude has been ‘wait and see.’ But see 33 above 35 The few ex-post evaluations that have been carried out were based on simple questionnaire surveys. The situation is changing now as the 1999–2000 UK Foresight Programme and the German Futur programme both incorporate evaluation capabilities. Evaluations have been made of the Futur programme (Cuhls and Georghiou 2004) and of the UK programme (Anon 2006). The emphasis in both cases is on learning as well as accountability and effectiveness, reflecting the uncertainty about impact trails and the fuzziness of long-term attribution 36 The high profile and, at least in the UK case, the pervasiveness of foresight, has meant that the calls for evaluation have grown so loud and so widespread, that programme managers now consider it to be a core task, demanding considerable attention and funding 37 Quality controls (whether an exercise is said to be ‘delivering’) have tended to draw on comparisons with international studies and the expectations of key actors as their referents. Value (or otherwise) has tended to be assigned to exercises through the views expressed by their audiences, although few systematic approaches have been employed to elicit these views. Indeed, most of this ‘evidence’ is anecdotal although some countries, such as Germany, have organised specific workshops to elicit feedback on the approaches used and their impacts 38 Milestones need to be set throughout the life of a study, particularly during the more intensive consultation phases; milestones are intrinsic to

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a study and depend on the methods used. Typically, milestones are laid out in project plans that are usually widely distributed to those closely involved in a study, so that its overall rationality is clear and progress is easily measured 39 Milestones can also arise externally as in the UK where, in 1994–5, ministers demanded that priorities be identified in time for inclusion in the annually published Forward Look for S&T; this can lead to tasks being rushed, although such externally imposed milestones can also have the benefit of concentrating minds 40 Reporting lines are important for clear project management. In studies sponsored by a government ministry it appoints (a) a relatively independent steering committee to guide the overall programme strategy (although this may be dominated by senior officials) and (b) a small unit of officials to take care of day-to-day operations. The latter tends to be answerable to both the ministry and the steering committee, and is often the official conduit between expert panels, the ministry and steering committee 41 Expert panels are commonly given milestones with progress towards them reported at regular intervals in written or oral reports. A hierarchy of reporting lines, from the panels at the bottom to the ministry at the top, seems to be the norm. However, this view is simplistic; most participants in a foresight study are volunteers who commonly expect something in return for their time and efforts – this may simply be the credit attached to panel membership or the opportunities offered by being ‘on the inside’. However, in the 1994–5 UK Programme these volunteers made demands for action on their findings and thus became customers for government commitment to implementation. Ministers and senior officials were called upon time and again to report what the government intended to do about this or that issue. Step 7 – Resources 42 Foresight studies can be expensive, particularly if an active implementation strategy is to be followed 43 The German Delphi exercises have cost between 1–1.8 million DM, whilst the first UK Foresight Programme cost around £1.5 million per annum. Data for the other programmes is not available, but resource constraints are known to have been a limiting factor in some cases 44 Consultation periods are the most resource intensive, particularly in human terms. Normally, workshops and questionnaires have to be organised and the wider participant resource must also be managed. Thus, the normal complement of five or six core staff in a foresight unit can easily increase temporarily to more than twenty staff (including outside contractors) 45 It remains unclear whether the use of the Internet in foresight programmes will have any impact on their costs.

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Step 8 – Programme Level 46 All the programmes to which the analytical framework has been applied were national ones, though international comparisons pervade them all. Most studies have little to say about outcomes for the regions. Step 9 – Nature of Intervention 47 Intervention simply refers to activities undertaken in response to the outputs of a foresight study 48 Concrete outputs refer to critical technology lists, priorities, recommenda­ tions, scenarios and written accounts of future trends and issues 49 How and why organisations have made use of the outcomes from a foresight programme is not readily apparent, nor is assessing it a straightforward task (see Step 6). The much-vaunted ‘process’ benefits of foresight are even less clear 50 Programme managers must, in some sense, act as social programmers by stating the anticipated impacts of an exercise so they will commonly seek to shape a programme’s outputs according to the perceived needs of a given audience 51 In some studies, such as in the Netherlands, this social programming is devolved to the panels themselves, though the same devolution also occurred during the implementation phases of the (supposedly) more dirigiste 1994–5 UK Programme 52 Studies that claim to be non-interventionist include the Japanese, German and French Delphi studies, where there was neither strategic implementation, nor priority setting, nor binding decisions based on the outcomes; the aim was for organisations to decide for themselves their own technological priorities 53 It can be argued that foresight studies are weak, directive policy instruments, which is where the process benefits of taking part become significant, since actors choose of their own accord to utilise the outputs or methodologies in their own organisational settings 54 Some studies have been openly interventionist, most notably the UK Programme, which employed more people during the Programme’s implementation phases than during the consultation phase. However, neither officials nor panel members could ignore the existing dynamics at work in the innovation landscape and Programme activities have sought to fit with these wherever possible through complex processes of negotiation. Step 10 – Outcomes 55 Foresight activities can generate widely differing expectations of the process itself and the outputs generated vis-à-vis the national innovation

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landscape. Most of these can be accommodated within foresight, which is one of the main strengths of the process, but some expectations can be overly optimistic and should be kept in check. Step 11 – Renewal 56 Although taking considerable time to bring together, the production of critical technology lists and the publication of the results of major Delphistyle studies tend not to be followed by a proactive interventionist agenda. In a sense, these can be thought of as projects rather than programmes, where an example of the latter is perhaps best demonstrated by the UK Programme 57 Programmes need to be repackaged periodically to maintain momentum and retain the interest of target audiences; this is perhaps the main reason for repeating foresight exercises every five years or so, though it is often claimed that rapid technological change demands it.

Ch a p t e r 4

Fo re sigh t i n i n d u s t ry

Indecision, n: The chief element of success; ‘for whereas,’ saith Sir Thomas Brewbold, ‘there is but one way to do nothing and divers ways to do something, whereof, to a surety, only one is the right way, it followeth that he who from indecision standeth still hath not so many chances of going astray as he who pusheth forwards’ The Devil’s Dictionary How and why does foresight in industry differ from its institutional counterpart in the public domain? In this chapter I shall draw extensively on papers I wrote from the 1970s onwards to answer these two questions. All companies practice foresight, and have always done so, though not necessarily as a formal activity conducted by a recognisable ‘department’ shown in its organisation chart. To industry and business, which I shall refer to under the simple word ‘business’, anticipation (or foresight) is the basis of successful continuity and always has been; it is not a newly discovered or optional activity. I make no apology for the sometimes heavy influence of personal experience from nearly 45 years in business and industrial research. No one in business would claim more than that foresight has been, is and will remain a fundamental activity. Equally, no one would expect management anticipation to lead always to happy and advantageous outcomes; no form of anticipation is risk free because the future is unknowable on even the shortest time horizon. Company policy, strategy and tactics, in all the many aspects of business, depend on foresight, since all business activity is future oriented. No company can conduct its business in the past, though many conduct their business on the basis of the past, relying on the momentum it has generated to persist long into the future. The consequences of this procedure begin my reflections on foresight in business. Businesses always have to remember that they exist to serve some perceived or actual need in the polity; without that the business will cease or it must go through the arduous and uncertain process of reinventing itself. After World War II company planning was influenced by notions of model building that evolved from operational research; it frequently resembled a Cartesian process. The post-war environment of shortages encouraged the

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belief in straightforward production planning despite the political uncertainties of the ‘cold war’ and the ever-threatening background of nuclear Armageddon. Impartial planning frameworks and certainty of their outcome were expected, rather than the reality of dealing with the aggregations of overt and covert ambitions, and agendas of innumerable people of greater or lesser power within and outside an organisation. Throughout the 1940s, 1950s and the early 1960s this form of semi-Cartesian logic was sufficient in spite of fractious industrial relations in many countries and the presence or dominance of self-interest, typified by the UK’s ‘I’m all right Jack’ paradigm, in society. The late 1960s onwards saw the collapse of this form of certainty for many different reasons, and not simply the oil crisis that followed the Yom Kippur war in October 1973. The oil shortage and price hikes that followed in 1974 and 1979, may have brought one kind of uncertainty, but the development of pressure and single issue groups, in the USA, Europe and globally, changed the shape of the business and regulatory environment in ways that were totally unexpected by many corporations. International terrorism strode onto the world stage to introduce another kind of uncertainty as many companies found to their cost. The aftermath of the 1968 student campus riots in the USA and in France continued to leave their mark. For many people their ideas concerning loyalty to their company were rudely altered by a merger boom, which started in 1966 and has continued unabated ever since. Individual expectations also changed in the OECD countries. The immediate post-war age cohort and their children grew up in a changing world in which travel, communications and the absence of want (for many but not all people) created a totally different ambience to the 1930s, the era from which their parents had come. These expectations are now widespread throughout humankind. At that time it was easy to recognise that business and the global economy were in the midst of major changes, that many people related to the Kondratieff cycle (Chapter 2). Many of these changes were dwelt on by Toffler in a series of racy books (Toffler 1970, 1980, 1990). By the late 1970s, it was incontrovertible that some new, major generic technologies were beginning to reshape business. Some contrary trends came into play with the publication of Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972) with its multifaceted foresight concerning the Earth’s future, accompanied by the long running need, under the pressure of a new and aggressive takeover boom, for companies to become leaner and fitter to raise value for shareholders. An article in the Sunday Times in 1986 identified this trend with a condition called ‘anorexia industrialosia’ (MacDonald 1986) describing it as ‘the then current “whiz-kids” … milking dry the brilliant endeavours of past generations of entrepreneurs, without any attempt to invest in new products (or processes and markets).’ To these whiz-kids only short-term results and profits mattered. Competitive position, market share, and research and development were irrelevant. It is this approach, all in the name of rationality and prudent management, more than any other, that caused, in MacDonald’s opinion, Britain’s economic decline. The condition

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persisted, and still does in an accentuated form ‘from the starvation of skills as demographic change bites.’ It was also possible, from the long-wave theory, to anticipate a long-running revival of the world’s economy from the early 1990s (Loveridge 1988: 689). For business these indications had and still have a story to tell, as globalisation, demographic change and shifts in the distribution of skills bring eastward rearrangements in industrial power and world markets, events that have long been anticipated in industry but not in political circles, which in 2007, largely remain in a state of denial. Foresight in business must avoid the attitude expressed in the phrase ‘jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam to-day’ if it is to make a contribution to securing the future profits and positive cash flow essential to successful continuity. There will be no ‘jam to-morrow’ unless today can be navigated successfully, a simple dictum that has often been forgotten and was much in evidence during the dot-com bubble around the millennium. As an aside, even governments need to pay attention to this attitude in all they do; the public purse is not bottomless nor is currency invulnerable. Along with most people I had used the word foresight haphazardly in conversation until, in 1974 it took on a different significance during a conversation with Clive Simmonds, a meaning that became firmly attached to business. The business world is always disorderly, a characteristic of human events that are embedded in a natural world of an equally disorderly nature. For this reason, in business, foresight helps to ensure the successful continuity of the business in a disorderly world, through being highly focused on an individual business’s needs. If formal, and sometimes referred to as rational, planning remains a controversial activity in business the role of foresight should be to identify well ahead of time: • Possible changes in the business environment • Things to do and things to avoid (the first may be more exciting but the latter may be more important to successful continuity). Through foresight, businesses expect concrete outcomes that can be implemented to create competitive advantage and improved market power, and through these to contribute toward ensuring successful continuity, by helping to ensure a positive cash flow and future profits. Interest, if any, in the outcome of institutional Foresight programmes will reflect these objectives. For these reasons foresight in business needs to be concerned with the three ‘R’s: • Relevance – the processes through which a business relates to the ‘world’ in which it works and the processes that it uses in its interrelationships • Reasonableness – the extent to which it is reasonable to extend what is known of that world in all the STEEPV themes into what is likely to become known over any given time horizon

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• Robustness – the extent to which alternative courses of action, arising from the above interrelated factors, are: able to withstand the inevitable impact of influences arising in an unknowable future; understandable by and acceptable to all the stakeholders concerned; and relatively insensitive to delay: an alternative requiring exactness in implementation to be effective is, in this sense, not robust. The time horizon of any foresight activity has then to be related to implementation appropriate to securing a business’s future position. No single time horizon is likely to be acceptable, as both short-term and longterm objectives have to be met in the interests of the shareholders to whom a company has legal responsibilities. Indeed, short-term activity will be embedded knowingly or unknowingly in the business’s long-term survival. The latter place constraints on businesses, limiting their ability to proceed with all the opportunities that their foresight activity might throw up, making responses to threats to the continuity of their business an essential preoccupation. In business there tends to be a dual view of time horizons; short horizons up to about five years will be controlled almost entirely by immediate interests. For long horizons of 20 years or more many, but not all, businesses are more relaxed in their willingness to enter open debate. The difficult area is around ten years, particularly for businesses whose activities involve much expenditure on R&D or the need to meet various forms of extended regulatory approval. For a company’s foresight, whatever its genus, must lead to concrete developments related to its business, whatever forms these may take, clearly an all-embracing requirement. Whilst the most obvious and the most welcome outcomes are those likely to ensure, as far as can be the case, successful continuity, there are many others that are less flamboyant. Two key characteristics of foresight in business have already been indicated, the exciting one of indicating new activities to be embarked upon (often typified by an unwise and risky ‘can do’ mentality) and the equally important messages about activities to avoid. The message which says ‘for heaven’s sake don’t do that’ can literally save companies from extinction, but more frequently such warnings can be very valuable in avoiding potentially damaging situations. How both kinds of message are received and acted upon depends forcefully on a company’s internal power structure and its perception of its market power. It is very easy to get excited about the first of these benefits particularly if it involves markets where everything is new. The situation can be illustrated con­veniently in what might be called ‘the business cube’, illustrated in Figure 4.1. The cube illustrates a clear movement of a business’s activity from its current and conventional form in the uppermost left-hand corner toward more extreme departures from these as the lower right-hand corner is approached.

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Figure 4.1 Business cube: an illustration of the need for foresight in business

In the extreme, new generic technology, new markets and new processes, bring with them the need for radical change within a company and possibly an entire reorganisation into a new form of company oriented towards a different business field, an event that is more frequent than is commonly supposed. It is the stuff that gets entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and business and management school lecturers excited; the first two because they know they are going to do something, the latter because after the event they think they know how something was done and wish to record their ‘view’ about it for posterity in a highly stylised and rationalised way that is influenced by hindsight. Nokia and Hoover are just two examples of businesses reinventing themselves. However, very few radical ideas actually get to this point as most business’s boards of directors are understandably very cautious about embarking on radical change and know how hazardous it can be to successful continuity; often boards of directors are simply not in a position to embark on such activity through either legal restraints or within-business capability. The second aspect of foresight, typified by warnings of what to avoid, is very interesting to business even if it seems less exciting. Such warnings are

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not necessarily in the mould of putting the brakes on everything, nor are they of the ilk of Peters and Waterman’s (1982) ‘stick to the knitting’ which drives thoughtful managers to distraction because of its stagnating implications. When foresight provides warnings, indicating the need for a business to ‘be careful’, the effect is probably more important in making a company profitable (it is) than radical change. However, these warnings are not nearly as exciting as developing something new; that will cost a lot of money with great uncertainty in the outcome; that will take the company into business areas that it may be new to (and may not understand very well) and into markets where it does not have a presence. Clearly, for industry, foresight is a paradox. It is simultaneously a necessity and a nuisance, depending on managerial attitudes, introducing, as it does, notions of uncertainty, risk and indecision about investment in new markets, products and processes, and all their associated nuances and influences. Uncertainty remains anathema in industry even though it pervades the conduct of business and always has. Just as certain, is that many a company chairman has little time for ‘people peering into the future’, a view that exhibits an inbuilt myopia. Foresight in business helps to ‘create the brisk and confident stride towards a strategic vision, and creates the endurance to reach it’ (Loveridge 1988: 679). The vision has to be ‘disciplined and not daydream’ (Haig 1984) and its value lies in creating a ‘… [business] of the future [that] will differ significantly if it is approached through a series of short, halting and apparently random steps by comparison with the brisker stride towards a longer-term vision’ (Loveridge 1988: 679). Foresight has always taken place across all business activity, including those elements of the STEEPV set that are relevant. Indeed, it is not an option: it is expected. It is as important for a business to understand, influence and anticipate changes in regulation, and company and trade law as it is to anticipate movements in science, technology and markets. None of these activities are (or ought not to be) seen as being independent of any other part. In addition, the international dimension is taken for granted; those businesses that can do so have always sought to anticipate international developments that are likely to influence their aim of successful continuity. Businesses, whatever their focus and turnover [a measure of their size] expect foresight to be international in its context and content, and that international expertise will be sought under negotiated terms where necessary. However, business policy will limit the scope of its foresight activity to those areas of current or potential interest, the essential aspect of its context. For this reason, prioritisation, with all its vagaries (Chapter 2), figures strongly in the implementation of the outcome of any business foresight activity. The massive interest in foresight in business is evidenced from the frequency with which consultants and other advisers are commissioned, either for company studies or for shared multi-client ones, to provide business with views about the changing business environment and many other matters. Public

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knowledge of the outcome is often limited by the needs of confidentiality to secure a market advantage: by Stock Exchange rules whenever price-sensitive information is involved, especially in instances of merger and acquisition activity, or simply because a company regards a report as ‘its property’ even when it is innocuous. Where foresight activity is known publicly, its content is only revealed to the extent that it seems unlikely to compromise the company’s business, a judgement in itself. Most public are those occasions when companies have lacked foresight spectacularly, with outcomes that have figured prominently in after-dinner speeches and business school courses after a good deal of rationalised hindsight. However, Whitehead’s dictum about the welter in which foresight takes place should never be forgotten (Whitehead 1933: 94). By contrast, the very success of foresight means that it is rarely recognised publicly. The classic case is Shell International’s widely known scenario planning activity (it will be referred to again in Chapter 6). Much of the scenario content is made known publicly (via Shell’s website), but much important detail is not revealed for understandable reasons. Similar comments apply to work at General Electric in the USA, Daimler-Benz and many other companies. British Petroleum (BP) publishes probably the most exhaustive energy review. On the edge of the corporate world, industry sector working groups, assembled by companies, and multi-client studies carried out by major consultancies, have been published from time to time, but not always in their entirety. Examples are evident in the global microelectronic industry, computer systems, aerospace and under the general umbrella of ‘critical technologies’. The ‘Home of the Future’ project, that ran in the UK from 1988 to 1991 and involved 16 major companies, is another example that has been largely unpublished. More openly, SEMATECH, a grouping of the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturers, publishes an international Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors from time to time. In the UK government’s second and third Foresight Programmes, which began in April 1999 and 2002 respectively, associate programmes were created, and these may also lie on the edge of the corporate world. However, the ever-present need for corporate security restricts corporate freedom to communicate their findings while there will be concerns, among participating companies, about jeopardising intellectual property rights; much will depend on the study time horizon for the reasons described earlier. There is no lack of evidence, first, for the existence of foresight activity in industry, without it Sir Thomas Brewbold’s dictum for inactivity will certainly gain credence (a form of the Lemming phenomenon); and second, of the usefulness of the activity in industry’s terms. However, there is a curious paradox about business’s attitude toward foresight style reports prepared by consultants, with or without its support. Much of the content of these reports is already known to business so that their purpose must be for some other use than ensuring successful continuity.

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It is now time to look more specifically at industry foresight activity which may be thought of as encompassing, though not with clear distinctions, the following: • Functional, involving: • Marketing • Research & Development • Intellectual property, licensing and patenting • Law and regulation • Public relations and corporate issue management • Science and technology ‘watch’ • Corporate venturing and new business creation • Purposive, involving: • Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity • Competitiveness • Market development • Product & process development • S&T acquisition and outward licensing strategy • Creating and maintaining business momentum • Exploratory R&D and collaboration with universities • Organisation development • Formal activity, involving: • Participation in national studies • Participation in EU projects • Industry issue groups including regulation development. Functional foresight is multifaceted anticipation, pure and simple, involving an interactive set of activities as indicated above, though in companies it will not be thought of under that title. In marketing, anticipation of what products and services people may prefer to the money in their pockets (von Mises 1949: 97) is a nontrivial task. Those anticipations can be guided by and responded to from the company’s knowledge base created, in part, by its R&D activity and augmented by continuing appreciation of the directions being taken by relevant science and technology, the ‘watch’ or intelligence function that is so often neglected. None of these matters should escape the attention of those concerned with protection and exploitation of a business’s intellectual property where again foresight is needed to anticipate how that protection might be circumvented by others and how patents, their own and others in the public domain, can be exploited by the company. Law and regulation form a bridge between the foregoing activities and corporate venturing for new business creation, public relations and issue management. Not only must those concerned with law and regulation keep the company out of trouble (there are classic examples of failure to do so. For example, litigation concerning asbestosis caused Johns Manville in the US to file

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for protection under Chapter 11 proceedings in 1982 from which it emerged in 1988), but they must also anticipate, as must the directors, issues in the public sphere that may bring the company and its activities into disrepute or high esteem depending on how the issue is managed. All of that requires considerable foresight (e.g. for Shell, the disposal of the Brent Spar oil terminal; for Monsanto the situation with GMOs; for major aircraft companies the successful regulatory approval of Concorde flights compared with the failure to gain public acceptance of its US rival, which was abandoned). Finally, corporate venturing, which is perhaps the bête noire for many boards of directors, embraces all the foregoing activities acutely. While the venturing issue may be small financially, it rarely is politically, either internally or externally. Venturing of any form is the physical representation of either individual or collective foresight concluding that a new form of product, process or service presents a business opportunity that ought to be exploited because of its relevance, reasonableness and robustness in its relationship to ‘situations’ (see Chapters 1 and 2). Venturing is, perhaps, the greatest paradox corporations face and where its foresight capability also faces its sternest test. All businesses need some form of venturing capability and actual activity to maintain their internal vitality, and the external world’s perception of its activities as a vital entity, an important part of successful continuity. However, in a business world where nothing succeeds like success, real or apparent failure can be very punishing. It is the pervasive effect and discipline of this balance between essential venturing and the public risk of failure; strictures imposed by financial institutions of all kinds; and by shareholders and customers, that perplex company directors in relation to venturing. The outcome can then be to use foresight to extend the business’s momentum and to focus on defensive measures. The separation between functional and purposive uses of foresight in business is a slim one; many people would say it is non-existent, a view that is hard to demur from. However, here it enables the discussion. In practice, many company personnel will be involved in both functional and purposive activities underlain by foresight style activity. For purposive activity, it is the creation of business momentum, often regarded as a fuzzy notion at best. Perhaps the best way to think of momentum is as that distance into the future to which the business can continue without adding any additional forms of business. It depends on all those factors and actors that ensure repeat contracts and business in those parts of the business cube that define existing conventional activity. Vulnerability arises from the uncomfortable notion that repeat orders may not be forthcoming; an indication that immediately forces a company’s attention on creating additional business. The other activities listed earlier under the purposive heading are the tools that a company can turn to. Merger with another company or acquisition of one can increase a company’s market presence and power as well as spreading its interests into additional fields. Merger & Acquisition activity depends as much on past as on present competitiveness of the parties involved, while that in turn focuses on market

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development supported by product and process development. Both of these latter activities can depend on policies and strategies for acquiring science and technology either through direct purchase or through inward licensing or through merger and acquisitions. Often these steps depend on collaborative work, based on clearly defined strategies and legal agreement, with small companies, research institutes and universities. Lastly, much of the foregoing requires reorganisation, a favourite managerial remedy, or development of the organisation into a different form which requires considerable foresight relating to external and internal social structures and dependent matters. Sketchy though these comments may be, they give an idea of the range of matters where foresight, not technique, is needed as a way of thinking about the matters in hand. Mostly, none will figure in the public domain but those that follow next will do so. Business participation in public foresight activity, as exemplified by the many national institutional Foresight programmes of the past two decades, is most likely to be driven by either the self-interest of particular individuals, who are in a position to commit company resources, or by what is perceived as corporate self-interest. In the first instance, there are likely to be multiple motives driving participation; some may be personal, others corporate. If a business participates corporately in institutional Foresight the reasons may be to gain information and insights into public research programmes or to hope to influence the directions taken by publicly funded research programmes. They may also hope to gain insights into what other businesses or research institutions, including universities, are thinking in the fields of concern to the business and possibly to create working partnerships that did not exist before, one of the often referred to claims for institutional Foresight programmes, though there may be antitrust considerations to take account of. The opportunity for businesses to participate in national studies has varied greatly from country to country. Wherever expert committees are used either for sector panel or overall programme management, there are opportunities for business personnel to be appointed as panel or management team members. In some studies, the sponsors make a point of ensuring that committee chairmen are industry appointees. Expert committees frequently appoint working groups or task forces that offer further opportunities for business involvement. Where conduct of the programme involves widespread opinion seeking, possibly through surveys, there are opportunities for businesses to contribute to it either corporately or, preferably, through individual contributions from business personnel on their own account. The self-interest nature of participation described above applies in all these circumstances. Similar comments apply to participation in EU foresight projects which have, at the time of writing, been limited in their scope. Industry-sponsored issue groups influence the development of regulations, such as product liability, environmental impact assessment, corporate social responsibility and the Global Reporting Initiative where the debate is taking

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place globally through the World Trade Organization and also through other regional organisations, such as the EU. The activities of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fall under the same banner. Similar claims could be made for the World Economic Forum and the negotiations regarding intellectual property enshrined in the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). In as much as all these activities are future oriented, and there are many others where business participation takes place guardedly and in low key, they involve foresight, though that word might not figure formally in the discussions that take place. Whether business conducts foresight or not is simply a matter of semantics; were that to be true there would be less to be concerned about. Unfortunately, it is more than semantics that separate the foresightful business from one that is not. Perhaps there is no better example than the tales set out by Peters and Waterman (1982) in their famous book, but the message is not the one they intended to convey. Rather it is one of the lack of foresight by many of the companies they listed as ‘excellent’ that quickly fell from that lofty acclaim. Much of all foresight, business included, depends on intelligence gathering (not to be confused with espionage) which is a close relation to science and technology ‘watch’. While it cannot be divorced easily from the notions of espionage, it does not imply law breaking. Much intelligence can be gathered from publicly available material and the use of intelligent and intuitive behaviour; this is a philosophy close to that used by R.V. Jones during World War II (as described in Chapter 2). It is not a fashionable approach and Dedijer describes it as the ‘ … antithesis of the caricature of government intelligence [gathering] (Dedijer 1978: 333)’, which is set out below. Table 4.1  Representation of government’s intelligence organisation • Hierarchically arranged infrastructures: agencies • Boards, directorates, divisions, departments, committees, task-forces • Continuous bureaucratic wars over internal pecking order • Staff experts in all relevant subjects paid according to seniority on civil service rates • Compartmentalisation to secure ‘need to know’ boundaries, with communications rigidly controlled to the ‘proper channels’ and regulated by security rules that are constantly enforced and often penetrated by opponents • The latest scientific and technological equipment • Production of multiple classified outputs in all forms of media most of which are rarely if ever lead to decisions and actions • Engagement in ultra-secret operations that are poorly managed • The delusion that failures are known but successes are secret whereas the inverse is a closer approximation to reality with their outputs being known to their opponents while remaining secret from their polity whose growth and security is the objective of the systems existence

126  Systems and foresight Table 2.1  Criteria of the ‘Jones method’ of intelligence gathering • Intelligence that does not lead to informed action is of little use • Intelligence is gathered from sources and output by subject, a transformation that requires observation, memory, criticism and correlation of widely different types of information that are synthesised in the output • The larger the organisation the more difficult it becomes to perform the above task: a small staff with great ability in the above tasks, particularly inference and synthesis is best suited to meet these demands • The principle of thinking simply, with frequent application of Occam’s razor, is the key to good intelligence work, especially when dealing with experts whose view tend to be narrow and overoptimistic, sometimes wildly so • Recognise that your opponents, competitors and others are not omniscient and ‘all seeing:’ do not fall into the trap of believing otherwise

By contrast Jones’s principles (Table 2.1) are repeated above: Dedijer advanced two propositions that are relevant to companies, particularly regarding technology transfer (Dedijer 1978: 5), claiming that the Jones doctrine: • Is applicable to social intelligence in general • Enables businesses to learn how other businesses affect their development and how, in turn, they affect other businesses. For businesses it is important to develop a broad intelligence function aimed at social intelligence that asks: • What may be the future impact of science and technology, and the growth of knowledge on businesses large and small, developed and in transition? • Is espionage of diminishing importance or simply being carried out by less obvious means that are more widely available? • Is economic, political, cultural and psychological intelligence at the national level growing in importance relative to the hitherto dominance of military intelligence? This includes, for example, the influence of the growth of ‘knowledge industries’. Information processed into intelligence begets knowledge (see Chapter 1), in this instance about the world into which businesses are moving. In the sense of the policy-strategy-tactics hierarchy (Chapter 2) this is a vital resource, so it may seem illogical to leave this topic to the end of this chapter. Why have I done this? Intelligence gathering is fundamental to all foresight and not simply to the needs of business. There are some major differences between the needs of business and that of the public sector sponsors of institutional Foresight. These

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differences lie in the specific needs of business that stem from the interaction between business momentum and successful continuity, both of which are decreasing in the public arena. In business, intelligence must turn into action quickly in day-to-day management, but must also build a picture of long-term trends and identification of specific issues that may influence a business’s world, all of which will be permeated by uncertainty. Of the two intelligence gathering processes outlined above, business falls closest to Jones’s principles in which gathering of intelligence is the greatest conundrum. It is here that the notion of detecting weak signals of change becomes important using any of the current modes of over the horizon scanning, for which the Jones method is indispensable. What exactly is meant by over the horizon scanning (colloquially referred to simply as scanning)? Scanning is the Cinderella of the foresight world, which is unfortunate as it is the basic input to the entire activity. It is a structured, but subjective process of identifying bits of information that, taken out of their immediate context and married with other similar or dissimilar bits of information, may be the first weak indication of a change sometime in the future (henceforth a ‘signal of change’). An outline of a generic scanning process is illustrated below in Figure 4.2. Governments, through their intelligence services, have always conducted a form of scanning, as have businesses. By contrast to the clearly bureaucratic and heavily structured government processes, over the horizon scanning gathers information through networks. Many of these are informal, learning oriented, and have the essential capability of transforming apparently unrelated

Though t and thoughtexperiments

Meaning

Matter

Media

Bi ts o

S

ion f informat

g cannin

Figure 4.2 Illustration of a notional scanning process

Situation with fuzzy boundaries

128  Systems and foresight

observations and memories, via criticism, correlation and synthesis of different types of information, into output related to the business concerned. The larger the organisation the less it is able to perform this task because of rising bureaucracy. This means that those people involved in synthesising the output need to be small in number, but with great ability. Scanning that is derived from the Jones doctrine can lead to learning and the kind of broad intelligence, in all the STEEPV themes, on which foresight depends. It also provides material relevant to the questions framed above relating to social intelligence where the questions may be reframed as follows: • What may be the future impact of science and technology, and the growth of knowledge on societies of the future? • Is economic, political, cultural, psychological intelligence at the national level growing in importance relative to the hitherto dominance of military intelligence? This includes, for example, the influence of the growth of industries, including those based on information exemplified by Google, the World Wide Web, Ask.com, YouTube, Al Jazeera and many other broadcasters, and government-sponsored information activity via the Internet. How information is processed into intelligence and begets knowledge has been described in Chapter 1 but here I have placed emphasis on the evolution of scanning and the anticipatory intelligence that emerges from it, which needs to have the following questions in mind: • What kind of global developments could be harmful and what kind beneficial? • How soon may these developments occur? • What might be the first signs that these developments are happening? • Where and how might the leading indications of impending change be seen? • Who is in a position anywhere to observe these indications? • What is it worth to minimise the extent of surprise introduced by these indications? • Who needs to know about these impending changes? In this context, foresight has an important role to play in indicating what to do and what not to do, as already mentioned, and when to embark on policy changes, and implementations. One of the most successful scanning processes was developed by Weiner and Brown in response to Allstate Insurance’s concerns, in the early 1970s, at the rising costs of US health care and health insurance. In 1976, the process was taken up by the Corporate Associates for Environmental Monitoring, under pressure from SRI International, and adopted internally by SRI International a

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few years later to evolve their internal research programmes. In the early 1980s the founders of the SRI process created the Business Futures Network that has continued to evolve the scanning process. Other organisations including Shell, BP, the Institute for the Future, The Global Business Network, The Henley Centre, SRI Consulting – Business Intelligence and many other organisations, small and large, have used their own ideas on what constitutes scanning to provide weak signals of change that they believe need to be part of corporate thinking. Few, if any, of these organisations have codified their practices in public; perhaps this is unsurprising given the subjective nature of what is involved and its potential importance for a business. Returning to Figure 4.2, a generic scanning process for intelligence gathering, the key zone is the mattermedia-meaning loop. It is here that bits of information, chosen subjectively, are associated and integrated in the manner of the Jones doctrine, through thought experiments, to reveal situations with their fuzzy boundaries and equally fuzzy web-like structures and organisation. The production of long lists of highly specific, undifferentiated micro-ideas devoid of interrelationships and memory is not a useful outcome of a scanning process. It is this area that needs better understanding if foresight programmes are to become less pedestrian and less fractured (as discussed in Chapter 1). It is also this area that raises the deeply philosophical and subjective matter of where and how boundaries to situations ought to be drawn to cope with the shortcomings of conventional reductionist thinking with its Wittgensteinian overtones.

C or res pondence a nd di vergence fr o m i n s titutional Foresi ght Knowledge about foresight activity in business is paradoxical. Many of its features are openly displayed piecemeal through literature, ranging over every aspect of business; rarely is the information presented more coherently than is required by company law in company annual reports. Learning to interpret these documents is a skill in itself related to intelligence gathering. For these reasons there is no strict comparison between institutional Foresight and foresight activity in business. The use and practice of foresight in industry and business reintroduces the notions of uncertainty and indecision about investment in new markets, products and processes, matters that can remain problematic in business even though they pervade the conduct of its affairs. The value of foresight is then seen as an enabler to creating a business of the future that has a brisk stride towards a longer term vision that, as far as that is possible, assures successful continuity through helping to secure future profits and alerting companies to new or possible future responsibilities. There are correspondences and divergences between foresight in business and institutional Foresight that lie in procedures, their purposes and in the methods used; these will be expanded on in Chapter 5 where the thrust of the first four chapters is drawn together.

Chapter 5

G e ne ra l i s ab l e ou t co m es

Design is really just applied foresight. It’s what you do now carefully and responsibly to achieve what you want later Hawken et al. 1999, ‘Natural Capitalism’

C ommen ta ry Ought the opening quotation be the credo for the marriage of foresight to systemic thinking? However foresight is created, those involved in it pass through processes, either consciously or unconsciously, in forming a product in the form of foresightful ideas with, hopefully, concrete outcomes of benefit to a polity. In this chapter, the possibility of deriving generalisable outcomes from foresight experience and systems thinking, in the form of a process-product net, will be examined. With a large body of empirical studies to draw upon, it might seem obvious that a generalised set of rules could be interpreted as ‘best practice’. Such an outcome is not assumed. So far, foresight activity has paid too little attention to the context in which it takes place and to the integration of its ideas. Instead, foresight, and especially the institutional form, has dabbled on the fringes of scenario planning.

T he ques tion of ‘ best pra ct ice’ The phrase ‘best practice’ is often bandied about amongst institutional Foresight practitioners; it is a contentious and possibly calamitous claim. So far real foresight has been conducted widely by individuals and small groups outside any formal framework and in contexts that, for the most part, have been highly individual and ad hoc. Often the outcome has been through a form of skunk-works, a term that has more often been associated with product development than with wider situations involving shifts in beliefs through to law, legislation and international relations. Institutional Foresight, occurring as it does in a different and constrained public milieu, sets out formally with the informal intentions of real foresight, but without the ability or context in which to mimic it. Throughout, the thinking in all forms of foresight appears fragmented rather than systemic with its emphasis on interconnectedness. If

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the notion of ‘best practice’ is something of a fig-leaf, how ought the practices of foresight practitioners change to make their work more relevant to situations (Chapter 1) rather than problems given the nature of situations? It is cautionary to begin with an example. Desk-based research is an intimate part of foresight of any kind and always has been. However, in the early 1970s, advertisements appeared on commercial television in the UK indicating how computer networks would be able to unearth unusual ideas and present them to (astonished) managers. In this way the idea of computer-based data-mining, to produce what amounts to foresightful information arranged systematically if not systemically, was born into the public’s mind. The claim is spurious, at least for the foreseeable future. Its output only comes ‘alive’ through the imagination of the human mind when associated with substantive knowledge and assessing ability as discussed earlier (Chapter 2). Long before the UK advertisements, Colossus, in code breaking intelligence during World War II, had enabled the marriage of computer output to human interpretation, creating a real form of data-mining. Until computers can ‘think for themselves’ and interact freely and imaginatively without human intervention or direction, that is live in their own world, the notion of computer-based foresight will remain a transhumanist dream. For these dreams to be recognised by humans will require computer–human interaction to have passed the Turing test; without that the two worlds will remain separate. However, it has to be remembered that much foresight activity makes no use at all of formal methods, but relies on simple intuition, induction or logical inference to identify important issues and artefacts, some of global importance, others local. How these are brought to the notice of the polity then becomes the focus of attention. In these circumstances ought computer-based data-mining to become part of foresight ‘best practice’? Varying cultural conditions alone make the notion of ‘best practice’ elusive if not misplaced.

I ntentions of foresight The intention of foresight of any variety is to create change through controversy. The context can vary from global, international, national, regional or local and in organisations such as the UN and similar global organisations, OECD, national governments, companies, local government and so on down the size and geographical scale. How well has it succeeded? Conventional evaluations of institutional Foresight programmes have been conducted, but it is in their nature only to validate the process and its immediate influences in the specified context, the real outcomes occur years (or decades) later so that a sponsor’s demand to know whether the programme has been ‘value for money’ cannot be assessed over a shorter timescale. By that time the excitement the programme generated has been forgotten and its outcomes have become muddled up with other events. A tale of woe? No, simply the way of life. There is also a difference between the context where real foresight (Loveridge 2001: 783) shocks, and

132  Systems and foresight

that of institutional Foresight, where its softer outcome may work its political implications, creating possible changes in modes of thought about situations a polity may face presented in ways that are less shocking. The difference lies in timing. Real foresight occurs when a polity is unprepared for what is foreseen. By comparison, institutional Foresight is more emollient and a polity is more prepared for its outcomes. Nevertheless, to embark on an institutional Foresight programme carries considerable risks, something I can vouch for from personal experience, and as revealed by the analytical framework used earlier. Institutional Foresight is more concerned with managing policy making in government and business across many different spheres, but especially in their major spending areas. In itself this supposes the ambitious extension of what started as technology foresight into foresight for society as a whole, while getting onto the slippery slope that leads into the notions of scenario planning. Currently, there is no evidence of any government-sponsored institutional Foresight programme having recognised the magnitude of this subtle mutation, though it is commonplace in business, where scenario planning is used more frequently, either formally or informally. If client-government’s expectations have shifted unknowingly toward those associated with scenario planning, then institutional Foresight as practiced cannot deliver what clients may be expecting for reasons that will become obvious in Chapter 6. Despite this there is now a well-embedded belief in governments that the ‘foresight process’ can deliver some rather ill-defined benefits that will enhance public policy making, by using their outcome to help formulate the creative and restrictive limits to policy, described in Chapter 2, accompanied by the identification of the associated levers, or policy instruments, for strategy development.

C on tex t and cont ent In Chapter 4 I indicated that foresight is simply expected in the business world, though it is rarely a formally recognised activity. For institutional Foresight to have enjoyed prolonged support from governments is an achievement to be celebrated, while the mercurial rise of such programmes across the globe can give nothing but satisfaction to practitioners; but what of their government sponsors? It would be a major task, and not one I shall attempt, to disentangle from the multitude of anecdotes and formal reports whether programme sponsors were ‘satisfied’ with the outcome. Indeed, the result might well be a further set of anecdotes. For these reasons, the best guide may be to see how institutional Foresight has changed over time as a guide to how sponsors, old and new, have seen the need for the context and its premises, and the content of the activity, to change to meet their expectations. The context of institutional Foresight has not changed greatly in as much as government and governmental institutions, such as the UN or the EU, have been their sponsor. Individually, the context has shifted naturally to adapt to the different national cultures, ideologies and geographical locations, and

Generalisable outcomes  133

the different expectations engendered by these three factors. The different expectations have caused the content of programmes to change frequently and this has been reflected in the specifications of desired outcome and programme procedures of individual country programmes, a point specifically sought out in the framework described in Chapter 3. That framework revealed how institutional Foresight has been practiced in many different ways, illustrated by a simple, hypothetical, idealised taxonomy as follows (Georghiou 2001): • First Generation: technology forecasts, driven mainly by the internal dynamics of technology • Second Generation: foresight in technology and markets, in which technological development is understood in relation to its contribution to and influence from markets • Third Generation: in which the market perspective is enhanced by inclusion of social factors requiring elicitation of the concerns of society. None of the institutional Foresight programmes conducted so far conform to any of these stereotypes but are mixtures of two or more ‘generations’. As an aid to thinking about how the content of institutional Foresight programmes has evolved, the taxonomy is academically interesting. Schartinger and Webber (2007) have taken the ideas of generations of foresight in a different direction by outlining four ‘models’ characterising the future of institutional Foresight (ibid.: 8) as: • A policy-informing tool: An expert-based conservative model restricted to informing policy through thinking ahead; to be prepared for the unexpected. The political process should be clearly separated from the advisory foresight process • An integral part of policy processes: The model is forward looking: strategic support as an integral part of policy making achieved through informing functions enabling coordination of policy making by integrating different inputs into policy formation. It could become a standard element of reflexivity in decision-making processes, in competition with other forms of policy intelligence • The model is a pacemaker and a precursor for building reflexivity into institutional Foresight and the policy-making system: serving several purposes simultaneously by capacity building for policy intelligence and establishing other institutions and instruments in support of reflexive policy making • A tool for impact assessment through which institutional Foresight would make impact assessments more realistic, accepting the uncertainties and qualitative nature of the future. The model assumes that foresight assists a technocratic assessment culture that becomes the dominant mode of decision making.

134  Systems and foresight

Schartinger and Webber (ibid.) offered these models as ‘food for thought’. None were mutually exclusive, but all depend on the context in which insti­ tutional Foresight is conducted. Georghiou’s three generations and Schartinger and Webber’s four models add to what was revealed by the use of Nedeva et al.’s (2001) analytical framework. However, there is little evidence that sponsors do other than to specify their programmes according to their specific context and content and involve participants according to both, but profit, where possible, from experience elsewhere. As the quotation from Hawken et al. should remind potential sponsors, design and foresight are tightly interrelated. Through the 1990s the precedents set by the Japanese technology fore­ casts were widely adopted, a typical ‘follower’ strategy, so that for a time inventiveness languished. The core part of many studies was enshrined in a Delphi survey and copious use of expert panels; while these varied in detail the single most important context was technology. Only in the mid- to late1990s was there a general recognition that wider issues from the STEEPV set needed to be involved. Many had been included in a minor way in some of the programmes. Only one study by the Netherlands Foresight Steering Committee (Anon 1996), included the entire STEEPV set, a major invention. Some 31 individual foresight activities were included ranging from fundamental sciences through newer technologies (at the micro- and nano-scales), economics, health social studies and language, and the humanities. There has not been another study like it since. In addition, a more traditionally organised study in Austria (Aichholzer 2001: 739, Tichy 2001: 756) included a considerable number of social factors. The new millennium has been mostly businessas-usual with technology continuing to grow with the rest of the STEEPV declining. Inventiveness surfaced again in the Czech Republic study and even more so in the German Futur project that used an open enquiry system (Cuhls 2003: 93). Loveridge and Street. proposed ways to widen the base of people involved in foresight programmes (Loveridge and Street. 2005: 41), but this has not proceeded further. In the UK, government-sponsored studies returned to a more conventional format based on specific topics, such as flood defences, use of the electromagnetic spectrum, cognitive science and, most recently obesity. Valuable though these studies may be, their character is essentially reductionist; how they would fare if presented to the notional policy matrix (illustrated in Figure 2.5) is far less clear. Much valuable and in-depth foresight activity now takes place outside the world of institutional Foresight in truly massive and far-reaching programmes relating to: • medical practice involving genetics in some shape or form • synthetic biology • the marriage of artificial intelligence, computing power and human intelligence • the social understanding of behaviour • the long-running shift away from conventional economic thinking

Generalisable outcomes  135

• shifts in international power relations and their dependence on ‘ownership’ of essential resources, especially fuel and water • tensions, real or apparent, between belief systems that in the Western world were long thought to be of little or minor importance. These are truly international situations that also have the characteristic of reaching down to influence an individual’s behaviour, which is one reason for placing so much emphasis on behavioural matters in earlier chapters. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the convergence of science and technology at the nano-scale (Loveridge et al. 2008: in press) with all its social, economic, ecologic, political and value implications. Similar comments apply to the continuing debate about the way in which the Earth’s climate may be going through one of its periodic shifts to a new regime. It is perfectly legitimate for sponsors and clients to select a specific component of the STEEPV set, most often the ‘T’ component (technological), as their primary interest. The reason they do probably lies in the history of current foresight activity described earlier in the Introduction. The longstanding desire, by no means universally shared, to apply reductionist thought to social situations that are systemic and dynamic, has created a divergence of considerable importance. There is a second reason for the dominance of the ‘T’ aspect that lies in the persistent belief that industrial competitiveness is underlain by science and technology. By inference, social well-being is similarly dependent. It is not immediately apparent that any institutional Foresight programme is challenging or has challenged either of these presumptions at a time when science and technology seem to have the capability to wreak change throughout every aspect of the STEEPV set. Narrowness in both participation and focus has been and continues to be a major drawback in all institutional Foresight programmes (to a degree it is inevitable in the entrepreneurial forms of real foresight). Narrow participation is a matter of programme specification and deliberate choice rather than an accident or inevitability. The domination of the belief in expert opinion is the reason for this choice, an issue dealt with explicitly by Loveridge and Street. (2005: 43). Nevertheless, it is worth remembering that it was not expert opinion that led Shell to abandon dumping the Brent Spar platform in the deep ocean or what caused Monsanto to make significant changes to the introduction of genetically modified organisms, particularly seeds that incorporated the terminator gene. The question of participation in institutional Foresight programmes remains unresolved and largely hidden as the polity is generally unaware of their existence. The persistent perception of foresight as a problem-solving process, involving scientific reductionist thinking, hampers or inhibits reference to the interrelatedness of the STEEPV themes, their selected subsets and their chosen components. Interrelatedness is then not pursued, though it is widely recognised to be necessary. The issue translates into questioning the kind of model that sponsors, clients and

136  Systems and foresight

practitioners have of the real and institutional Foresight process they engage with, a question of some moment. The traditional procedures seem to imply a model based on a random sampling of opinion concerning a highly selective set of regions in the landscape of the future to facilitate policy development that, by implication, will cover a wider situation than the information gathered really allows; no current procedure overcomes this shortcoming though Schartinger and Webber’s suggestions depart to a degree from this conclusion. The most recent procedures adopted by the UK’s Office of Science and Technology (www.foresight.gov.uk) are an example of this reductionist phenomenon in which the problem-solving approach is very much in evidence. However thorough these and other comparable studies may be, the absence of interrelatedness, or its limited recognition, will continue to be a major drawback until integration of the outcomes is attempted under the guidance of a systemic model of what is expected of institutional Foresight. An alternative is that sponsors, clients and practitioners really believe that their sampling procedure leads to or is based on a causal model in which the interlinkages are or can be established with relevance, reasonableness and robustness. Evidence that such models are in mind and can be constructed is sparse to nonexistent. When it comes to policy formulation, it is then no surprise that, in the absence of any model of what is expected of institutional Foresight, conflicts between incompatible policies persist (Vickers 1972: 265). For example, the UK allows housing developments on flood plains while aquifers continue to suffer falling water levels causing water shortages. In contrast, foresight and systems thinking in business must be concerned with all those matters that influence a business’s successful continuity. Positive cash flow and profits demand attention – without them the business will fail however many foresightful ideas it may have about its future. There are also new demands being placed on how businesses conduct themselves, including corporate social responsibility (CSR), their current and future environmental ‘footprint’ following the implementation of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), as well as a raft of other legal and regulatory frameworks that have been introduced in recent decades. At present the requirements of CSR and the GRI on business are mostly voluntary (see Chapter 7), but managing how a business engages with current law, regulations and attempts to understand their future possibilities has to be, and will continue so, a major preoccupation for management, where scanning, foresight and systemic thinking have a part to play. For business, foresight and systems thinking are not optional, but are essential for survival, to remain solvent and relevant – two closely interrelated conditions. Because in business foresight is simply expected, it is, in most instances, not organised in a formal fashion, only being so in large businesses. Given that a business is focused in a particular way, that will only reduce, not eliminate the fuzziness of the boundaries of situations that may influence its viability. While much of what has been said in the preceding chapters may be shrugged off by the hard-pressed business manager as ‘not relevant’, a view

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reminiscent of Lilienfeld’s criticism (1978: 191), along with expletives that foresight and systems thinking are activities that cannot be afforded either in time or cost, it is likely that even the smallest business use both involuntarily and in minimalist fashion. Some new metaphors (Gunderson and Holling 2002: 3), showing how businesses ‘fit together’, may help to expand this minimalist activity and will be introduced shortly. As Saritas (2006) found there is little evidence of systems thinking being used in any kind of foresight. So far, institutional Foresight programmes have been reported monolithically, giving their outcomes the air of an institutional view, although this is the outcome of various forms of consultation ranging from one-to-one discussion, opinion surveys, workshops and closed panel discussions. Expressions of opinions by individuals and groups, and their combination into a joint opinion is a non-trivial matter, alluded to by several authors (Winkler and Cummings 1972: 63, Lipinski and Loveridge 1982: 220, Cooke 1991: 43, Clemen and Winkler 1999: 187), but so common is the occurrence that complex reports are simply accepted at face value, much to our detriment. For example, the recent report in the UK on the economic costs and benefits of climate change (Stern and Taylor 2007) piles economic opinion, with its gross assumptions that are now causing considerable critical debate (Nordhaus 2007: 201, Stern and Taylor 2007: 203), on top of scientific opinion, with its uncertainties, to make claims that do not stand up well when examined using the NUSAP system. Indeed, this is a classic example of how behavioural traits become enmeshed with foresight, as that is what the Stern report is, without setting out the possibly profound influence this has on the outcome. The combination of, for example the VALSTM1 behavioural typology, ecological economics, the NUSAP system and subjective opinion, systemically could pose some devastating questions to the outcome of many institutional Foresight programmes, and much real foresight too. Not much attention has been given to matters of these kinds to date. It is time to reflect on some of the points that have emerged already; this is done in Table 5.1. It is time to move further into the interrelated issues of the narrowness of participation, modelling of the procedure, behavioural influences, and their dynamic-cum-systemic effects that probably pose the most difficult concerns facing all foresight, but the institutional variant in particular.

C hange in f o resight If foresight is to change then it is best to ask ‘Change from what?’ There seem to be three current models indicating that foresight is: • An elegant guessing game • A systematic process that produces a chaotic set of notions about the future related to a specified set of interests

138  Systems and foresight Table 5.1  Issues for foresight Issue

Implication

Absence of interrelatedness and causation

Introduce use of systems thinking

Procedures remain reductionist and problem solving in their orientation

Failure to recognise that these are not appropriate to recognising dominance of situations that can only be ameliorated and not solved

Restricted focus on only one or maybe two themes from STEEPV set

Lack of interrelatedness between all themes in STEEPV set limits interpretation of outcome

Institutional programmes conceived in narrow context and content

Widen both and widen participation to match

Institutional programmes do not challenge notion of technological dominance

Need for wider programme content and participation

Outcome produces narrowly framed information of limited use in policy making

Policy formulated on basis of insecure and insufficient information - context and content need to be widened

Sponsor’s shift their expectations

Need to adapt procedures

Unrecognised drift toward scenario planning

Incomplete change means sponsor’s expectations not met

Effect of culture on ‘Best practice’

Renders possibility inapplicable

• A systematic process based on conventional learning about a specified topic or problem for which boundaries are drawn and in which systemic interrelationships are largely ignored. The model is essentially endogenous. Stereotypical typologies rarely ‘fit’ reality in any particular case and this is true for the above characterisations of foresight. Real foresight might have a high content of an elegant guessing game, but entrepreneurs and inventors are shrewd people. Their activity does not happen in a vacuum and the discipline of bidding for investment funds forces much systemic thinking on them to set out the development of their ideas; without this their sources of finance would soon evaporate. Much entrepreneurial activity lies in the softer world of ideas that may influence the way anything from the world, down to small groups or individuals conduct their lives; at first these may simply be seen as ‘oddities’ but their growth can be astonishing and, at least for a while, relatively insensitive to finance. For example, ‘skiffle’, one of the roots of rock music, started from a few individuals playing in ‘pubs and clubs’ for simple enjoyment and very little financial reward. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones (and others) helped to change this into the

Generalisable outcomes  139

present-day global industry that is worth billions of dollars, and for past decades has influenced the behaviour of youthful generations. The combined value-norm and financial discipline forced on inventors and entrepreneurs, whatever their variety, has a temporal component that delays the kind of growth just indicated or that may even result in rejection temporarily or permanently, though the latter is a risky opinion since, as said earlier, ideas never die. For real foresight, its context and content always differ from instance to instance, but the behavioural pattern(s) of those involved, and their appreciative setting, usually have some striking similarities. Their (conscious or unconscious) focus of attention is on what I have earlier called the ‘maelstrom’ of the evolution of values and norms, since it is through their particular interpretation that possible, feasible and desirable new ideas and artefacts are conceived, perceived and ultimately expressed physically. Wherever they are located in the VALSTM1 typology (it is most likely to be in the upper regions of the right hand loop), they are likely to be seen as ‘lone rangers’ who are more likely to standout than to ‘fit’ in the social sense. So much for the entrepreneurial world of real foresight; institutional Foresight is a very different animal that lives in a different world where attention now needs to be focused. An institutional Foresight programme is a multi-headed Hydra that requires a Heracles and Iolaus to see it through to successful completion. The degree of complication, if not complexity, is created by some crucial initial events and choices, revealed by Nedeva et al.’s analytical framework (2001: 6), most of which fall into the Wittgensteinian trap of early departure into methods before the nature of the beast is appreciated: much was learned from use of the analytical framework that has informed, in part, the following discussion. Opinions vary about which of the stereotypical models described above, if any, characterise current institutional Foresight; in effect bits of each are present in most programmes. However, three characteristics are absent, namely appreciation of the situation being confronted, systemic thought and entrepreneurialism. Let me deal with the last first. The entrepreneurial nature of real foresight is set out above. I have also commented that often institutional Foresight programmes set out with similar expectations, but that their context and content prevent that from happening. There are cogent reasons for this that are ultimately encapsulated in the ideas expressed in Figure 2.7, showing how group reports tend to migrate towards the lowest common denominator: they will not be entrepreneurial. Other reasons lie in the behavioural nature of group discussions, consultations and surveys, all of which figure in institutional Foresight. These traits lead toward confirmation of known opinions rather than to inventiveness and exploration of ideas of low probability of occurrence but of high information content. Often the design of the programme does not encourage excursions into these unusual areas as the risks of doing so are simply too high for the people involved. Appreciation of the situation being confronted and systemic thinking are intertwined; both are concerned with creating a model that sets out the initial perception of the situation and its fuzzy boundaries. An example may help. Life,

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human life in particular, lies at the heart of all situations. Grasping the notion of existence is the first essential of systemic thought (Flood 1999: 82). For this reason my starting point is always what kind of life and how much of it is involved? In the mid-1970s it became clear to me, along with other people, that population growth and changing need distributions were likely to alter world markets drastically in distribution and kind by the year 2000. For humanity the context was easy to recognise as Table 5.2, which is a very simple piece of foresight, indicates, while simultaneously establishing that a situation exists. As an aside, application of the NUSAP criteria would establish that the numerical data were appropriate in numeral and units. The spread is unknown but is unlikely to be widely different from that of any survey process, which amounts to an acceptable assessment. Human population data has a long pedigree so, that while different sources may not agree, the growth rates are within accepted boundaries for the world’s population. Table 5.2 sets the context for the multi-headed Hydra of world situations where, as Heracles found, cutting off one head simply caused the Hydra to grow more, reshaping the situation with only a temporary amelioration. For the world situation – or problematique if I can resurrect that term – the cascade of nested situations that flows from Table 5.2 is astonishing. How to proceed? Georghiou’s et al.’s (1988) taxonomy indicates only and broadly the content of institutional Foresight. Schartinger and Webber (2007) proffer opinion on what institutional Foresight may be used for and assume the existence of a procedure. However, an explorer must invent a procedure, one that maximises the pace and breadth of learning about the unknown terrain and minimises the probability of disaster that could result from haphazard opinion and steps. The first mandatory step is to attempt to understand the present and how that situation was achieved. History is important, but the emphasis has to be on the Table 5.2  Estimates of world population (1971, 1995 and 2030)

Asia

Actual population (millions)

Estimated population (millions)

1971

1995

2030

2,313

3,443

5,176

Africa

372

707

1,807

North America

235

279

332

South America

274

474

919

Europe

470

506

494

Russia

235

283

274

20

26

31

39

60

3,920

5,756

9,094

Oceania Caribbean Total

Generalisable outcomes  141

‘attempt’ since both history and the present are subject to Simon’s expression of ‘bounded rationality’ (Simon 1957). For example, learning about the growth of the human population, set out in Table 5.2, imposes the need to go back several centuries to appreciate how, why and when the human population began to grow exponentially. The result will be a firmer grasp of the present, together with the beginnings of mental constructs of the kinds of information needed to begin the systemic exploration of the unknown territory of the future. These mental constructs are markers that enable the first steps into the unknown territory; they are not scenarios. For the human population, learning the history will create substantive knowledge about: life expectancy at birth and from later years; total fertility rates; population structure; and other important features and their dynamics. The Earth’s carrying capacity for the human population needs to be in mind constantly but is an objective function rather than an exploration marker. Great care is needed in choosing the initial set of markers as this step may easily lead to the exclusion of important features, leading to a more biased picture of the terrain of the future than is inevitable because of the uncertainties of the opinions expressed about the terrain from the marker features. Each marker feature will reveal a new situation while the interrelatedness between markers will affect the appreciation of the situation of each and of each of the subsequently revealed situations. As with all mapmaking, the dimensions of the grid, which the markers determine, directly influences the depth of understanding of the terrain of the future they reveal and is directly related to the intentions of the institutional Foresight programme. In effect, the model proposed is inevitably exploratory and based on mapmaking, not mapping which assumes the important features of a terrain are known, an assumption that is inappropriate for any form of foresight. Mapmaking may seem an unlikely way to go about institutional foresight. Most people’s acquaintance with maps is of a static picture that alters only slowly; the converse is actually the case. However, mapmaking is systemic and maps display interrelationships, interconnectedness and causal linkages that may or may not be logical. Mapmaking embodies both the fast and slow processes that underlie all aspects of the STEEPV acronym and of policymaking, though with the latter the fast and inherently short-term processes tend to dominate. Satellite mapmaking shows the fast processes that tend to be associated with human alterations of the landscape together with the slower natural and human social processes that can accumulate to cause unexpected disruption or even major discontinuities to landscapes social and natural. Gunderson and Holling have developed a metaphor, based on ecology, which can be used widely to explain, through adaptive change, the inter-working of these fast and slow processes (Gunderson and Holling 2002: 5). The metaphor is termed ‘panarchy’ (Note 1) since it needs to be capable of organising our understanding of economic, ecological, and institutional systems and it must explain situations where all three types

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of system interact. The cross-scale, interdisciplinary, and dynamic nature … Its essential focus is to rationalise the interplay between change and persistence, between the predictable and unpredictable. The depth and breadth of the panarchy metaphor can only be indicated here. It sets out from the r and K strategies that are common in ecology; both stem from the Verhulst equation used in population dynamics where r is the population’s growth rate and K its carrying capacity. Typically, in an r-strategy a species has a high reproductive rate in which the life expectancy of progeny is short with the population suffering frequent population crashes due to predation, disease and, on occasion, through overpopulation of their niche. By comparison, species that adopt a K strategy invest more heavily in fewer offspring, each of which has a better chance of surviving to adulthood, their lower breeding rate meaning that their population does not exceed the carrying capacity of their niche, making population crashes less likely. Gunderson and Holling proposed an extension to the simple r and K strategies by incorporating them into an adaptive cycle with two additional features that allow reorganisation and transformation in a system. The resulting metaphor is an evolving, complex, adaptive system that its authors describe as follows: Panarchy is the hierarchical structure in which systems of nature … human … as well as combined human-nature systems … and social-ecological systems … are inter-linked in never-ending adaptive cycles of growth, accumulation, restructuring and renewal. Holling evolved the notion of an adaptive cycle (Holling 2001: 392), that takes a form similar to a Mobius spiral, following from Simon’s identification of the significance of adaptation in hierarchical structures (Simon 1974). The metaphor is fully described in Gunderson and Holling (2002: 34): in two dimensions the axes are connectedness and potential, as illustrated in Figure 5.1, where the conventional r and K features of the cycle are extended to include two new ones, release and reorganisation, that complete the adaptive cycle as shown. Later, Gunderson and Holling add a third axis representing resilience, converting the spiral into a three dimensional form (Gunderson and Holling 2002: 41), as illustrated in Figure 5.2. As a nested series of cycles, the metaphor makes the point that the ‘functioning of those cycles and the communication between them determines the sustainability of the system.’ For a socio-ecological system it represents its ability to ‘invent and experiment, benefiting from inventions that create opportunity while it [the system] is kept safe from those that destabilise the system because of their nature or excessive exuberance’ (Holling 2001: 398). The panarchy metaphor can give some deep insights into the behaviour of nested and interdependent situations that evolve during the use of the

Generalisable outcomes  143

K

A servation con

r

potential

eo

rganization

n tio exploita

e as r el e

7

r connectedness

potential

Figure 5.1 Stylised representation of the four adaptive ecosystem functions (r, K, Ω, α) and the flow of events among them

K

r

K 

connectedness

r

rotation reveals resilience

K potential



con

r nec

ted

nes



s

nce

ilie

res

Figure 5.2 Addition of resilience to the adaptive cycle as a third dimension

mapmaking model in the conduct of institutional Foresight. Remembering that the adaptive cycle is three dimensional with axes of potential, connectedness and resilience, the metaphor allows interpretation, at various levels in nested situations, of how the context and content of the situations change following the pattern of exploitation (r), conservation (K), release (Ω) and reorganisation (α) that also typifies fast and slow nature of the loop (r → K: slow); (K → Ω: fast);

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(Ω → α: fast); (α → r: slow). Holling (2001) presents interpretations of several situations likening the cycle to Schumpeter’s notion of creative destruction (Schumpeter 1950). Similarly, there are resemblances to the bursts of invention followed by innovation that are claimed to typify the Kondratieff long cycle of economic and social development (Kondratieff 1935). As will become clear in Chapter 7, panarchy is of particular relevance in the development of the notions of sustainability and sustainable development. When all is said and done modelling a complex situation of the kind characterised by institutional Foresight in what it attempts, remains elusive but according to Holland (1998) it is not in that category marked ‘impossible’. It is now time to journey into the different lands set out in Part II.

Pa rt II

Scenarios and s u s t a in a b i l i ty

Ch a p t e r 6

Foresigh t , s c e n a r i o s and s c e n ari o p l an n i n g

As you slide down the banisters of life may the splinters never face the wrong way. Traditional wedding toast The purpose of the chapter is to set out the art and practice of scenario writing and scenario planning, and to show the place of foresight within both. Most theoretical matters have already been discussed in Chapter 2 but some are reintroduced here for the sake of clarity. The core of scenario writing and planning lie in the wide and deep processes described in Chapter 1, in the interlinking of learning, appreciation and anticipation that underlie foresight. The preparation of scenarios; their use subsequently in planning; their analysis and presentation; and their use by an organisation in the development of policy, strategy and tactics, hinges uniquely on these three pillars of foresight. Scenario planning arose because traditional extrapolative planning collapsed in the face of the growing uncertainties every organisation faced during the ‘Cold War’ years and particularly from the mid-1960s onward. Scenario planning’s popularity and power lie in its ability to encompass the complexity of the modern world, enabling organisations to examine alternative futures for themselves while remaining adroit and aware of how world changes influence them. The chapter will be based on a nine-step approach to scenario planning. Summer schools for the UK’s Open University and other organisations showed me just how difficult it is to teach scenario writing and planning; I suspect others have had similar experiences. The underlying principles of scenario planning must concern themselves with: A Understanding, as far as possible, those matters that are intangible and subjectively uncertain in relation to the territory of the future B Matters that are obvious where uncertainty can be characterised more objectively. Typically, A involves a mixture of what is often called ‘megatrends’; companies will also need to understand the impact of value-norm shifts on

148  Scenarios and sustainability

the market life of products and services, or the influence of legislation, such as product liability, on purchaser’s perceptions of their rights with respect to faulty or dangerous products. Generally, B concerns matters thought to be more directly controllable through policy, such as costs and prices for producing and selling products, both of which are subject to far greater uncertainty than is generally accepted. Marginal understanding of intangible factors in A leads to too-narrow an appreciation of their power and too much certainty about matters that are highly uncertain and can change rapidly, possibly with devastating results: politics and social behaviour fall into this category. By contrast, too much ‘understanding’ and too great an emphasis on what is believed to be obvious and well understood (for example, economics and accountancy) as in B lead to a loss of appreciation of the surrounding uncertainties and supporting assumptions. Numerate, deterministic planning as in B is embedded in and supported by a host of unquantified, and often undeclared, assumptions or presumptions or assertions about the nature of the ‘world’ in which planning is being conducted (Churchman 1972). And Churchman was not the first to make this often forgotten or conveniently ignored point.

In troduction Scenario building and scenario planning depend on foresight; neither can exist without anticipation of trends, events and discontinuities, the so-called wild card. The processes involved are learning oriented and more of an art form than an activity with a well-established theoretical base. Indeed, the word scenario is meat for the playwright as it means the skeleton of a play, giving the outline of the plot, particulars of scenes, situations and the main characters. The word scenario is now used so indiscriminately as to debase the activity that it commands: the same fate as has befallen foresight and systems. Sadly the debasing is now spilling over into a tendency to equate institutional Foresight with scenario planning, an activity that is far more demanding and different in character to any Foresight programme. Despite the prolific and indiscriminate use of both terms, ‘how to do texts’ are relatively rare and those that exist too often tend not to dispel the mystique that surrounds the subject, much like foresight itself. Too often learners look for instruction sets or recipe books where, in my view, none exist and would be inappropriate to the task in any event. The best that can be offered is notional processes according to my own preferences and experience. While these are unique, other authors (e.g. Schwartz 1991) have set out their own preferred processes though to some extent all the processes can and do have some resemblance to one another. However, a book on foresight would be incomplete without a journey in the realm of scenarios and scenario planning. Such is the tight relationship between foresight, scenario preparation and scenario planning, that it is a puzzle that the connection is not made more explicit as their anticipatory basis is subsumed under the mystique of the processes of both.

Foresight, scenarios and scenario planning  149

Popularis ation in cont ext In human societies plays and storytelling have a very long history. It is a matter of debate whether these arts have influenced human societies in ways that the modern form of scenario writing and scenario planning cannot. Theatre, television plays and docudramas as wells as documentaries about current and future issues all depend on (often undeclared) scenarios and reach far wider audiences than any formal scenario planning. However, these are mostly events whose impacts have the shape of a spike with a long tailed decay. Where the influence of art may be a matter of minutes to days, leaving a low-level long tail of influence, the influence of scenario writing is intended to persist over many years or decades and there is evidence from work by Kahn (e.g. Kahn 1967); the Meadows (Meadows et al. 1972, 1992); Hackett (1978, 1982); Taylor (1972) and Feynman (1959) that indeed it does. By comparison, scenario planning is relatively new or newly rediscovered (Schnaars 1989: 161) being most publicly instituted and acclaimed at Shell International. The common claim is that scenario planning gained in popularity following the first ‘oil shock’, sparked by the Yom Kippur war in October 1973. While there is much to support this claim it does not stand up to scrutiny. Scenarios were used extensively during the Second World War and in the immediate post-war years to ‘plan’ for the possibilities of thermonuclear war and the ‘Cold War’. During these immediate post-war years it was possible for planning in civil society, including industry, to rely on mechanistic (Cartesian) and extrapolative planning processes, often because product shortages and rising expectations for material standards of living presented what seemed to be an economically defined world in which all relationships were simple and well defined. The events of October 1973 were probably the final ‘nail in the coffin’ of this attitude world wide, but it followed a pervasive series of events including the long take-over and merger boom of the 1960s that destroyed company loyalty; rising and forced unemployment; the expropriation of oil assets in Iran in 1952; the failed Suez war in 1956 and the Hungarian uprising in the same year; student riots and the Prague Spring in Europe in 1968; the US campus riots; the US defeat in Vietnam in 1972; the appearance of international terrorism; the Breshnev doctrine in Russian foreign policy; and other events that destroyed the comfortable post-war feeling of economic and social certainty, though against the persistent background of thermonuclear holocaust. It was this collapse of certainty that led to a crisis among the planning fraternity to be followed by a frantic search for some way of ‘restoring control’ over events. Scenario planning strode onto the scene to a great deal of puzzlement, a feeling that its proponents have never really dispelled. The context of the rise of scenario planning was then the collapse of the pseudo-certainty that had pervaded business and civil society in the two decades immediately after the end of World War II. What of its content?

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C on tent and w ha t i t offers Scenarios offer the planning fraternity the opportunity to include and embrace uncertainty in their thinking; scenarios are thought experiments that enable events and trends that would not otherwise be brought to the surface, to be legitimised. Scenarios are not predictions, but as with the skeleton of a play, a scenario in planning needs to include possible future situations, their scenes, their boundaries and their actors, all of which will be encompassed by the STEEPV set. From earlier chapters the emphasis on situations and not problem solving will be recognised as deliberate. Similarly, all experiments require discipline and the thought variety is no exception so that scenarios without a disciplined sense are nonsense. The sense of any scenario must lie in its relevance and reasonableness, the first two of the three ‘R’s; these bring many other features into play. Scenarios may exhibit many of the features of systems but holism is not one of them, since the entire set of scenarios that surround the possible futures of any situation is beyond human comprehension as Simon’s rule of bounded rationality (Simon 1957) comes into play. While boundary setting is antithetical to the study of situations (see Chapters 1 and 2) it becomes inescapable as scenarios are developed if they are to retain their credibility. Scenarios may not be holistic but their content, as with any experiment, needs to include as many of the events and trends relating to a situation that can be perceived readily or conceived from intelligence gathering (Jones 1978) or from elicitation of opinion from anyone related to the situation. Here there is a need to observe the gradation of subjective knowledge, originally described by Dalkey (1969), but redeveloped here in a more exhaustive way in Figure 6.1. In any scenario, the inclusion of matters arising from conjecture is clearly a delicate judgement. Lastly, in these general comments about the content of scenarios any situation is systemic and this has to be characterised through

Assertionswith littleornoevidence

Assertionswith evi den ce

Imaginativeopinion orspeculation

Conjecture e Figure 6.1 Role of speculation and conjecture in foresight

Knowledge

Foresight, scenarios and scenario planning  151

the interrelatedness of all the components; scenarios cannot represent one part of a situation independently from others. For example, the situation that a company finds itself in and scenarios for its future must include the interrelatedness between internal and external components as the parts work in a gestalt fashion. There are many technical matters relating to scenario writing and it is time to move on to these in preparation for the discussion of a scenario planning procedure.

S cenar ios as ment a l models Scenarios are representations of mental models; how these develop was described earlier (Chapter 2) and will not be repeated here except to say that mental models are representations in the mind that guide actions in the real world. All mental models are limited by their partiality. While the notions of holism are sometimes attached to mental models, the fallibility of that notion is readily apparent from the principle of bounded rationality (Simon 1957) as already indicated. Scenario writing also makes an unusual demand for the suspension of existing mental models so that speculative ones can be developed in the context of the unknown future. Suspension of current mental models is a common feature in all thought experiments and the extent to which this can be done makes the difference between what I shall later call the ‘so what?’ scenario and those that can shift perceptions onto different planes. In the present context, scenarios represent models of the future (history and other disciplines frequently use scenarios but do not refer to them as such) and are synthetic, involving synthesis, as all such representations must be. It is inappropriate to refer to scenarios as analytic or to their being an ‘analysis of the future’; both of these references are in evidence. The synthesis versus analysis argument is a sterile one that I shall not pursue. Scenario writing clearly requires foresightful information or ideas relating to the future that can be synthesised into alternative possibilities for the future.

B oundar y s ett ing Synthesis invokes several other important matters, the first of which is boundary setting. Throughout I have emphasised the notion of situations rather than problems as the focus of attention; the reasons for this were discussed in Chapters 1 and 2. Boundary setting for situations requires a different mindset to the complementary process of problem solving. The latter posits the existence of a definable set of elements that can be set within well-defined boundaries, as the reductionist mode of thought would require, even if their interrelatedness is not clearly understood. However enigmatic the problem statement may be, there is an underlying assumption that an understanding or a solution is possible, the outcome being resolution. Situations cannot be thought of in this way as their relationship to scenario writing makes clear (they are an essential feature of it).

152  Scenarios and sustainability

Situations occur in cascades, one leading to another, just as one act in a play leads to another. As a result there are multiple boundaries that are themselves not well defined, but are driven by the context and content of each scenario in the multiple set of scenarios. Boundaries in the sense used here can only be appreciated through an individual’s appreciative setting or behavioural pattern (see Chapter 1) which depends on the experience and learning that lies at the core of any scenario project. Boundary setting is then a highly subjective matter that depends on the response to the questions Who and what are important to the situations and their cascade? Checkland, in his development of his soft systems approach, suggests that boundaries may be described (Checkland 1981) as the ‘… area within a formal systems model … within which the decision-taking process of the system has the power to make things happen, or to prevent them from happening.’ He goes on to suggest that, ‘[m]ore generally, a boundary is a distinction made by an observer which marks the difference between an entity he/she takes to be a system and its environment.’ While this is a more static description than I have in mind, it is essentially encapsulated by the questions who? and what? Checkland’s statement has one weakness, the notion that the observer is somehow outside the system; this is not true because by the very act of observing, the observer becomes part of the system. Boundary setting is then always done subjectively from within the system carrying with it the cultural and mental baggage of those involved. In many senses, especially in variations of the soft systems approach, boundary setting may be underlain by the principles of set theory – grouping together trends and issues, actors and factors, that clearly belong together, even if their interrelationships are not clear and learning from how these sets intersect – in this way identifying common elements that exert powerful influences. Throughout, boundary setting is pervaded by bounded rationality, with its claim of the limitations of the human mind to comprehend complex and dynamic situations; this alone diminishes the claim for scenarios to be holistic.

C aus ality The comments on boundary setting cannot be divorced from the notion of causality. Much play is made in scenario planning of causal linkages; these need to be treated with caution and understood in the following way. Causal relations between any set of elements come in two forms: analytic and quantitative; and cognitive (behavioural) and qualitative. Both may occur in the development of scenarios, but the clear distinction between them needs to be borne in mind constantly, as it is fatal for the two forms to masquerade one for the other. Unfortunately, some specific computational methods used in scenario planning do exactly that, for example, cross-impact methods which confuse quantitative and qualitative models. Much effort goes into the representation of mental models through influence diagrams that portray interrelatedness, often also claiming that these influences are causal (Forrester 1961, Dubin

Foresight, scenarios and scenario planning  153

1978). In Forrester’s (1961) systems dynamics, for example, such diagrams are effectively flow charts in which every flow will be represented either analytically or empirically. By contrast, in soft systems the behavioural nature of many of the influences means that the interrelationships are qualitative and open to multiple interpretations that can lead to quite different structures, according to the behavioural patterns of the protagonists. Indeed, this is typical of situations. Perhaps the most difficult situation is one where causal relations are a mixture of the two kinds. Too often this leads to the ‘numbers’ acquiring a magic of their own and, through their misuse, other qualitative factors are simply overridden. The conclusion has to be that while casual relationships are relevant to scenario building, the claim for each needs to be examined (and tested) carefully to agree its characteristics, i.e. whether its direction is forward or backward or bi-directional; whether its characteristic is feedback or feed-forward; whether the feed action is positive or negative. Despite all that is claimed for them, influence diagrams are often expressions of belief rather than of demonstrable logic. With this stricture in mind their usefulness in structuring ‘causal’ linkages and the general ‘shape’ of a situation is overwhelming.

E v en t s trin gs The above matters lead inevitably to the assembly of the event strings that are the skeletons of the scenarios themselves, each of which describes a situation and its evolution. The learning basis of scanning (for weak signals of change) and of foresight are intended to enable coping with situations as they evolve and to anticipate or shape the way that evolution progresses into the future. Anticipatory learning then needs to have Jones’s (1978) characteristics of intelligence gathering and learning leading to the creation of a library of anticipations comprising trends, issues and events relevant to the time horizon of the scenarios. Event strings are composed of anticipations drawn from the library and placed in alternative sets of sequences that, when examined critically, are thought to be free of inconsistencies and impossibilities; the logic required by causality may or may not be satisfied for the reasons given in Chapter 2. None of this rules out or should rule out, the possibility that some event strings may be counter-intuitive in some aspects or in their entirety. The library of anticipations ought to contain entries in all the six themes of the STEEPV set, as any real-world situation will have elements from each theme. There has been some criticism of the use of the STEEPV set (van der Heijden 2005 [1996]) as a way of organising information as its use is claimed to negate the systemic relations between anticipations. There is no need for this to occur and, indeed, it ought not to through the process of assembling event strings. The same author makes extensive reference to the use of a more limited set (STEP) later in his discussion, omitting the second E (Ecology) and the V (Values) themes, both of which are vital constituents in the library. The anticipation in the library needs to meet the criteria of relevance, reasonableness and robustness, where

154  Scenarios and sustainability

relevance concerns the ‘process of relating’ or dynamic interconnectedness and its limits; reasonableness concerns possible extensions of knowledge over the time horizon; and robustness concerns how comprehensible and adaptable the resulting scenarios are. This leads to the need to examine the unusual nature of the information on which the anticipations are based. Intelligence and anticipation from a Jones-based process (1978), emerge from memory, counter-intuitive interpretation of the commonplace, and careful interpretation of the unusual, the unexpected or speculation. There are no methods of measuring the future, but the last two elements of Funtowicz and Ravetz’s (1990: 28) NUSAP scheme, assessment and pedigree, enable some judgements to be made about the quality of the information enshrined in each anticipation in the library. Assessment allows quantitative and qualitative, or linguistic, descriptions of the vagueness or ambiguity of the information, while pedigree introduces the otherwise excluded beliefs related to the origin of the information, the how? why? who? when? questions that relate to what the information is and where it came from. Understanding the information flowing from any scanning process is of critical importance; this has to be done in the face of ambiguity while simultaneously searching for consistency, rigour and the quality referred to by the NUSAP scheme in the same information – a paradoxical state of affairs. It is usual to resort to expert opinion, either as the source of information in the first place or later in judging the information emerging from scanning within the terms of the paradox referred to above. Predictability versus importance is a further element of the paradox. Opinion may be drawn to support matters that are believed to be more likely, in preference to those that are lesser known and accompanied by obscurity or ambiguity but whose potential future influence may be catastrophic, devastating or a serious discontinuity. The way I have phrased this last sentence typifies the language of the discussion concerning information while also posing some questions about the nature and value of expert opinion. In the Jones (1978) sense, expert opinion is described as ‘Intelligence … gathered by source and output by subject; this requires an internal transformation requiring observation, memory, criticism, and correlation of different types of information which is then given expression to in a synthesised output.’ The key is then people who specialise in depth and breadth, a rare if not paradoxical combination of capabilities, but not in the sense of those characteristics that seem to be attributed by Shell International to their remarkable people (van der Heijden 2005 [1996]: 222). Experts are also known (Lipinski and Loveridge 1982: 216) to tend toward over-confidence when making estimates about developments in their own field of expertise, believing these may occur with greater certainty, more quickly and with more influence than history shows to be likely and the three ‘R’s are likely to allow. Sadly, the information proffered through foresight of any kind only rarely goes through the kind of scrutiny outlined above, while there is little evidence that expert opinion is especially sensitive to what might be called ‘over the horizon’

Foresight, scenarios and scenario planning  155

scanning or to the speculative issues it raises; often it is quite the reverse, a cautionary tale for the scenario writer.

Pr ob ab ility Subjective opinion and probability are woefully misunderstood in relation to scenario writing and planning. The outcome of scanning and foresight is subjective opinion with the exception of a few universal constants. Claims for constants and variables in scenario writing arise from the writers’ perception of the situations that are their concern, including the time horizon involved. The shorter the horizon and the narrower the boundaries, the stronger the claims for constants at the expense of variables and vice versa. There are several interrelated knotty ‘theoretical’ problems to explain at this point. 1

2

3

There is not and, I will assert, there cannot be a ‘theoretical’ basis to scenario planning any more than there can be a theoretical basis to a playwright’s art. Attempts to create a theory for scenario planning have been made (e.g. Chermack 2004: 301) using a quantitative theory-building methodology (Dubin 1978) but all have failed, often because they assume the existence of scenarios in the first place and illogically place this existence ahead of the learning basis of scenario planning. Learning is the basis of scenario construction, but the two processes do not march in step, as learning precedes scenario writing by a phase angle that depends on the situation scenario planning is attempting to embrace. There should be no doubt about the tight feed-around loop between learning and scenario writing, but the nature of thought experiments requires something to think about first so that a theory that posits the pre-existence of a scenario as its initial starting point is fundamentally flawed and of little or no value. There is confusion over possibility versus probability. In science, current understanding, laws and theory set out what is possible while speculative theory indicates what may become possible within a defined time horizon. Similarly, thought experiments create ideas in conceptual and perceptual space (Chapter 1) that may emerge in physical space. Once communicated ideas are indestructible and the possibility that they will emerge into physical space is ever present. Ideas in this sense do not have to have any underlying relation to existing ideas or theoretical basis, unlike possibility in science. Probability is then a subjective estimate, an expression of opinion or of belief in an idea and in its likely occurrence in the world of ideas. The expression of belief and likelihood are inseparable. Possibility may then be characterised through speculation or conjecture (see Figure 6.1) concerning ideas while the related probability is subjective and not frequentist There is a very large number of discrete ways (scenarios describe them) any situation can evolve, each of which will be only marginally different to

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4

its adjacent scenarios. The entire set of scenarios is then a distribution in which each individual scenario has a negligible probability of occurrence. Scenarios constructed for use in planning have then to be regarded as either representing the properties of a known group of scenarios in the entire set (these may be called meta-scenarios [Lipinski and Loveridge 1982: 205]) or simply as individual scenarios, of negligible probability of occurrence, from the entire set. Without knowing the content of the entire set of scenarios, meta-scenarios cannot be formulated with attached probabilities. By extension, individual scenarios created during a planning project should never have probabilities attached to them as they are not meta-scenarios, but simply random samples from the entire distribution which remains unknown. The pernicious habit of attaching ‘guesstimates’ of probability to individual scenarios is simply without justification or merit and amounts to nothing more than an expression of belief by the scenario writer(s), complete with their inherent biases Lipinski and Loveridge (ibid.) viewed scenarios merely as convenient samples of one way to visualise a physical map of the ‘territory’ of the future. The characteristics of the territory are more important than any individual scenario. The parallel is that of a nineteenth century explorer trying to convey what Africa, for example, is like by mentioning mountains, deserts and deep clefts (e.g. the Rift valley). Similarly, looking at the future of a situation there might be mountains of prosperity and valleys of depression. A modified version of Lipinski and Loveridges’s illustration of this idea is shown in Chapter 2 (Figure 2.2) where the explanation of the basis of scenario writing is set out in detail. Briefly, for present purposes the present time is a single point of known attributes, though Whitehead (1964: 93) argues that the present and history are both poorly understood. The ‘real’ future is unknowable, but some of its characteristics (possible futures) are discernible, to an unknown degree. Lipinski and Loveridge regarded scenarios as a concise way of conveying information about the possible appearances of that territory. Increasing uncertainty means that the paths described by scenarios diverge into the future. Seen this way, the future is not one future, but a continuum of individual improbable scenarios in which those scenarios, or futures, reside side by side, the entire set being more important than any individual scenario. The consequences of this viewpoint are considerable. These individual scenarios are but a small sample of the entire set that may be sorted according to some convenient measure. Then the scenarios can be reshuffled in any fashion, as long as their probabilities sum to unity (the transverse dimension in Figure 2.2 is always probability); the probability domain of an entire lottery which is what a set of scenarios amounts to. The information contained in the scenario set is unaffected by reshuffling the scenarios. It merely becomes easier to examine if the scenarios are ordered either by a particular element or its function

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5

6

7

Conceptual thought, conjecture and opinion lie at the heart of scenario writing. Their underlying artistic theme is psychological and behavioural; this is reinforced by the recognition that the strategic role of scenarios imposes secrecy and limits the extent of any open and widespread consultation among experts and opinion formers. Single subjective opinions have to be treated with great caution as they are but a single point on a distribution of many thousands of ways the future of a situation may develop. For certain crucial factors it is important to have an appreciation of the shape of that distribution. Some authors (e.g. Simmonds 1977: 13) present these matters in a qualitative way giving a view of the important matter of how alternative views of the future can be characterised, the subject that scenario planning addresses, in terms of (i) their definability and structuring; (ii) probability relationships; (iii) measurability; and (iv) communicability Consideration of the distribution of the entire set of event strings (or scenarios) leads to the outcome that any single scenario has a negligible probability of occurring; this is not a useful operational property. A scenario of negligible probability ought to have negligible operational significance for management; this is intuitively recognised by managers who tend, in consequence, to grant scenarios low credibility, which is not equivalent to low probability. By using a set of explorations sampling the unknown number of pathways into the future, planned in accordance with the principles of subjective probability, groups of scenarios (meta-scenarios) can be aggregated (Chapter 2) Deciding how many scenarios to present to management is not easy and depends on the acceptability of scenario planning in the organisation and the skill of the planners in conveying what scenario planning has to say in the context of management’s current expectations and their views of the world. Managers intuitively understand the point made earlier about the negligible probability of a single scenario; that is not a problem. More serious is their unwillingness to accept any view of the world that does not fit with preconceived ideas. The intuitive disbelief in scenarios allows managers to disregard all scenarios if they so choose. Scenario planning must fit the situation and the organisation and present scenarios at the edges of managers’ perceptions of their world, or just beyond them, leading them beyond their present perceptions in a believable way in a form of ‘hand shaking’ (Boettinger 1969) that is illustrated in Figure 6.2 Scenarios in the region of indifference will provoke no interest; they are of the ‘so what?’ variety. By contrast, scenarios that are utterly astonishing seem detached from reality and leave huge gaps in perception between the manager and the planner; these will be greeted with total disbelief. Scenarios pitched in the regions indicated in Figure 6.2 will contain recognisable warnings, threats and opportunities which, though outside the manager’s current perceptions, can be connected to their world. Although two scenarios (for

158  Scenarios and sustainability Almosttotal disbelief

Regionofincreasinglystretchedbelief

Utterly astonishing Scenario content

response

M anagerial

'Sowhat's new?'

Unsurprising

R egion of indi f ference Scenariospitched here p S ectrum

of scenario contents

Figure 6.2 Managerial response to placing of scenarios

example) may pose warnings/threats and opportunities from opposite sides of the region of indifference, these help to create the new broad strategic vision that will avoid the curses of narrow perception and overconfidence. The marriage of this form of presentation to the notion of meta-scenarios requires some care because of their probabilistic characteristics.

Learnin g processes Most authors assume the existence of scenarios that guide the learning process – I do not. The need for scenarios depends on the recognition by an organisation that it faces or is soon likely to face an unfamiliar situation creating uncertainty about its future; this emerges from intelligence gathered in ways already discussed. Consequently, it seems illogical to assume that scenarios already exist or are created to guide the necessary learning. Rather it is the recognition of the situation, however fuzzily, that prompts the need for learning to enable an organisation to cope with the ‘new’ world it anticipates. There is then a need for two distinct steps in learning. Because the situation will at first be described broadly and in a few words, its extent cannot at first be anticipated; at this stage learning needs to be broad and open-ended within limits that begin to emerge during the learning itself; as a result anticipation of the situation becomes less fuzzy until it can be restated in a way that enables more directed learning related to the emerging situation and anticipation of it. The entire process is illustrated in Figure 6.3. Every situation will be composed of elements of the STEEPV set of themes so that these can be used to guide learning while simultaneously interrelating knowledge of the themes as learning proceeds. In effect, learning about the anticipated situation never ends but a time comes when sufficient foresightful

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Learning& Appreciationof situation,its elements,theirinterrelatedness& possible boundaries usingSTEPV

Initial perception ) of(new)situation

Intime,policy failsinpartor totally Policy Formulation& implementation

Dynamicbroad learning programme

No

Newperception ofsituation& itsboundaries In-depthlearning &appreciation withinagreedbut fuzyboundaries usingSTEPV

Appreciation 'good enough ' ? Y es

Directed&indepthlearning programme

Y es No

Systemicforesight & Anticipation inputtoPolicyMatrix

'good

Input enough ' ?

Figure 6.3 A process for learning to appreciate situations

intelligence exists to enable scenario preparation to proceed; clearly this is a matter of judgement that needs to include ways of bringing new intelligence into scenario preparation as it proceeds. An example of these steps is my anticipation in the 1970s that there would be major shifts in the way the world works toward the Eastern countries (India, China and Russia) arising from the population distribution and growing skills. I was not alone in recognising this pattern which, has only recently been recognised publicly by world leaders. The context in which this shift would take place was, I contended, geographic, demographic and political while its content would be a complex matter of access to resources, capabilities of people with a long history of intellectual and dextrous skills (although these were not recognised by those who thought of the countries concerned as less developed countries) and education. Learning to appreciate and anticipate the possible future situations needed consideration of all of the STEEPV themes. As commented earlier my emphasis on the STEEPV themes is not shared universally but other authors make liberal use of similar artefacts in their own way.

A s cen ario pla nni ng process I make no special claims for the process that is outlined below nor shall I make claims for its successes or failures as I am bound by confidentiality agreements that remain in force. The process has nine steps from conception to outcome implementation. Whilst there are similarities between all descriptions of the processes of scenario planning (an unsurprising outcome) opinions differ

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between authors on the order of, and emphasis given to, the steps in the process. However, in my view there is not and never can be a simple ‘cookbook’ of instructions on how to conduct scenario planning. An example to introduce the scenario planning process is the Interfutures project, conducted by the OECD in 1979, where the purpose of scenarios is described in the following abridged quotation: (a) The object of the scenarios is to provide, on the basis of explicit assumptions concerning … major trends, coherent … frameworks by means of which it is possible: • To assess how issues impinge one on another … • To explore the consequences of the adoption … of strategic guidelines … (b) The scenarios are attempts to describe the sequence and images up to the time-horizon 2000 … (c) … the working out of a scenario involves first the selection of major assumptions, then the calculation of … orders of magnitude with the help of various models … then … analysing and criticising … developments and the way they can be generated by the decisions of the actors involved, and concludes by discussing the consistency and plausibility of the scenario(s)’ The basis of scenario planning is not a matter of technique, but depends on learning, integration and synthesis of alternative futures for the organisation. As with all learning, particular methods can enliven its progress, but it would be hard to argue for any particular method. In 1992 I proposed a scheme (Loveridge 1992: 56) that, in the light of experience and to cope with the notion of situations, I have since revised into the following format:

Summar y : a process of scena rio p l a nni ng Step 1 Set up a preliminary description of the situation that the scenario planning exercise is intended to ameliorate, together with its preliminary boundaries and time horizon. While this initial perception of the situation may be stark, the messiness of the situation ought to be recognised Step 2 Establish a broad learning programme, using the STEEPV guidelines. The programme ought to be aimed at creating an appreciation of the situation to enable the boundaries to be derived: these ought to be appropriate to the exploration of the ‘territory of the future’. The boundaries of the exploration and the exploration itself, ought to (a) be perceived to be relevant to amelioration of the situation; (b) enable identification of the broad trends that are likely to influence the evolution of the situation; and (c) by asking ‘who and what’ is

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Step 3

Step 4 Step 5

Step 6

Step 7

Step 8

important to the situation, map out more specifically the driving forces relevant to the evolution of the situation including the organisations within it Through a directed learning programme, derived from Step 2, make explicit the assumptions that will be used in writing the scenarios; examine these assumptions for their relevance, reasonableness and robustness in relation to the amelioration of the situation over the time horizon, acknowledging the multidimensional uncertainties of the unknowable territory of the future Assemble a set of alternative event strings and trends that will be the skeletons for the scenarios From knowledge of the culture of the organisation write a set of scenarios, usually two for presentation (see Figure 6.2), avoiding one that may be perceived to mean that the organisation can avoid change, using whatever presentational technique seems to be most suited to the objective and the culture of the organisation Analyse the set of scenarios with particular reference to turning or branch points in the evolution of the situation that may constitute a crisis (with its Greek connotation of change rather than disaster) for organisations within the situation From the analysis, derive alternative policies for ameliorating the situation, within which organisations ought to work (the limits of actions the organisations ought not to exceed in seeking to ameliorate the situation) with an emphasis on adaptability in the instruments of policy over which the organisation has complete or partial control, while recognising those that are beyond its control Using the instruments of policy, derive alternative, adaptable strategies that are robust in the sense that they will be: (a) Somewhat robust toward the uncertainties likely to be encountered in the territory of the future and able to withstand the impact of their inevitable disturbances over the time horizon (b) Comprehended by, and acceptable to, society (c) Relatively insensitive to delay

Step 9 By using some form of model, evaluate these strategic alternatives numerically, as far as that is possible, and qualitatively otherwise, over the chosen timescale, paying particular attention to the strategic allocation of resources, including financing, and the best routes to achieving the desired financial returns.

C ommen tar y on process st eps Step 1 Perceptions of situations are highly individual so that at first descriptions of one should be brief at the expense of clarity. Newspaper headlines

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can be a useful analogy with their intention to draw attention to a situation, indicating that something has happened but what has happened remains unclear. Despite the lack of clarity the headline description of the situation ought to be sufficient to orient thinking toward broad areas where learning is needed Step 2 The scope of the broad learning programme cannot be anticipated except through the six guiding themes of the STEEPV acronym. Asking ‘who’ and ‘what’ is important to the situation and follows naturally from the initial sensitisation. Listing the internal and external variables begins to build the required bridge between, on the one hand, external trends and events and, on the other, internal aspirations and capabilities. The risk is that learning will become highly divergent so that the necessary free thinking needs to be matched by careful control perhaps through raising questions of the following kind: • What do we understand of the situation now about its internal and external interrelations? • Who is important to the situation now and into the future? • Where do we now think we need to get to in the future? • How long do we now think it will take? • What do we learn about now, through thought experiments, to change our appreciation of the territory of the future? • What do we need to do to improve our present level of under­ standing? • With whom should we talk to aid the learning process? • How will we monitor the field(s) we need to learn from? • How will we identify the driving force(s), the crises(s), and the learning field(s)? • How important are the constants and the variables of our vision and how do we identify them? There are many sources of information about trends in the STEEPV set, ranging from the global to the very detailed. At first it is best to obtain a view of major trends and events at a range that might be likened to the perspective from a high-flying aircraft, where the main features of the terrain are clearly visible and correspond to the major trends and landmarks in the external world in which the organisation is embedded (see also Lipinski and Loveridge’s reference to the ‘territory of the future’). The search must be for publications which, and people who, can give that perspective. Only after this initial sensitisation that leads to appreciation, should there be any attempt to look into the situation in greater detail. The temptation is to do precisely the reverse. Because an organisation believes it knows so much about itself and its situation, the external influences receive

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relatively little attention; this is precisely the point about narrow perception made earlier. Aspects of the broad learning programme now become clearer. First, there is the need to create an appreciation of the present that ought to lead to an initial appreciative setting for the people involved, a task that should not be underestimated as indicated by Whitehead (1964). Second, there is the later normative step of describing a desired final state. Third, is time: how long may it take to get there? The subsequent questions all get beneath the surface of the responses to those three questions. Many additional matters are raised too, including: consultation with others (learning cannot be an entirely self-centred process); monitoring (since all fields of intelligence and knowledge change; this is an important matter); timescale; and so on. It is important to be able to identify the factors that will hardly change at all and those that will change greatly in the chosen time span: this is the underlying metaphor of panarchy (Gunderson and Holling 2002). Throughout this step, interrelationships ought to be very much in mind. Influence or interaction diagrams should be used to plot these interrelationships, enabling them to be revised as learning proceeds, portraying the changing appreciation of the situation as time passes. Development of the possible interrelationships between the constants and the variables revealed by the STEEPV learning can be done using Checkland’s soft systems approach (Checkland 1981: 149) to create an influence ‘map’ in which interactions are shown. Variables can also be grouped together into sets which in themselves interact at a higher level with other sets of variables (e.g. companies interacting with other companies). These interrelationships are important for another reason: they help to classify the variables into primary ones, differentiating them from those that can be mapped directly or indirectly or simply inferred from primary variables. At some point, demarcation of the relevant situation boundaries must be made so that a sharper and longer headline description of the situation can be set out to enable Step 3 to begin Step 3 Directed learning can now move on, since the boundaries to the situation will have been defined by this point, to the more limited level of those ‘deemed to be necessary for the management of the complex process of development’ (Loveridge 1981: 59). How, or even whether, the directed learning programme should embark on the full process of eliciting expert opinion, outlined by Lipinski and Loveridge (Chapter  2), is a question of choice. Frequently, a subset of that process will be sufficient to help the learning process significantly, for example, by using the self-evaluation criteria for judging the weight of an expert’s opinion. Choice needs to be exercised in all these matters

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to illuminate the nature of the relationships from which the event strings will be assembled. In this step the learning programme becomes more highly focused onto matters that lie within the boundaries that have been drawn, bearing in mind that these are mental inventions to facilitate the growth of mental models of the situation whose physical expression is through influence or similar diagrams. Alterations to the boundaries may still occur but the changes ought to be minor ones. As already described (Chapter 2) boundary setting is a matter of judgement, applying the tests of relevance, reasonableness and robustness to the prime demarcation of who and what are important in and to the situation. The earlier broad learning programme ought to have set the situation in context; the directed programme should identify the content and the interrelationships. As Step 3 proceeds it becomes possible to identify the constants and the variables of the situation. Both are related to the time horizon: the constants are those factors whose rate of change is effectively zero over the time horizon; and the variables are clearly going to change in that period, either in an identifiable way as a trend or as a specific event or discontinuity, effectively forming a library of constants and variables for use in constructing the event strings Step 4 Here sets of events are chosen from the library and placed in ordered strings to make up the skeleton of the scenario. How many event strings to create is a matter of judgement, bearing in mind the earlier discussion of the technicalities involved and the best way to present the eventual scenarios to the organisation. The learning process, however it is constructed, will always have the investigative character of sampling the unknown territory of the future. Meta-scenarios, with assignable characteristics, can only be created if the basis of the process is probabilistic, in the form described by Lipinski and Loveridge (ibid.). Event strings arrived at by other more conventional processes will result in single scenarios of negligible likelihood of occurrence Step 5 Presentation of the scenarios is a preoccupation at this point. Tools for creating change scenarios have a strong behavioural component and are value full, so that there is a question to be asked about ‘whose values do they represent?’ No learning process is value free as human selectivity to favour some subjects, sources and authors over others, is a prime issue in the NUSAP system that I am aware of as I write. Selectivity is inescapable for behavioural reasons, from Simon’s (1957) notion of bounded rationality and from the sheer quantity of information that now deluges organisations. Methods of presentation, much like a play, can take many different forms; the scenario planner’s art must be to recognise the one that is most likely to be well received by the audience. To have a mismatch at this point means disaster, no

Foresight, scenarios and scenario planning  165

matter how well the earlier steps are done: this is a key to the ‘art of strategic conversation’ (van der Heijden 2005 [1996]). The mode of presenting scenarios is crucial and depends strongly on the culture of the organisation. Some will readily accept the storytelling mode, in which the assumptions are not explicitly set out, but are contained in the narrative. In others quantitative information is thought to be of prime importance: here the assumptions will be set out usually in bald appendices. There is only one golden rule: know your audience. Similar comments apply to the positioning of the scenarios on the ‘believability’ scale, as discussed earlier Step 6 Analysis of the set of scenarios is probably the most misunderstood part of scenario planning. To many people it seems paradoxical to create scenarios and then to apparently take them apart again to see what they mean for the organisation. However, it is analysis of the set of scenarios in relation to the organisation and the situation, to see how they may introduce branch or turning points in the possible futures the organisation may face that is being searched for. Scenario analysis is then conducted to: • Search for those matters that provide opportunities for the organisation • Issue warnings on matters that lie outside the present perception of the management • Identify conjunctions of events which, if they occur, are likely to lead to hitherto unanticipated changes in the organisation’s environment • Lead to definitions of the organisation’s policy and with that identification of the appropriate instruments of policy Step 7 Derivation of policies within which the organisation ‘ought to’ work, which I defined earlier as the limits of actions the organisation ‘ought not to’ exceed in seeking to achieve its purposes and objectives, is the outcome of the scenario analysis. Scenario analysis is again a process in which behavioural patterns come into play, through the highest and least well defined level of the policy hierarchy (Chapter 2), sensing those future values and norms that imply a continuing need for the organisation and its activities. The scenarios are a key in this and the following matters, which is why there is a question to be answered about whose values and norms they embody. Subsequently, the organisation’s policy is set out in a set of statements delimiting its activities using the phrase ‘ought to’ or ‘ought not to’ in the sense of advisability and not commands. Once these statements have been created the instruments of policy can be searched for: these are contained in a set of instruments over which the organisation has control, those where it has partial control and those that are

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beyond its control. Recognition of the latter is an important issue that cannot happily be ignored and does not identify with the economist’s exogenous variables Step 8 The instruments of policy can then be used to derive alternative strategies that are robust in the senses that they will: (a) Probably be able to withstand the impact of inevitable disturbances in the future (b) Be comprehended by, and acceptable to, society (c) Be relatively insensitive to delay The keyword is ‘can’ and refers to the disposition of resources. The second part of this step is that of detailed actions, the tactical step of setting out what individual parts of the organisations and individuals in them ‘will’ do within the framework of the strategy; this is very much the region of operational command Step 9 In this final step, the question of evaluation of the alternative strategies needs to be addressed by modelling the outcome of the scenario analysis to give a numerical characterisation to each of the candidate strategies. Here the use of Ockham’s razor pays off. The principle of Ockham’s razor is that the fewest possible assumptions should be made to explain something, with its emphasis on simplicity. There is a lingering belief that strategic models are necessarily complex and complicated; this is not the case. Key measures relating to financial returns, the allocation of resources, financing methods and costs, the role of acquisitions, capital expenditure programmes, and research and development programmes are expected to be identified during the scenario analysis and the development of the candidate strategies. The measures involved will represent complex matters, but at the level of aggregation appropriate to strategic management, the corresponding model need not be one of great complication. Should the reverse be the case, there is good cause to suspect the depth of thought that has gone into preparing the scenarios and their analysis. Bringing focus to the learning programmes, indicated in Steps 2 and 3, is a matter of judgement as are all matters relating to boundary setting. It is here that Vickers’ notions of appreciation and appreciative setting (Vickers 1963:  274), and my own of behavioural pattern (Loveridge 1977: 53) come into play. For the newcomer the process seems awesome, each step seeming to call for many new steps in different directions, making the process seem highly divergent. The circular (or feedback/feed forward) nature of Steps 1–3 and, to some degree, of all those up to Step 6 has already been stressed. Learning will affect appreciation of the present, as well as perception and conception of what can be achieved in the future.

Foresight, scenarios and scenario planning  167

C r itiqu e Is scenario planning and all that is associated with it a valuable, or maybe an indispensable, way for organisations to plan for the future in a changing world? Or is it simply the latest planning gimmick? Anecdotal evidence points in all directions with claims ranging from the stunning and successful use of scenario planning to the opposite, with the former very much fortissimo the latter in definite diminuendo. It is only natural for protagonists to trumpet their wares while busy managers decide that their time is better spent in ‘getting on with the job’ rather than writing press articles. There are much deeper difficulties in deciding how useful scenarios and scenario planning are, ones that stem from foresight, on which scenario planning depends, and the values, and norms which scenarios and planning express. I raised the latter earlier under the simple question ‘whose values and whose norms?’ These questions occur in the context of human physical and intellectual capability that have brought humanity to the global Ackoffian ‘mess’ that it now faces, a mindset typified by the belief, now prevalent once again, that we are ‘in charge’ of the future of the planet, an issue I shall return to in Chapters 7 and 8, while human psychology and behaviour have remained unchanged over millennia. There can be no clearer evidence of this belief that ‘we are in charge’ than the current scenarios of climate change that are producing a clamour for actions by world institutions, governments and individuals to ‘control’ the changes foreseen. Even a cursory look back over aeons of time reveals that, in the solar system, the Earth’s climate is highly unusual and that it has never been stable. Changes from warm periods to cold ones and back again were present long before human existence and scenario planning. The ultimate test of scenario planning will be if the worst effects of climate change do not occur; the word averted is not admissible as it will never be possible to prove conclusively that human actions prevented the climate Armageddon currently in vogue. Whatever happens, the biggest casualty will be science and technology, which will be seen as failing humanity whatever the outcome, because it will not be possible to demonstrate that humanity can control the Earth’s climate if the catastrophe fails to materialise, nor can science simply sit back with ‘I told you so’ if it does, as the results may be so dramatic as to make science irrelevant. Scenarios and scenario planning may well be the best change tools around for some time. The question ‘change to what?’ is inescapable, as is the indeterminacy of the effect of foresight which, while shaping human societies, can rarely be traced to specific events that reshape their trajectory. Hindsight enables strong claims for the reverse, but if there is a trait that identifies real foresight (Loveridge 2001: 781) it is that it is ridiculed or ignored (the greatest form of oppression) when it happens as Einstein, Churchill, the Meadows (and Forrester), Lorenz, Commoner, Hardin and many others show. Scenarios and scenario planning are useful: how useful depends on to whom you are listening. Its worst fate could be to follow the pattern of Peters and Waterman’s analysis of companies that

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exhibited ‘excellence’ many of which no longer exist (Peters and Waterman 1982); this is simply a demonstration that organisations only exist for as long as human societies need them. The best demonstration for scenarios and planning is to help humanity to cope with the dynamics of the human world as part of the natural world, keeping human organisations fit for their purpose within the unknown limits of the Earth’s natural system. Several different themes have been alluded to in discussing the development of scenarios; each has something to offer to the others. While scenario building is an everyday occurrence, its depth is not often appreciated so that there is glibness about much of what emerges and is used in parading ideas about the territory of the future – this is unfortunate. The study by Lipinski and Loveridge is unique in its approach and may never be repeated. However, there is much to learn from it regarding the probabilistic nature of all scenarios and how that is ignored in most scenario development. Playwrights, poets and artists intend to display passions for situations past, present and future unashamedly in their own highly personal way without any inhibitions about embodying their values and norms in their works. All use scenarios, for that is what their works are, to influence human thought and behaviour. Scenario planners have the same intention. Their implied claim is that the procedures used in gathering information and eliciting opinion from opinion formers, enables ideas for the future and the situations they will be embedded in or will create, to be represented impartially in their scenarios. Judgement on this matter does not lie in the lap of the scenario writer, but in that of the users through their view of the offerings. The earlier diagram (Figure 6.2) showing the placement of scenarios and Boettinger’s notion of handshaking is where these judgements are made. It comes down to the question of ‘Whose values?’

Ch a p t e r 7

Sus taina b l e worl d

Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable – to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. G.H. Brundtland, ‘Our Common Future’ (1987)

I ntroduction There can hardly be an occasion where synergy between foresight and systems thinking can be more significant than in the future of humankind; this chapter will present a personal view illustrating this synergy. Sustainable world? It is an inappropriate question to ask about a planet that has existed for some four billion years. Foresight for, and systemic thinking about, a sustainable world needs much preparation. Whether the popular notion of sustainability is supportable leads to many questions about definitions, of which there are many – all of which create an aura of mysticism that can become misleading. My initiation into the mysteries of ‘sustainability’ came in the 1970s when Philip Holroyd and I learned the essentials of the ‘Limits to Growth’ debate and speculated about what would bring population growth to an end. Which of the ‘four horsemen’ would bring the apocalypse? Would it be War? Famine? Pestilence? Death? Or is it more likely all four causes will occur in unison? Or would there be some other events that could provide food for the horsemen? We speculated about these, knowing that there were and still are many wellsubstantiated events that could be apocalyptic. Asteroid impact, huge volcanic eruptions, the eruption of a giant caldera or super-volcano (Yellowstone Park is one), thermonuclear war, unusually strong sunspot activity with a marked increase in cosmic ray bombardment. The potential for climate change and the likelihood of the return of an ice age was well known, though we felt, along with so many other people, that the time scale for these two events seemed long enough for them to be a lesser focus of attention. In the 1970s the forecasting world was agog at the ‘Limits to Growth’ debate (Meadows et al. 1972) and other similar ‘world modelling’ studies each with their protagonists and antagonists. In 1973, the ‘first oil shock’ seemed to amplify the messages from ‘Limits’ and placed the question of security of fuel

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supply on national agendas for the first time; it soon disappeared from these agendas and, despite all efforts, security of fuel supply has largely remained a low key matter for politicians until events in 2005 have forced it back onto the agenda. Even now, the near universal dependence of social coherence and development on a secure supply of electricity hardly makes the headlines. We also worked with the Intermediate Technology Development Group that enabled us to absorb some of their ideas about what were then rudely called the LDCs (less-developed countries), a further insight into ideas that have since become associated with ‘sustainability’. Moving nearer to this topic, Herman Daly’s work on steady-state economics, from 1968 onwards, and the ever growing introduction of mathematics into ecology, beautifully described by Maynard-Smith (1974), made it possible to perceive as others did too, that the time for a marriage between ecology and economics ‘was near’ (Loveridge 1981: 12): thanks to Costanza and Daly (1987: 1) ecological economics has been placed firmly on the agenda of sustainability since 1990. Some of our speculations were described to the UK Futures Network in 1984 (Oliver et al. 1984: 286). These informal and mainly unintentional steps helped when coming up against the notion of sustainability more directly. It was in the early 1960s that Lorenz laid the foundations of weather forecasting models (Lorenz 1963: 130); these had to await the development of super-computers before they became capable of staying ahead of the weather in the real world. Now these models are widely used and relied upon for many commercial and non-commercial purposes. Subtly, the weather forecasting models were transformed into the various forms of climate models (there are several different types) for which expansive claims are now made despite known uncertainties about their parameters and their completeness which is fully exposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2007). Nevertheless, climate models have captured political imagination with startling expediency. As with the ‘Limits’ models, the usefulness of climate models, in their various guises, remains contentious, especially as some aspects of climate science or its representation remain in dispute. As will be seen later, both the ‘Limits’ models and their climate counterparts have, in combination, created a political debate that is focussed currently on the possibilities of climate change, not in itself an exceptional event as the Earth’s climate has never been stable, having varied greatly over the aeons of the planet’s history. Nevertheless, the prospects of climate variations beyond common experience are frightening to a vulnerable species like humanity, particularly when painted in apocalyptic terms for real or imagined purposes.

Might s u s ta i na bil i t y exist ? The notion of sustainability, the ability to prevent something from failing under stress, seems disarmingly simple. Currently, in the political debate ‘failure under stress’ refers to either the extinction of the human species or

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to a gross change in humankind’s life-support system, altering drastically the conditions under which people live. It remains unclear whether that change would be for better or for worse: it depends on how apocalyptic the storyteller chooses to be. Why a storyteller? Because all descriptions of the future, however they are created, are scenarios or stories that have to await events in the real world for their unveiling. Rephrased the question is ‘What is life?’, a question posed many times in humankind’s history, most cogently by Schrödinger (Schrödinger 1944) which prompted a reply in 1995, from Margulis and Sagan, that places the debate about ‘sustainability’ in an altogether different context with a far more extensive content than is usually evident (Margulis and Sagan 1995). Many people question the relevance or even the reasonableness of the notions of sustainability and sustainable development to humankind’s current situation. Attempts have been made to represent sustainability in simple terms, but without much success (Upham 1999); sustainability is complex. Lovelock’s Gaia theory (Lovelock 1972, 1979, 1988, 2000, 2006) and Holling’s (in Linstone and Simmonds 1977: 129) work and that of Gunderson and Holling (2002) are manifestations of the complexity involved. Holling (1977) makes the difficult differentiation between the engineering ‘fail-safe’ procedure, with its assumption that the system can be completely specified, and his proposal that real ecological systems remain ‘safe when they fail’. The latter means that ecological systems never fail completely, as explained more exhaustively by Gunderson and Holling (2002), even though the circumstances in which the systems exist can never be fully understood. The notion of sustainability is not universally accepted nor is its practical counterpart sustainable development (Lovelock 2006: 3), though Gunderson and Holling (2002) present an elegant explanation of the two phenomena derived from their evolution of the notion of ‘panarchy’. Consequently, the ensuing politicisation of both ideas has simply diverted the debate away from the essence of the question, which is the continuance of life on the planet. Margulis and Sagan (1995), and Lovelock (2000: 91) describe the continuance of planetary life as requiring the complex inter-working of factors ranging from the Earth’s position in the solar system and its consequent dynamics, to the ecological web of organisms down to bacteria and viruses. The complicated, systemic nature of the Earth has been described by Huggett, amongst others, in publications of rare clarity and enormous scope (Huggett 1995, 1997). In a different and more astonishing way the Gaia theory (Lovelock 1979) is an evolving systemic theory of how the Earth’s functions have evolved since its formation some four billion years ago. The most recent version is beautifully presented in a popular format (Lovelock 2000: 91). These points of view will be discussed later; suffice to say here that whilst the breadth of Huggett’s canvas is based on normal science, Margulis’ serial endosymbiosis theory (Margulis 1968: 3845) and Lovelock’s Gaia theory are not, both having taken many years to gain limited acceptance.

172  Scenarios and sustainability

The ‘sustainability’ debate has reached its current intensity because the future of humankind is purported to be threatened, if not totally then to the ways of living evident in the ‘developed’ world, itself a questionable attribute. This is a stark description of the situation that requires appreciation of the planet’s systemic properties within in the solar system. Drawing the situation’s boundaries in this way places sustainable development in physical scales that are immense, ranging from the dimensions of viruses to astronomical distances, a range of 1037. The cascade – down from the latter and up from the former – to the scale of human activity and business places these in a perspective that has mostly been absent from the debate over past decades. Similarly, the current emphasis on environmental sustainability is misleading as it rests on a number of untenable assumptions. Chief amongst these is the belief that man is in control of the planet, a belief set down in Genesis (1:28–30), but which has been evident from the time humanity began moulding the natural world to survive. It is a belief that has gone through many reincarnations. In the 1970s it occurred in its modern format only to die again. Now it seems to be re-emerging in the guise of what humanity can do to ameliorate, if not control, climate changes. Within the situation boundary set out, sustainability has to be the far wider concept described by Margulis and Sagan (1995) and by Lovelock (2000) rather than the current concern for the ‘environment’ and concerns for the developed world’s way of life. Despite Lovelock’s criticism of sustainability (Lovelock 2006: 3), it contains a hint that sustainable development might have been a valid notion had humankind paid more and earlier respect for the natural world in which its societies are embedded. For that reason I shall use the terms sustainability and sustainable development throughout the remainder of the chapter to provide a conduit, Boettinger’s notion of ‘hand shaking’ (Boettinger 1969), between the ideas of the protagonists and antagonists in the current debate. Before doing so it is necessary to dispose of the penchant for humankind to seek definitions of subjects to facilitate debate.

Def inition s of sust a ina bil i t y: ut i l i ty o r f uti l i ty ? Definitions of sustainability and sustainable development abound and so do criticisms of them. Even obvious supporters have reached the conclusion that ‘attempts to find an exhaustive definition for sustainability seems to be futile’ (Voinov and Smith 1994). A similar state pertains to sustainability’s close relative, the knowledge society. Paradoxically neither can be specified to enable their recognition let alone their achievement: ‘To a certain extent this may be because once scientific analysis is applied to the sustainability concept [or to the knowledge society – authors’ addition] it turns out to be either redundant, or ambiguous’ (Voinov 1998). Both sustainability and the knowledge society have become political issues more than part of science, exhibiting many of the aspects of trans-science (Weinberg 1972).

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The knowledge society is a set within the entire set that makes up sustainability. There ‘efforts to mobilise S&T for sustainability are more likely to be effective when they manage boundaries between knowledge and action in ways that simultaneously enhance the salience, credibility, and legitimacy of the information they produce’ (Cash et al. 2003). Cash et al. (ibid.: 8086) go on to suggest that: credibility involves the scientific adequacy of the technical evidence and arguments. Salience deals with the relevance of the assessment to the needs of decision makers. Legitimacy reflects the perception that the production of information and technology has been respectful of stakeholders divergent values and beliefs, unbiased in its conduct, and fair in its treatment of opposing views and interests. Cash et al. went on to claim their ‘work shows these attributes are tightly coupled, such that efforts to enhance any one normally incur a cost to the others.’ Cash et al.’s notion of credibility implies the need to use the NUSAP system (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1990a: 28) when examining data, while salience faces the policy makers quandary of Barker and Peters’ (1993: 2) six levels of cognitive difficulty. Both components come together through Weinberg’s (1972) notion of trans-science, which embraces Barker and Peters’ two highest levels of cognitive difficulty (Chapter 2), so that legitimacy becomes an emergent property in society (Figure 7.1) rather than a well understood one that could have been foreseen.

Figure 7.1 Legitimisation of new forms of behaviour

174  Scenarios and sustainability Reasonableness

Social Relevance

Robustnes Robustness ess es Human values

Technological

Politics

Economic

Ecology

Figure 7.2 Influence of the 3-RRR’s (relevance, reasonableness and robustness) on the STEEPV set and their interactions

Legitimisation is a step toward a change in personal and collective mindset (Chapter 2) that occurs through the inter-working of thought experiments and real world events in the STEEPV set. Sustainability, if it exists at all as a concept and a practical endeavour, requires the triangular interrelatedness between relevance, reasonableness and robustness (Chapter 2) to operate over the interrelatedness of the whole STEEPV set, as illustrated below (Figure 7.2), rather than Cash et al.’s (2003) notions of credibility and salience. If legitimacy is an emergent property it can only be appreciated in hindsight, whereas the role of foresight is to synthesise possibilities for sustainability, incorporating the systemic thought patterns illustrated in Figures 7.1 and 7.2. Recognition of a situation in which sustainability might exist, will then need to detect events that arise from the individual strands of the STEEPV set and also from the increasing number of complex intersections between them, with the most complex of all being the intersection formed from all six strands. These intersections only convey the boundaries and contexts involved; their content is made up of the elements within each intersection, which display the extent to which events, trends and issues in each of the six themes are common or unique to any single intersection. It is this staggering complexity that makes sustainability a uniquely difficult situation, as will be referred to again later. Critics use this situation to denigrate sustainability, while its supporters flounder to explain its possibilities, often resorting to extravagant claims for them that are difficult to support.

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Given the above comments do definitions of sustainability have utility or are they simply futile endeavours? The scene can be set by Lovelock’s expression of amazement at the way the Brundtland’s definition of sustainable development has been manipulated and ‘so grievously misunderstood’ (Lovelock 2006: 78). Susan Murcott compiled a list of 57 definitions of sustainability, proposed between 1979 and 1997 (Murcott 1997), while the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) simply claims that there are ‘as many definitions as there are people working on it [sustainable development].’ By now Murcott’s ‘57 varieties’ will have spawned many more. The plethora of information about sustainability may give an indication of the current interest and expectation about it, which is being fanned by the politicisation of the IPCC’s reports on climate change. However, if sustainability is to be based in a respectable theory and in practice, there has to be more to it than massive amounts of information of highly variable quality and origin. To gain some insight into how sustainability is thought about, a simple content analysis of a well-known listing of the principles of sustainability has some remarkable outcomes (Note 1). The procedure is only an indicative one and its shortcomings are openly acknowledged. The analysis was conducted on the words derived from the listed principles (the definite and indefinite articles and similar words were removed during the initial steps in the analysis) and revealed the Table 7.1. Of the 888 distinct words, three non-specific ones (environment, sustain­ ability and principle) occur most frequently. Use of the word ‘system’, in its colloquial meanings, occurred at moderate frequencies. It was only at the lower frequencies of occurrence that more specific words began to appear. Many important words relating to foresight and systems thinking, in the context of sustainability, occurred only once in the entire set: these included words and phrases such as appreciation, boundary, carrying capacity, clean air, climate, context, dynamics, foresight, situation, stability, synthesis, unsustainable and warming. It would be wrong to over-emphasise the indications from this rough and ready analysis beyond the obvious conclusion that the principles in this list are not overly concerned with systemic thought. So what does any definition of sustainability tell us? The abundance of definitions, some with similarities, but many being unique, indicate that each is set down for a specific purpose without the need to regard any unifying principles so that each definition: • Is related to the situation concerned • May be unique to the people concerned representing their interests and predilections in relation to the situation • Will be a representation of the behavioural pattern of the individual or the aggregate pattern of the group of individuals concerned with respect to the situation effectively mapping its boundaries • Will effectively prescribe the way the situation may be ameliorated.

5

0.3

0.2

49–40

Number of distinct words 3

>50

% of total distinct words

Range of occurrence 0.6

5

39–30 0.8

7

29–20

Table 7.1  Content analysis of a listing of the principles of sustainability

4.5

40

19–10 12.1

107

9–5 6.9

61

4 8.6

76

3 15.9

141

2

50.2

446

1

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In general, the abundance of definitions indicates a healthy diversity of ideas about the nature and purposes of sustainability (and sustainable development) from which a minimum set of guiding principles may emerge, leaving sufficient flexibility to allow definitions or, perhaps more appropriately, specifications of what is intended in each unique situation. In itself this state of affairs typifies the growth of new ideas that come and go rapidly until a set of durable ideas emerge from the welter of those that are short lived, but not forgotten. In human affairs (and in ecology in the evolution of species referred to later) this is a common experience. Even academic disciplines are not immune to apparently chaotic times during their evolution, and periodically thereafter, though these ideas have been most highly developed for the nature of paradigm shifts in science (Kuhn 1962). Because of the all-embracing character of sustainability and its relationship to the continuity of life on the planet, elucidation of a minimum set of guiding principles is unlikely to evolve quickly, despite the presence of a raft of assessment methodologies related to the limited notion of environmental protection. The public debate in the 1970s about sustainability returned in the 1990s, but most noisily focussed on concerns about climate change. The debate about sustainability goes back to ancient times, but its modern incarnation began with Robert Wallace’s concern for population growth and food shortages (Wallace 1761). Two strands of the current debate emerged simultaneously, and without any connection, in the early 1960s, when Lorenz laid the foundations of the current climate models (Lorenz 1963) and Forrester developed the systems dynamics approach to modelling complex systems (Forrester 1961: 21). Just as important was the deeper understanding of the dynamic history of the Earth that was emerging, at the same time, from other disciplines. The ferocity of the current debate stems from the social phenomena of single issue groups in the ‘environmental’ field. The Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace are just two of the current galaxy of organisations that circle round the notion of sustainability. However, the current debate is but a repetition of events that occurred in the 1970s following the publication of ‘The Limits to Growth’ (Meadows et al. 1972) and the first ‘oil crisis’. Understanding of the many phenomena involved in sustainability and of the complexity of the Earth, and its life support systems, may have improved, but their politicisation has done little to improve the public perception or understanding of the underlying issues, if only because many of the caveats and qualifications attached to research outcomes are happily ignored in the search for ‘clarity and simplicity’ of presentation by the media and political institutions. The many earlier warnings and entreaties for governments to take actions in various fields were largely (but not entirely) ignored, while industry was left to make the considerable progress it has in many aspects of sustainable development, through market forces and the influence of some regulation. Perhaps this is only right. In the end it is people who will make sustainability and sustainable development a reality. Lastly,

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from here onwards the terms sustainability and sustainable development are not used indiscriminately or interchangeably as it may seem. For reasons that are explained, sustainability is reserved for the underlying philosophy, while sustainable development is regarded as its practical implementation.

T he ‘s itu at i on’ Is successful continuity for humanity possible indefinitely? From a systems view, is sustainability ‘unavoidable’ or simply an option? How do foresight and systems thinking relate to sustainability? There is something quaint about the way the current debate surrounding ‘sustainability’ is being conducted. In September 1999 The Sunday Times reported how footprints of Homo habilis had been found in central Africa, indicating a migration dating back 2 million years. Other forms of life existed long before these migrations, evolving over several aeons (1 aeon = 1 billion years) by adapting to changed circumstances on the Earth’s surface and in its oceans, that far exceed those that are the source of so much current excitement. Indeed, ‘… for the past three and a half aeons the climate has never been, even for a short period, wholly unfavourable for life. Because of the unbroken record of life … the oceans can never have either frozen or boiled’ (Lovelock 1979: 19). Life has adapted to the greatest change of all, the shift from an atmosphere largely devoid of oxygen to one that is oxygen rich and has remained of stable composition (Lovelock 1979: 67) for many aeons, despite its curious chemical composition. There is then nothing new about sustainable development in nature – it is not optional but inevitable. Successful life on the planet requires the complicated inter-working of factors ranging from the Earth’s position in the solar system and its consequent dynamics, to the ecological web of organisms down to bacteria; in these wide limits human activity has little control, but humanity’s interventions and activities, as practiced over millennia, has brought many uncertain and unexpected outcomes and may continue to do so. By contrast, the current interventions and pronouncements by politicians, policy makers, the media and single issue groups relating to the environment (not sustainability) lack coherence and a proper historical perspective. One can only conclude that the current source of excitement is then about two possibilities: either a paroxysm in the solar system causing the Earth to lose its life support system, or more likely the rapid return of much harsher climatic conditions (Agar 1973) promoting the possible need for mass migrations by all species in which humans may not fare best. The notion of sustainability seems disarmingly simple but in practice it is slippery. The complicated nature of the system in which the Earth and sustainability reside has been described by Huggett (Huggett 1995 illustrated in a systems diagram Huggett 1997: 7). Huggett’s description can be summarised briefly in three levels and four sub-levels as follows:

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• The galaxy and universe • The solar system • The Earth • The atmosphere • The hydrosphere • The lithosphere • The barysphere All of these levels interact, but the present situation boundary is drawn at the solar system, and within that, at the Earth and its subsystems. Huggett breaks the system down into the: • • • • •

Atmosphere Biosphere Hydrosphere Pedosphere Toposphere

These are given their current colloquial name of the ecosphere. To para­ phrase Huggett, environmental change comes from the interactions within the ecosphere and from its interactions with its external surroundings, the ‘solid’ below it (the lithosphere and barysphere) and with the external forces arising within the solar system. Standing on the Earth’s ‘surface’ it is hard to remember that the planet is far from stable, but is a ‘semisolid’ body whose surface is cracked into tectonic plates that are in continuous movement, driven by the cooling of the molten core and shaped by weathering effects. Also, several forces cause motions and shifts in the Earth’s spin axis (Huggett 1997: 43). Examples are the Chandler wobble and other motions of the poles, which have wandered over geologic time and continue to do so. The occurrence of earthquakes, sea floor spreading and rising, and volcanism are some of the surface manifestations of the turmoil that occurs deep in the Earth. While movement of the tectonic plates is most obvious in geologic time, the immediate impact on surface life is considerable and extensive, while there are constant reminders of humanity’s inability to anticipate let alone control these events as demonstrated, for example, by the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 28, 2004. Similarly, the influence of the cosmosphere is crucial, including, as it does, solar activity and the likely impact of asteroids (Schilling 1999: 655) and comets. Solar activity includes sunspot cycles, cosmic radiation levels and the changes in the solar irradiance. Each of these, and other solar effects, have different influences on the successful continuity of life on the Earth. Arguments rage over the likelihood of a major asteroid impact, but a ‘recent calculation gives a 1-in-10,000 odds on a 2 km diameter asteroid smiting the Earth in the next century’ (Chapman and Morrison 1994); episodic bombardments are not

180  Scenarios and sustainability

in the past. It is easy to forget that the cosmosphere is a violent place; the Galaxy and the Earth itself were born of violence beyond our appreciation. For all the foregoing reasons it has to be recognised that the human species has little or no control over its successful continuity, other than in a few minor ways. Indeed, the notion that ‘we are in control’ should be avoided in all circumstances (Margulis and Sagan 1995: 243). The best that can be hoped for is that the Earth’s life support system will remain ‘safe when it fails’ (Holling 1977: 129), for humans in particular. If the physical dynamics of the Earth were not fearful enough, the multiplicity of predatory life forms, bacteria and viruses, in particular, add a further interrelated factor in the web of systems that control the existence of life on the Earth and is one that is happily downgraded if not ignored in the current ‘debate’ on sustainability. Strangely, the modern debate does not focus on the concerns that occurred centuries ago: population, food supply and disease, but on factors relating to climate change, presumably on the (incorrect) assumption that these original concerns are no longer of importance. Now it is necessary to add another often neglected factor, water supply, to the original list. In antiquity, successful societies maintained high fertility rates. They did so partly by stressing the duties of marriage and procreation, stigmatising persons who failed to produce children. Many of these pronatalist motives were incorporated into the broad spectrum of religious dogma and mythology, yet more factors to be considered systemically. Population and its general demography are fundamental to systemic thinking about sustainability. In the present situation, successful continuity of the human population is the focus; that requires the life-support systems referred to above to be present, a major assumption. The names Wallace (1761) and Malthus (Malthus 1798) are inextricably tied to population matters following the publication of their ideas concerning population growth, food supply and other matters. In particular, Malthus’ ideas influenced public policy (such as reforms in the English Poor Laws) and the ideas of the classical, and neo-classical economists, demographers, and evolutionary biologists, led by Charles Darwin; the evidence and analyses that Malthus produced dominated scientific discussion of population during his lifetime. Though many of Malthus’ gloomy predictions have so far proved to be mistaken, his later work introduced analytical methods that clearly anticipated demographic techniques developed more than 100 years later. The debate started by Malthus has never stopped, so it is instructive to look at the way the distribution of the world’s population has changed in recent years (Table 7.2). The relative decrease in the population of the current group of ‘rich’ or ‘developed’ nations compared to the rest of the world is evident and is of immense importance for sustainable development, for international relations and for business. There is nothing new in this conclusion: it has been evident for many decades. The implications of this shift for sustainable development have also been known for many decades, but it helps to restate these rather obvious conclusions lest they get forgotten. The Earth’s population by all species

Sustainable world  181 Table 7.2  Estimates of world population (1971, 1995 and 2030) – from Table 5.2 Average annual growth rate between 1995 and 2030 = 1.4% Actual population (millions)

Estimated population (millions)

1971

1995

2030

2,313

3,443

5,176

Africa

372

707

1,807

North America

235

279

332

South America

274

474

919

Europe

470

506

494

Russia

235

283

274

20

26

31

39

60

3,920

5,756

9,094

Asia

Oceania Caribbean Total

and the nature of those species is a key factor in sustainable development, as is the rate at which species suffer extinction or evolve; this applies particularly to viruses and organic diseases.

C ompu ter m odel l i ng: GI GO or a n i m p o rta nt t ool? Modelling of a situation is an essential part of foresight and systems thinking; how it influences ideas about sustainability is important. Chapter 1 outlined the way models evolve from concepts into their descriptive forms: this is the point of departure here. The idea of describing the future of the world by a set of equations proved difficult to come to terms with when the ‘Limits to Growth’ was published (Meadows et al. 1972). The publication of ‘Limits’ brought ripostes in such a way as to bring a concern and a focus onto sustainability in a way that nothing else had done, though the ripostes were not often referred to in those terms. The reason for this is not hard to find; the Meadows’ work breached too many conventions simultaneously, even if the claims made at the time went beyond probity. The other reason why ‘Limits’ attracted so much attention was the direct way sustainability and its importance to everyday life featured in the outputs; these included representing the ‘state of the world’ in terms of: • • • • •

Resources Population Food Industrial output Pollution.

182  Scenarios and sustainability

The ‘material standard of living’ was represented by: • • • •

Life expectancy Services per person Consumer goods per person Food per person.

The behaviours of these variables, as an interacting set, were presented as trends rather than absolute values: this was part of the problem the work faced. In cultures where the political argument is so often subverted from governing principles into a morass of statistical information of doubtful relevance, a practice that still abounds, the ‘Limits’ form of presentation was difficult to cope with. The Meadows work had, and still has, shortcomings, in such a major effort that is hardly surprising. What is irrational is the way that climate modelling has been granted wide credibility with relative ease, when the earliest work was no more credible than that of the Meadows and has only become slightly more credible now. The comparative usefulness of the Meadows ‘world models’ and of the four types of climate models, which range from the zero-dimensional models to the complicated threedimensional general circulation models (GCM) described in the latest IPCC assessment report (IPCC AR4 2007), must remain a matter of opinion. As the saying goes ‘models are models – they are not reality’. There is no way in which the two kinds of model can be compared. However, in the political domain climate models have achieved a status not accorded to world models that attempt to deal with the complications of sustainable development. Again, the reason is not hard to find: however complicated climate change models may be they have been portrayed as addressing a single issue, that of the outcome of humanity’s interaction with the ‘environment’ though the scope of that term is rarely defined. By comparison ‘world models’ address a complicated set of issues that cannot be reduced to a single convenient statistic or a notion, such as the atmospheric CO2 concentration or a rise in global mean temperature, even though that latter statistic is meaningless operationally. However, these simplifications have enabled public debate to proceed unhampered by a need to pay attention to the many caveats and qualifications that climate modellers, climatologists, geophysicists and many other groups of scientists, and non-scientists, have placed on the outcomes of climate simulations. Global circulation models have become more realistic as more features have been incorporated. Until recently, short cuts had to be taken if the simulations were to run in a realistic time even on the most powerful computers; there was also no option but to use these short cuts due to physical constraints of in situ observations. Now these ‘fudge factors’ are beginning to be dispensed with but uncertainties and caveats remain. Part of the art of simulation is in verification, usually by running the simulation for a period for which input

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and output data are known, verisimilitude granting validity to the simulation model. The practice is successful for systems that are completely specified, a necessary condition to run the simulation forward since this assumes that the unknown future is an extension of the past, no new or unexpected features being involved. In climate simulation there are doubts and uncertainties that question whether the future will be a simple extension of the past or whether the system is anywhere near fully specified, if only because of the many factors whose influence remains uncertain. Many of these factors are encapsulated in Huggett’s (1997) systems diagram. As an aside, a very different kind of climate change study was based on the elicitation of expert opinion with no simulations to guide them (Anon 1978); the time horizon was to the year 2000. The objective function was the mean average temperature change in the northern hemisphere over the 22 year period to the year 2000; the outcome was expressed as a probability distribution, as it must be in this kind of exercise, and showed a median change of +0.45°C with probabilities of 0.9 and 0.1 for temperature changes of +0.95°C and +0.05°C respectively. One wonders what the outcome would have been if the time horizon had been 100 years. The outcome is certainly comparable with climate simulations. Mahlman (1997: 1416) set out to clarify many of the arguments about the use of GCMs. He posed the question of why should any attention be paid to attempts to model the Earth’s climate, claiming that the models do a ‘… reasonably good job of capturing the essence of the large-scale aspects of the current climate …’ (ibid.) but added that GCMs still contain weaknesses and important uncertainties. Mahlman listed nine ‘virtually certain “facts”’ relating to GCMs, two ‘virtually certain projections,’ seven ‘very probable projections’ and five ‘probable projections’. He dismissed many of the commonly made assertions about climate change and pointed out that none of the GCMs can be relied on to give much guidance about the all-important ‘small scale’ variations in climate, an issue that the IPCC begins to address in its 2007 reports, that will be important for understanding where living conditions may undergo significant change. The importance of this latter point lies in the way that agricultural and biological effects, especially the shifts in the distribution of disease vectors and their hosts, may occur around the world, together with changes in water availability; models attempting to tackle these problems are now (2007) under discussion but this is a field rife with anecdote of such strength that current science relating to these matters is often drowned out. Lastly, Mahlman did not say how the effects of human activity can be separated from that of the natural changes that always occur (e.g. arising from volcanism, tectonic plate movement and sea floor spreading) and are, for the most part, of far greater magnitude than human activity. The comment made a few years ago that the debate about climate change was ‘taking place inside a computer’ has a ring of truth. But what is the debate really about? There are perhaps two salient notions:

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• The Earth’s ecosphere, and hence the climate, has never been ‘stable,’ but has always been and will always be in a state of flux. There is no ideal state to which the ecosphere can be ‘returned’ • The ecosphere has sustained ‘life’ for several aeons, only very recently including human life. During these aeons, once the atmosphere became aerobic the composition of the atmosphere has remained unchanged, with only minor variations, at its present unusual composition (Lovelock 1979: 67), though during the last 300 million years there have been five extinction events (Permian, Triassic, Toarcian, Cenomanian/Turonian and Paleocene) that have been attributed with vicarious authority to the concentration of some ‘trace’ gases, including carbon dioxide and water vapour. The debate cannot then be about the sustainability of life on the planet but about the way that human activity is interfering with the behaviour of the ecosphere. Humanity has always interfered with the ecosphere to benefit its ways of living as embodied in past and present human cultures. Interference has been particularly noticeable in and by the current group of developed countries, and those that aspire to be like them. The future behaviour of the ecosphere is unknown (it is unknowable). It will be a continuum from the past, so that models verified in the traditional way, using verisimilitude with the past, and then used to forecast the future of the ecosphere, already include human activity. These forecasts then assume the continuing validity of the models’ structure into the far future. It, therefore, becomes logically dubious to claim that these models can be used to detect a ‘fingerprint’ of human activity, unless: • Forecasts and observations of given parameters are in due time in reason­ able agreement • The influences arising from human activity rather than that from all forms of life can be established with comparable veracity by a different process, the difference between the two estimates then being found to be significant though this may arise from the difference between two comparable numbers. It is these kinds of arguments that are ignored or simply not appreciated by the media and in the political world. Worse still, the future behaviour of the ecosphere is only part of the story of sustainability, which is the arena that world models have attempted to shed some light on. World models have been difficult to come to terms with so it is worth understanding something about their genesis. The roots of world modelling lie in process control system engineering with its concerns for system inputs, outputs and regulatory feedback loops; the field had developed over many decades prior to the late 1950s. At that time management scientists were looking for

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tools for creating frameworks for describing industrial activity and to enable ‘enterprise design’ (Forrester 1961). To quote Forrester (ibid.: vii), ‘Industrial dynamics is a way of studying the behaviour of industrial systems to show how policies, decisions, structure, and delays are interrelated to influence growth and stability.’ To study industrial dynamics Forrester developed a symbolic language, now known as ‘systems dynamics’, to allow ‘… the investigation of the information feedback character of industrial systems and the use of models for the design of improved organisational forms and guiding policy.’ (ibid.: 13). System dynamics models are used in modelling unstructured systems in which many of the relationships are not explicit: they are made causal through appreciation of the feedback loops which are often characterised through empirical statistical analysis of existing data. To quote Forrester (ibid.: 60), ‘The questions to be answered precede model design. The closed-loop system structure must be reflected in a model. Time delays, amplification, and information distortion must be adequately represented.’ These comments reflect some of the essential differences between modelling a physical system, such as the climate, and systems modelled using systems dynamics. With the encouragement of the Club of Rome, the Meadows team developed the World 3 model using systems dynamics methods. The major outputs have already been mentioned and were typically presented as sets of trends showing how the model behaviour represented for example, a transition to a sustainable system based on policies adopted in 2015. The publication of ‘Limits’ in 1972 sparked a series of similar studies, summarised in 1982 (Meadows et al. 1982), that were much in the public perception for about a decade. However, since 1981 the visibility of global modelling activity has declined so that its effects on policy remain uncertain.

S us tain ab ilit y: compl i ca t ion vs. co m p l ex i ty Of the types of formal modelling, it is world models (World 3 and its variants) that attempt to deal with sustainability in its context of human society, but neither World 3 nor climate models deal with the notions of sustainability or sustainable development in their full context. Similarly, Watson and Lovelock’s ‘Daisyworld’ model (1983: 284) was built expressly to demonstrate the feasibility of Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis (Lovelock 1972). Both World 3 and the GCMs have to assume that the system they attempt to represent is fully described. However, it is in World 3 and its variants that there are the beginnings of a growing together of the notions of sustainability and economics. These emanate from Daly who proposed three conditions for the physical sustainability of material and energy throughputs (Daly in Meadows et al. 1992: 46) that resemble those found elsewhere (Meadows et al. 1992: 47; Robèrt et al. 1997: 79) as follows: • The rates of use of renewable resources ought not to exceed their rates of regeneration, a phenomenon described differently elsewhere (Hardin 1968: 1243)

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• The rates of use of non-renewable resources ought not to exceed the rate at which sustainable renewable substitutes are developed, a condition used later in the Natural Step (Robèrt et al. 1997: 79) • The rates of pollution emission ought not to exceed the assimilative capacity of the environment, an assumption later used by Meadows et al. in 1992 (p. 47). The above is but a brief example of the breadth of the discussion that accompanies the simulations set out by Meadows et al. (1972, 1992) of a transition to sustainable development. It explains why it has been so difficult for the outcome of world modelling to be politicised; there is no simple or single statistic or idea that can characterise its message. The purpose of dwelling on just two streams of thought, the notion of the simultaneous conditions of complication and complexity involved, needs some explanation in relation to sustainable development: it demonstrates the last point. Perrow (1984: 88) provides a convenient distinction between the two phenomena. Perrow’s argument develops from an analysis of ‘normal’ accidents in many kinds of systems, but can be extended into the debate about sustainable development. I have summarised and extended Perrow’s arguments in the following way (Table 7.3). The parallels between Perrow’s notions and the conditions in which sustainable development will exist are self-evident. Complicated systems are those in which linkages are largely understood even when they involve much complication: unintended outcomes are possible but are a rarity. Human engineering attempts to create systems with these characteristics and in many instances is successful in doing so (the engineering ‘fail-safe’ regime), but the potential for ‘normal accidents’ reveals that complicated systems can also become complex through interconnections that are neither obvious nor understood. It is also clear that sustainable development must take place in a world where complexity is the norm rather than the unusual. Complex systems are far removed from equilibrium and exhibit selforganisation. From what has already been said about the Earth’s position in the Galaxy and the universe, together with the above- and below-surface phenomena that are at work, the Earth’s system is far from equilibrium. It possesses many aspects of self-organisation and its planetary-wide living systems are autopoietic (Margulis and Sagan 1995: 20) though the notions of sympoiesis (Dempster 1998) question this conclusion. It then becomes disingenuous to suggest (or worse maintain) that human society can be separated from that system in such a way as to remove its inherent complexity. Successful continuity for humanity must then recognise this inherent complexity; the extreme limitations on human interventions, which will always have unexpected outcomes and the restrictions of these interventions to activities that are intended to maintain or promote ways of living that fall within the scope of the Brundtland definition. However, the viewpoint of the arch critics (Simon 1977; Beckerman 1974) of

Sustainable world  187 Table 7.3  Summary of Perrow’s arguments about complicated vs. complex systems

Nature of system Coupling

Complicated Linear

Complex

Loose

Use of higly engineered AI in living systems where AI is believed to be well-understood but its interaction with the living system is not, placing special demands on the fail-safe principle. Examples include AI programmed stock market trading, automatic language translation and tracking customer purchasing habits

Living systems with sympoietic characteristics where understanding is limited with evolutionary outcomes. The systems integrity and successful continuity depends on the 'safe-fail' principle

Tight

Process control systems highly engineered with design based on fail-safe principles. System understanding believed to be complete. Examples include fly-by-wire aeroplanes and pick-and-place robots

Transforming processes where understanding is limited with unsuspected interactions and feedback loops involving many control parameters with potential interactions and relying on many indirect and inferential sources of information

the notions of sustainable development cannot be denied, as will be seen later, since the conditions for and limits to sustainable development are unknown, and always will be, until they have been transgressed. Consequently, critics maintain the notion is an empty one and that each generation should look after its own interests without respect for the future. If the Earth is autopoietic then there is nothing to worry about, the future for ensuing generations will evolve as so far it has!

S ustainability vs. sustainable deve l o p m e n t : t he ar gument ‘Sustainability is like happiness – everyone believes in it and everyone has a different definition.’ Gow 1992: 49 The above trenchant comment leads directly into the Alice in Wonderland (Carroll 1865: 70) world of sustainability interpretations discussed earlier, that have done so much to devalue its philosophy and implementation. Brundtland’s seems simple but its flexibility and its breadth are very demanding. Sustainable development has so many aspects that policy for it is not conceived as a whole, indeed it is of such complexity that Simon’s principle of bounded rationality (Simon 1957) cannot be avoided. The penalty then lies in the risks posed by being either over cautious (later referred to as the ‘Precautionary Principle’) leading to stagnation or continuing the traditional

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piecemeal policy process. The latter implies an unrecognised reliance on the self-organising nature of the wider natural world to rescue humanity from its fallibility, if not its foolishness. The situation is a classic example of the notion of a ‘safe-fail’ system (Holling 1977), which is not of our creation, since human contrived polices and interventions will always fail at some point, producing unexpected outcomes that are often perceived as ‘undesirable’ for the polity. The touchstone of sustainability is stewardship – the care, maintenance and development of what we have inherited – but within those narrow limits that human activity can influence as defined by the dynamic policy trio of what can be controlled, what can be partially controlled and what cannot be controlled. As has already been said, the notion that we can ‘manage’ the planet to our benefit is undesirable and dangerous, a theme made severely by Margulis and Sagan (1995: 243). Development is an important part of the philosophy of sustainability if only because the dynamic evolution of the planet is continuous and does not enable human society to stagnate or to remain at some constant state. The notion of dynamism is fundamental as there is no pure and unadulterated state to which the planet can be returned as if to atone for human activity, pollution or destruction. Species come and go as part of the natural evolution of the planet through alteration of the Earth’s dynamics, predation and the carrying capacity for the species being exceeded; at some point extinction of the human species is certain. For the duration of humanity’s existence the notion of stewardship is essentially that of an interface between human activity and everything that it comes into contact with. All interfaces require protocols if they are to achieve their purpose of two-way communication and transformation. However, for sustainable development communication is across an interface of great complexity where recognition of the signals from the natural, non-human world requires unusual skills for which humanity’s protocols are poorly developed (there is no C3PO protocol droid as in the ‘Star Wars’ trilogy!). At this point it is necessary to take up the argument posed by Gow (1992) and Therivel et al. (1992) that sustainability and sustainable development are not equivalent. The latter authors emphasise that sustainable development is a subset of sustainability, claiming that it assumes that the concepts of sustainability and development cannot coexist. Earlier it was said that sustainability is ‘the ability to prevent something from failing under stress’. Therivel et al. refer to Jacobs’ definition of sustainability (1991: 123), which relates solely to the ‘environment’ (without properly defining the term) and to the ability of future generations to ‘… enjoy an equal measure of environmental consumption’. The notion of ‘environmental consumption’ is far removed from what is intended here; it should be far removed from any notion of sustainability and is equally far removed from the notion contained in the Brundtland definition. One can only assume that Jacobs did not intend the phrase to be interpreted in the most obvious way as it is the seed of the problem of carrying capacity (Hardin 1968). Therivel et al. go on to say that carrying capacity is the cornerstone

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to sustainability, without knowing how it can be determined. Gunderson and Holling’s (2002) elegant description of how sustainability and sustainable development can be related is a further reason not to regard sustainability and sustainable development as synonymous, but as mutually supporting – the second being the practical embodiment of the former. For these reasons the arguments of Gow and Therivel et al. are set aside as irrelevant and the two terms will continue to be used one for the philosophy (of sustainability), the other for its implementation; the latter must now become the focus of attention.

S us tain ab ilit y a nd preca ut ion The Precautionary Principle (the ‘Principle’ hereafter) is an important part of foresight and systems thinking with respect to sustainability and is one of the most contentious. The contention arises from claims from antagonists, as will become clear shortly, that the Principle is baseless and also because of the Principle’s potential influence in application, especially on invention, innovation, social well-being and business. For these reasons the Principle demands examination. The Principle has been endorsed internationally on many occasions. At the Earth Summit meeting in Rio de Janeiro (UNCED 1992), world leaders agreed Agenda 21, which advocated the widespread application of the Principle in the following terms: In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation (Principle 15). The Principle originates from environmental impact analysis (EIA) and has been described by Gilpin (1995: 171) as follows: A guiding rule in EIA to protect people and the environment against future risks, hazards, and adverse impacts, tending to emphasise safety considerations in the occasional absence of clear evidence. If it was not clear at the Rio Summit (UNCED ibid.) and to Gilpin (ibid.) that use of the phrase ‘the occasional absence of clear evidence’ would lead the notion of precaution into quicksand, then it should be abundantly clear now. EIA has to be conducted in a world of great complexity. As a result, the absence of clear evidence is normal and not occasional, especially under the assault from post-modern thinking, which seems to have penetrated human societies more deeply than is often recognised. In the present era, science,

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termed Post-Normal by Funtowicz and Ravetz (1990b: 20), is ‘… neither valuefree nor ethically neutral …’ while other authors are even more damning in their criticism of science, as has been drawn out by Laudan in his ‘dialogue’ between a realist, a pragmatist, a positivist and a relativist (Laudan 1990). The science used in decision making is often uncertain, but it is used nevertheless, to make decisions in the public domain when often there is urgency, with that uncertainty in mind. However, Funtowicz and Ravetz were not the first to draw attention to this state of affairs, post-normal science being but a particularisation of earlier arguments in these terms (Weinberg 1972; Maxwell 1984: 63). If the Principle is to be of any value at all its proponents have to come to terms with the characteristics of trans-science (Weinberg 1972) which is conducted in a complex world, accompanied by uncertainties and risks. If the Principle is used bluntly, as some proponent’s do, to forbid any activity in which clear evidence that it is ‘safe’ is absent, an inversion of the intention of the UN Earth Summit definition, then there are three consequences: • The nature of the real world is being denied • All science and technology, and associated invention and innovation, may stop • All development may cease, creating a stagnant world in which the capability of social, technological and value shifts to promote the dynamism needed to satisfy Brundtland (or any other notion of sustainability) will be denied. Science advances through doubt; the time when scientists claimed certainty for their work is long past, if it ever existed except in the media. There is now a mountain of evidence from all disciplines that the outcomes of research must be hedged about by qualifications and caveats that trap the unwary proponent in either the scientific community or the world of the media and politics, if not in both. Now that the courts intervene in the search for ‘integrity’ in science (Foster and Huber 1999), there is a double jeopardy for the unwary scientist. In some instances at least it seems that the time honoured ‘peer review’ is no longer good enough particularly in view of an apparently rising incidence of fraud in science. What then is to become of the Principle? Should it be abandoned completely? The response is clearly ‘no’. Paradoxically, sustainable development depends as much on the abandonment of or limitations to the use of the Principle as it does on its application (perhaps the resolution lies through Hegelian synthesis). The reason for this lies in the dynamic nature of the interfaces between human activity and everything it comes into contact with. An example is the desirable reduction in the use of nitrogenous fertilisers. These cause degradation of the water supply and damage water flows in rivers and watercourses by promoting bottom weed growth. If a desirable reduction is achieved, by enabling plants, other than legumes, to fix nitrogen directly from the air, it is highly likely to

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involve genetic modification of the plant stock, which may be rejected by the polity because of its views on GMOs, to say nothing of the impact on agribusiness. To cope with these kinds of paradoxes, the Principle needs to embrace the complexity involved and not attempt to destroy it by oversimplification. Precaution cannot be separated from risk, which is simultaneously objective and subjective, involving much psychology (The Royal Society 1981, 1983, 1992, 1997). For research intensive businesses, if not all businesses whatever their size, invocation of the Principle by groups ranging from activists to governments is one of ‘… the wider issues that now thrust themselves on any science and technology programme [and] is forced upon management’ (Loveridge 1997: 15). The importance of this invocation is obvious and is well demonstrated by Sterling and Meyer (1999) with respect to genetically modified crops. It is now time to move on to discuss the views of protagonists and antagonists of sustainability, and in doing so to illustrate some possible pointers to watch for as emergent properties following foresightful amelioration’s of situations as ‘problems of living.’

A rguments a bout sust a ina bil i t y Critics of sustainability cite its philosophical fuzziness as one of its weak points; it is hard to deny this. Principles, definitions, indicators and criteria are set out by authors in relation to the systemic situations, or more frequently the reductionist problems they are interested in, according to personal preferences and preconceptions. In the formative years of a complex situation this is only to be expected. The situation facing humankind now starts from population size and growth rate; that has been argued about for nearly 250 years with growing intensity, while recognition of its all embracing nature has been denied for far too long. For the antagonists that state of denial persists and they claim that sustainability is sophistry. By contrast, the widespread group of protagonists includes: many politicians and prime ministers, their advisors and their governments; NGOs and individuals: this group promotes ideas involving technology – mass changes in people’s mindsets away from rampant consumerism towards simpler lifestyles – and sometimes beliefs in humankind’s ability to manage the Earth’s complex life support systems, an attitude of mind involving faith and hope more than demonstrable human capability. Sometimes the debate between the protagonists and antagonists becomes ferocious but, come what may, it will shape the directions taken by sustainability and sustainable development as a result. The situation is replete with trans-science and beliefs that are inherently self-contradictory (Dawes 2001). The existence of trans-science may mean that the science is unknown or that it may be only partially known and uncertain. It may also mean that in the existing social, economic, ecological, political and value milieux, scientists do not understand the question(s) being asked nor know how to frame their response. In these

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circumstances, it is often the legal system that determines the outcome and sometimes, through its own foresight, sets the parameters or boundaries of the system within which the balance between science and society needs to operate. The dynamics of legal processes may then become a determining force in human survival. Sustainability and sustainable development are real matters but are slippery notions to protagonists and antagonists alike. The adoption of sustainability by political parties, NGOs, the media and many other organisations, has only served to confuse matters further while raising the temperature of the debate if not its quality. The claim that ‘defining sustainability connects abstract environmental issues with people’s personal and commercial interests’ (Voinov and Smith 1994) is a potent one, but I would go further to say that it involves the successful continuity of humankind, not simply personal and commercial interests. Perhaps this is only right as the real work lies among the ‘practical people’ who do things in the real world, sometimes at considerable personal risk. In an imperfect world, patchy adoption of new ways of thinking throughout the polity is all that can be expected. In the end it is people who will make sustainability and sustainable development a reality. As Lauterbach insists (1974: 147) modernisation, which is deeply entwined with sustainability and sustainable development, is pre-eminently a matter of mindset. Lauterbach’s concern for modernisation should not be confused with post-modern thought, which has its own influences on the ideas of protagonists and antagonists alike. In what follows the term sustainability retains the function allotted to it earlier as a shorthand conduit for ideas passing between protagonists and antagonists. There is now of tidal wave of literature about sustainability and sustainable development, so I make no apology for basing the following comments on a personal selection of sources that seem to contain the seeds of the various arguments; this is a common necessity in foresight and systems thinking referred to earlier (Chapter 2) and is typified by M’Pherson’s testy comments on Popper’s criticism of holism referred to in Chapter 1. The selection may also be a useful signpost to other sources of discussion and opinion.

Pr otagonist s a nd t heir ca se Protagonists of sustainable development include many international institutions (UNEP, UNESCO, UNIDO, IPCC); most governments through various departments; NGOs such as the Club of Rome, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, IIASA, IISD, the Stockholm Environmental Institute, the Worldwatch Institute, the Natural Step and the Forum for the Future; and individuals including Hawken, the Lovins, Lovelock, Margulis, Huggett, Hardin, Holling, Daly, Nicholson and many others too numerous to mention, but all acknowledged indirectly. International organisations and national governments are mostly concerned with regulation in its broadest sense;

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their programmes are broad and are focussed mainly on conventional ways of thinking bounded by what is colloquially defined by the term ‘the environment’. These programmes are concerned with surface and atmospheric effects, and their associated legal/regulatory regimes. NGOs use similar boundaries to the international organisations, but are more concerned with presenting the scope of the situation, pointing toward matters that societies, governments and international organisations ought to (the policy intonation) appreciate, along with their long-term influences on social behaviour and regulation. NGOs also exhibit a spectrum of ‘ideological’ mindsets with an accompanying variability in the depth and quality of the information used and presented to the public; international institutions and governments with the intention of influencing the choices contained within public policy and regulation. It falls most often to individuals to work with situation boundaries, contexts and contents that are far wider than those used by public institutions and NGOs. For example, Lovelock (2000) and Margulis and Sagan (1995) are concerned with the successful continuity of life, of any form, regarding the Earth as autopoietic, an issue that is contested by Dempster’s notion of sympoiesis (1998) as referred to earlier. Huggett’s canvas is wide (1995, 1997) but stops short of Lovelock and Margulis’ ideas, being based on the less risky ideas enshrined in geo-ecology. By contrast, Hardin’s classic paper (Hardin 1968: 1243) focuses on the human socioeconomic behavioural response to population overcrowding in a locale but the situation might also be seen in the wider context of life as a whole (Meadows et al. 1972; 1992). Holling has evolved a series of ideas relating to managing ecological situations (Holling 1977: 114, 1978, 1986, 2001) the latest called ‘panarchy’, being developed with Gunderson and others (Gunderson and Holling 2002) and outlined in Chapters 1 and 5. Daly’s development of the principles of steady state economics (Daly 1977) was the culmination of a major attempt, in a series of papers (Daly 1968, 1972, 1973, 1974), to overturn the reigning economic paradigm characterised as growthmania, an attempt that Daly continued after 1977 (Daly and Cobb 1989; Daly 1992). Daly’s work also provided the basis for the Natural Step (Robèrt et al. 1997: 79 ), a process for raising ecological awareness in organisations, where ecology is restricted to environmental aspects of resource use, depletion and management. Daly’s work also provoked interest in the possible synergy, if not symbiosis, between ecology and economics, as described earlier, that has now taken concrete form in ecological economics (Appendix 7.2). The near relative of industrial ecology has also developed since the 1980s from humbler origins in the 1920s (Soddy 1922, 1926). The basic tenet of industrial ecology is ‘nature as a model’ and ‘views the industrial plant or system as an integrated set of cyclical processes in which the consumption of energy and materials is optimised, waste generation is minimised, and wastes from one process serve as feed-stock for other production processes’ (Frosch and Gallopoulos 1989: 144). Ecological economics and industrial ecology are explored further in

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Appendix 7.2. These shifts in the way industrial activity is viewed lead toward the regulatory aspects of protagonism for sustainability, which is an immense and growing field in itself. International regulations, laws and agreements, and their national and regional counterparts impinge on sustainability, taking many different forms with diverse sets of intentions involving pollution, toxic materials, mineral extraction, water quality, laws relating to the use and protection of the oceans and seas (similarly for the wildernesses and Antarctica), for wildlife, as well as a plethora of laws – national and international – relating to every aspect of human behaviour and rights, employment, finance, accounting, taxation of corporations and individuals, economic and currency policy, to name but a few. The international and national informal regulation of science and technology, via peer review and similar processes, was established long ago, but formal regulation of science and technology is a relatively recent addition to the regulatory scene, largely through health and safety. In a different way there is an ever growing, but largely uncertain, literature that makes claims for the existence of systems of innovations (or even worse innovation systems) of national or other varieties, where there is evidence of confusion between invention, arising from scientific breakthrough or entrepreneurial serendipity, and the social-technical-economic-values phenomenon of innovation. In all, it is hardly surprising to find sustainability enmeshed in what can only be described as an Ackoffian ‘mess’ (Ackoff 1974: 21) or as cascades of interrelated situations where one set of laws and regulations are at odds with others. Whether or not the ‘mess’ has caused the evolution of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), both have sustainability embedded in their mindset and both have gained in stature in recent years. CSR and the GRI are linked to sustainability and are inter-linked themselves. CSR has a history going back to the 1970s. At that time activists began pressing for many forms of control over technology and industry. Technology assessment, social audits and social accounting were the outcomes of this early agitation in an era when the rate and breadth of the introduction of new technologies led to social concerns, a situation that persists today. The involvement in CSR of the UN, the USA, the EU and many individual countries shows that it is a growing activity and is clearly global as illustrated by Welford (2005: 33). The following eclectic choice of examples illustrates the point. The UN’s Global Compact was launched at the World Economic Forum in 1999. The Compact is intended to ‘bring companies together with UN agencies, labour and civil society to support universal environmental and social principles’ (UN Global Compact 1999). The Compact became effective in 2000 and ‘globally many companies and international labour, and civil society organisations are now working to advance its ten universal principles in human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption.’ Through collective action the Compact ‘seeks to promote responsible corporate citizenship so that

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business can be part of the solution to the challenges of globalisation.’ The ten principles of the voluntary Compact, summarised below, ask business to:   1 Support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights   2 Make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses   3 Uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining   4 Eliminate all forms of forced and compulsory labour   5 Abolish child labour   6 Eliminate discrimination in employment and occupation   7 Support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges   8 Undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility   9 Encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies 10 Work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery. The principles are intended to create business activities that catalyse actions in support of the UN’s goals through policy dialogues, learning, networks of experienced people and projects. The principles rely on ‘public accountability, transparency and the enlightened self-interest of companies, labour and civil society to initiate and share substantive action in pursuing the principles upon which the Compact is based’ (UN Global Compact 1999). Implementation relies on UN agencies including the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UNEP, the ILO, the UNDP, UNIDO and the UNODC. CSR Europe is a non-profit organisation, launched in 1995 by Jacques Delors, then CEC President, and European business leaders, with a mission to help companies achieve profitability, sustainable growth and human progress by placing CSR in the mainstream of business practice. The resulting network of professionals share their knowledge and experience of CSR; the ways it is shaping modern business and the corresponding political agenda relating to sustainability, and competitiveness. Some 60 multinational corporations belong to CSR Europe, which also has contact with 1,400 companies through 18 national partner organisations. A ‘roadmap’ for a sustainable and competitive enterprise sets goals and strategies to integrate CSR into daily business practices and includes integrating CSR across business functions, creating respect for human rights, developing employees’ capabilities, preserving the environment, and engaging with stakeholders. CSR Europe has taken note of the Lisbon Agenda in its work and claims to be the only truly European authority on CSR. In the EU member countries, the Copenhagen Centre in Denmark, the Swedish Partnership for Global Responsibility and the UK Government all have interests in CSR. Opinions about CSR vary. The Copenhagen Centre acknowledges that ‘the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has

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been surrounded by a lot of hype [and half-truths]’ (Nielsen 2006) and remains uncertain about either the meaning of CSR or whether is it more than a management fad of lofty aspirations that one cannot really disagree with. The Centre also concludes that acceptance of CSR does not necessarily conflict with Friedman’s view (Friedman 1970: 173), explaining that ‘today, “the business of business is a different kind of business.”’ Since the early 1970s the business environments of many companies have changed decisively, meaning that a rising number of companies are increasingly forced to include CSR initiatives in their overall business strategies (Knudsen 2006). By contrast, CSR is a tool in Sweden’s foreign policy as part of an initiative launched in March 2002 ‘designed to encourage Swedish companies to adhere to OECD guidelines for multinational companies and the principles of the UN Global Compact.’ The UK Government sees CSR ‘as good for society and good for business.’ It assumes there are potential benefits for competitiveness of individual companies and for national economies that may encourage the spread of CSR practice. The operational department is the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) where the ‘business case’ for CSR has been explored and its links to sustainability and competitiveness, examined. Meanwhile, US companies have developed a wide range of partnerships ‘to facilitate education, improve labour standards and even provide healthcare.’ The GRI is a much newer development, assembled during the 1990s into a voluntary code, now supported by many companies with global businesses. The GRI was launched in 1997 by the US Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) and United Nations Environment Programme to enhance the quality, rigour and utility of reporting on matters relating to sustainability. The first version of the GRI was released in 2000. The revised version, implemented in 2002, was considered to be a milestone in the evolution of the GRI as an institution and as a reporting framework. The GRI has the essential attribute of being a ‘living process that operates in the spirit of “doing” ’ (CERES 2002) enabling navigation towards continual improvement. The initiative has enjoyed widespread support from industry and many sectors of society; together they have built, by consensus, a set of reporting guidelines. Hopefully, these will achieve worldwide acceptance that will be aided by the flexibility and quality of their application, enabling comparisons to be made between reporting organisations. The GRI is a longterm process intended to develop and disseminate applicable sustainability reporting guidelines globally for use by organisations reporting on the economic, environmental and social dimensions of their activities, products and services. The aim of the guidelines is to create an understanding of how the reporting organisations influence sustainable development, taking into account corporate governance, accountability and citizenship: these are now mainstream policy and management issues. To quote: ‘The turbulent first years of the 21st century underscore the reason for GRI’s rapid expansion to form a significant part of organisational practice in the years to come’

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(CERES 2002). The GRI process is inclusive, transparent and neutral while its continual enhancement enables direct expression of accountability. The key trends that have accelerated the use of the GRI are the: • • • • • • • • •

Expanding globalisation Search for new forms of global governance Reform of corporate governance Global role of emerging economies Rising visibility of and expectations for organisations Measurement of progress toward sustainable development Governments’ interest in sustainability reporting Financial market’s interest in sustainability reporting Emergence of next-generation accounting.

Does CSR work in concert with the GRI? Both have much in common and both share the vagueness that goes with such widely drawn boundaries. Both have similar contexts with common threads in sustainability and governance. Otherwise the content of the GRI has a leaning towards money matters, characterised by economics and accounting, even though those matters may involve uncommon ideas only just gaining credence in current economic and accounting principles. The content of CSR appears to be more socially oriented than the GRI and its content, regarding sustainability, is openly restricted to ‘environmental’ matters: for the GRI it is hard to know whether, in the developer’s minds, sustainability is equated simply to environmental matters. It is here that both CSR and the GRI are in the greatest difficulty. Sustainability in its proper context is the senior matter with all remaining matters subsets of it. The ‘proper’ context of sustainability is the continuance of life on the Earth and in that context humankind is only one species among all those that inhabit the planet. In all its posturing, humanity’s concern is for the successful continuity of its species and it is the bounded subset of elements to achieve this that humankind designates as sustainability. There is a major issue here: noone knows what the conditions for successful continuity are and the conditions will never be known; they are certainly not those described in the book of Genesis. Because of their complexity, life on the Earth and its maintenance are emergent phenomena in which no animal species has ever survived indefinitely, though the crocodile is exceptionally long surviving. Political and other pundits currently peddle simplistic situations, themselves corruptions of the uncertain science of life on the planet. Situations are masqueraded as problems that can be solved by science, in its characteristic reductionist mode; they are the focus of CSR and the GRI. All this despite the clear recognition, as pointed out earlier, of the phenomenon of trans-science and that situations cannot be ‘solved’ like puzzles but only ameliorated into a new form in a continuing cascade. So far policy makers have struggled with the CSR debate as the element of regulation, which is the policy maker’s forte, is absent. A new report released by

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AccountAbility and the World Economic Forum (Anon 2005) shows how the financial community fails to meet the needs of the owners of capital, through its unwillingness to consider material, social and environmental factors in investment decisions. The key is seeing CSR as an investment in a distinctive capability, rather than as an expense. Companies and investors then need a means of managing and assessing the contributions of investments in CSR to the creation of competitive advantage. Similar comments apply to the GRI.

Antagonis ts a nd t hei r ca se Antagonists of sustainability profoundly disagree with the premise that human activities are creating conditions that endanger life or humanity’s ways of life. Their message to the world is simple and clear: there’s nothing to worry about – life can proceed along its path of ever-advancing ‘economic development’, whatever the latter means or entails. The antagonist’s second implied underlying assumption is that humanity can manage the Earth through the application of ever-deepening understanding of the planet’s systems achieved through science and technology. There will not be any shortages of any kind as, through science and technological ingenuity, substitutes will always be found or created for any resource well before exhaustion occurs. The dismal ‘science’ of economics will see to it that exhaustion and ecological change are avoided through forces that include prices, taxes, regulation, capital and much else besides. However, the human situation is not as clear as either the most ardent protagonist or antagonist likes to believe. As with all foresight and systems thinking there comes a time when ideas escape into the public realm and ‘positions’ begin to be taken in which information is used for particular purposes, it was ever thus. Lomborg’s mammoth work (2001) demonstrates the need to understand information, a much rarer capability than is commonly supposed. The purpose of the NUSAP system is just that (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1990b). Antagonism to sustainability is surprisingly vehement, especially in its attacks on environmentalism; as with all -ists and -isms those people on opposing sides collide acrimoniously. Learning about this antagonism to environmentalism is an essential part of systemic thinking about sustainability. Here this learning will be based on a small sample of published opinions that illustrate the point. Two opinions from the UK are those of Beckerman (2003) and Tavern (2005). Beckerman is well known for his views against sustainable development. He bases his argument on the influence of the price mechanism of conventional economics. Both Beckerman and Tavern complain vigorously that protagonists of sustainable development are sparing with the truth and very skilful at manipulating the media for their own ends. Far from demonstrating convincingly that sustainable development has ‘pathetically muddled principles’, Beckerman illustrates that conventional economics is not much better despite all its pretensions otherwise. Beckerman has always claimed that future generations cannot have expectations of rights from a generation that sires them. It may

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also be a viewpoint that has been absorbed too widely in some modern Western societies. All in all, if Beckerman provides a strong riposte to the extreme forms of eco-fundamentalism, its passion is about the same. Tavern focussed his attention on evidence and its use in policy making, drawing extensively on the genetic modification debate and the way ecofundamentalists frustrated the introduction of GMOs. He expressed concern for the rise of fundamentalisms, of many varieties, that denied both the value and the veracity of science. Tavern claimed that the current attacks on science by relativists, post-modernists and eco-fundamentalists were undermining the relationship between science, reason and democracy. Tavern’s reasoning about evidence in relation to policy has a fundamental flaw that also occurs, in an oblique way, in Beckerman’s discussion. Evidence is about the past and the present, whereas policy is about the future for which there is little evidence, except in highly specialised ways that require assumptions about the solar system. Neither Tavern nor Beckerman recognise that evidence alone is not sufficient for policy making, nor are indicators: anticipation or foresight is a prime element. Both Beckerman and Tavern make hesitant steps in this direction but to Tavern evidence seems to be the precursor to reaction with no sense of foresight. Both authors attack the ‘woolly’ notions of sustainable development and condemn the precautionary principle as either meaningless or downright dangerous to innovation. Tavern more than Beckerman, neither of whom are scientists, expressed concern over the way science has been rejected and misunderstood generally. Tavern also recognised that post-modernist thinking has penetrated society to the detriment of science and the devaluation of expert knowledge. Whilst Beckerman does not explicitly enter this debate, he expects science and technology to work marvels for society, removing any possibility of shortages and the need for restraint in the form of sustainable development, which is condemned outright. Peter Huber is an MIT-trained engineer and Harvard Law School graduate which puts a particular gloss on his attack on sustainability and environmentalism in the US context (Huber 1999). The centrepiece of Huber’s argument is over sustainability, conservation and the role of conventional economics based on his view of Theodore Roosevelt’s claim that wildernesses needed to be conserved and should not be exploited economically. Huber uses this theme to attack a number of ideas relating to sustainability, which he equates to environmentalism. Somehow he has become fascinated by the ‘sand pile’ model of complex behaviour, referring to it at every turn. Lovins, Perrow, Malthus, Hardin and Lovelock all come in for comments, some favourable some not; on occasion an unfavourable view shifts to a more favourable one later in the debate. Similarly, environmentalism is equated with poverty; wealth with sustainability and conservation because of the demographic transition so much derided by many people. Huber’s discussion is a mixture of insight, hindsight and confused thinking. He claims that only market forces will do, as only these are green, while environmentalism will

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simply maintain poverty in large areas of the world and is likely to create it in the more developed countries. The precautionary principle also comes in for harsh treatment in much the same way as Beckerman’s, though both seriously misunderstand the nature of the principle, which is not claimed to be based on science but on the lack of it. Rees’ (2003) canter through the many situations that face humankind serves as a timely reminder that ideas never die. The first is a reminder that humankind has the power to destroy itself through the continuing existence of nuclear and biological weapons, particularly the former. The second is the re-emergence of the feeling that science is getting out of control and may be posing a threat to humanity’s existence. The third is to remind humanity that it is ‘not in control’ of the planet, a factor more cogently presented by others (e.g. Margulis and Sagan 1995). It is many years since Stafford Beer (1971) demonstrated the inappropriateness, if not foolishness, of cost/benefit analysis to events similar to those discussed by Posner (2004). The costs and benefits of events that may extinguish human, and possibly all life, on the Earth is in a different league to cost/benefit analysis, so that it is surely logically and technically inapplicable to such a situation. Posner also makes short shrift of the precautionary principle for reasons that he barely explains: his disdain for precaution is presumably because it is not amenable to cost/benefit analysis. Posner pleads for the (American) legal profession to become literate in the basic principles of science and its methods, but others (Foster and Huber 1999) have given a deeper account of the situations faced by judges in cases where there is a high dependence on understanding the science involved and the interpretation of evidence given by expert witnesses. Posner (2004) displays a lack of understanding of matters that Foster and Huber make explicit, though he does make two points, strongly emphasised by them that scientists are often at a loss when acting as expert witnesses in court and come under cross examination, and that, unlike scientific activity, a court has to come to a conclusion with a judgement on the evidence presented and allowed. The purpose of the court proceedings is simply to achieve this result where the outcome depends on the skill of the prosecuting and defending barristers. Judges preside over cases where a conclusion can be reached not those where human survival is barely possible. Dawes (2001) extends this debate about behaviour in courts in a discussion of irrationality as ‘adhering to beliefs that are inherently self-contradictory, not just incorrect, self-defeating, or the basis of poor decisions.’ Beliefs of this kind are commonly met with in the learning processes involved in foresight and systems thinking relating to complex situations. Interpretation of the Precautionary Principle is an example where strong emotions lead to conflicts of this kind. Dawes demonstrates that many everyday judgements, unsupported professional claims and social policy are based on the same kind of ‘everyday irrationality’. There is a relationship here to my earlier representation of how experts manipulate their internal

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knowledge in the gradation from speculation (opinion or assertions based on evidence) into conjecture (assertions with little or no evidence). The transition in thinking is both fuzzy and risky, and an uncomfortably hazardous transition for the individual involved in both foresight and systems thinking. The transition I described is of paramount importance, as foresight depends critically on subjective opinion, creating a strong tension between foresight and systems thinking when the interrelationships between ideas are tested. Critical thinking and hard, reproducible data are the cornerstones of good science. Environmental sciences are no exception, but because their concern is with living systems, with their importance to our biological and economic survival, this makes meeting the requirements of good science for the former more arduous (economics cannot meet these conditions). Furthermore, biological and ecological, and economic survival are often at odds with one another, which makes it even more important to separate substantive knowledge in all three fields from rank opinion that often typifies all of them, but especially economics. It is likely that these features were in Lomborg’s mind when he set out to review the current environmental data so that policy, relating to the sustainability of humankind’s way of life, could be based on well-founded understanding of science and measurement. Lomborg (2001) approached his task as a criticism of ‘environmentalism’ and prefaced it with a well known quotation from Julian Simon, an arch critic of environmentalism, perhaps portraying a predisposition against sustainability whatever the acknowledged strengths or limitations of its foundations. Lomborg’s conclusions were based on reinterpreting current data on human welfare, life expectancy and health, food and hunger, and ‘prosperity’. Lomborg (ibid.) reached the conclusion that the future for the environment is less dire than is supposed, quite the contrary to conventional gloomy predictions. Lomborg accused a ‘pessimistic and dishonest cabal’ of environmental groups, institutions and the media of distorting scientists’ actual findings. His claim was disavowed by many scientists, who responded that Lomborg’s seemingly ‘dispassionate’ outsiders’ view was marred by an incomplete use of data or a misunderstanding of the underlying science. Lomborg’s work was criticised in a specially commissioned of set papers (Schneider (global warming) 2002: 60; Holdren (energy) 2002: 63; Bongaarts (population) 2002: 65 and Lovejoy (biodiversity) 2002: 67). These responses often disputed the soundness of Lomborg’s interpretation of the data relating to the environment, claiming that he failed to meet his own objectives. Even where his statistical analyses were valid his interpretations were frequently ‘off the mark’, or so it was claimed (Rennie 2002: 59). The argument rumbles on with counter-claims by different authors. Much of this takes place out of the sight of lay people and, perhaps, of policy makers too, who in any event may not be in a position to judge the relevance, reasonableness and robustness of the emerging opinions, each with its ‘unique’ claim to the ‘truth’. As a rule of thumb it may be better to see who is not afraid to admit uncertainty, another essential feature of

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good science, into the discussion of their opinions and to beware of the myth busters and ‘truth tellers’. The argument between the protagonists and antagonists of sustainability and sustainable development will rumble on well into the future. Indeed it is unlikely to be settled as it has the nature of a cascade of situations into the unknowable future. From the deep gloom of those who expect the extinction of the human species and to those who believe in its saviour in the form of science and technology are simply at the extremes of the argument. The former is inevitable in cosmological time and possibly much earlier as the history of species demonstrates: the latter is highly debatable and has some deep internal paradoxes that weigh on both sides of the argument. In the terms of Gunderson and Holling’s metaphor of panarchy, the present may represent the point where the long- and slow-running ecological cycle is releasing its potential (the omega phase) to reshape life on the Earth (the alpha phase) through the beginnings of a new (and possibly chaotic) exploitation (the r phase) of new connectedness, while ecosystem resilience prevents total collapse through the remarkable ‘safefail’ phenomenon. These are times when humanity is truly in a wilderness with, as always, only partial control over its future existence, a phenomenon that has to be grasped by all who claim to be systems thinkers.

Sustainabi lity, sustainable devel o p m e n t a n d human in ge nuit y At the start of this final appreciation of sustainability and sustainable development, the importance of history has to be made clear. Between 1960 and 1980, with much foresight and systemic thinking, the major issues that face humankind now and for some distance into the future were identified and made known extensively: there is plenty of evidence for this through books, papers and reports published during two decades of intensive reflection on what the Club of Rome called ‘the human predicament’. All were carried out under the duress of the ‘cold war’ with its perpetual backdrop of the possibility of a thermonuclear holocaust. It has become unconventional to continue to include the possibility of a nuclear holocaust, or its equivalent in some other form of human warfare, as part of the notion of sustainability, but I shall do so here and again in Chapter 8. It is doubtful whether the outpouring of reflections that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s has been matched at any time since; such was their number and diversity that any choice of mine in these reflections is eclectic. Many of my selections have already been referred to in earlier chapters or earlier in this chapter, particularly with respect to methodological matters. At this juncture I regard those of Kahn (1962), Ward (1966), Ward and Dubos (1972) and Heilbronner (1974), who created the term the ‘Human Prospect’, Dubos (1974), Peccei (1977, 1982) and Lovelock (1979) as of particular significance. It was a time of a mixture of gloomy predictions and extravagant expectations

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of the disappearance of poverty and disease. Indeed, it was two decades in which much thought was given to the future of humanity and in which the current human situation, a systems concept, was foreseen, but largely ignored by governments in general, and politicians in particular. The notion of modelling the human situation was born in this period and took on different forms ranging from the formal analytical models that have grown out of the early weather forecasting models (Lorenz 1963) into the modern GCMs; the systems dynamic models that grew into World 3 used in ‘The Limits to Growth’; to models, some descriptive and computable and others not, that depended on the elicitation of ‘expert’ opinion (e.g. Anon 1978). The latter included the now-popular art of scenario building that emerged from the military sphere, largely under Kahn’s influence (Kahn and Weiner 1967), and the extensive use of scenarios in industry, most publicly by Shell. The notion of scenarios permeated the modelling world widely. Usually there was a requirement for their quantitative characterisation as far as that was possible. However, sometimes these computable parts of scenario models were used sanctify the entire textual scenarios with an unwarranted air of veracity. All of the foregoing implies that the present furore about sustainability has arisen from a process of rediscovery in which long-established ideas and thought processes are rediscovered by newcomers to the scene (Loveridge 2001: 785). Much rhetoric concerning sustainability and sustainable development has now emerged from the political sphere: there complex ideas are being reduced to simplistic statements based on limited knowledge and understanding of the matters involved while policies and their dependent strategies are being planned under their guidance. In Dickens’s ‘A Christmas Carol’, the Ghost of Christmas Present confronts Scrooge with two very ugly children who he learns are called ‘Want’ and ‘Ignorance’; both are present now in the situations called sustainability and sustainable development and the political approach to them. Human ingenuity alone can achieve a widespread understanding that sustainability and sustainable development are not problems or projects amenable to reductionist thinking leading to a solution and an end point, a trap that many others in the media, politics and elsewhere fall into as does Sachs in the 2007 Reith Lectures. They are, as in earlier terminology, dynamic cascades of interdependent situations of ever-shifting character, that emerge from interrelations between the human and natural worlds, in which the absolute dependence of the former on the latter is recognised and acted upon. Mind shifts of this kind were at the heart of the debate in the 1960s and 1970s; their achievement throughout human societies remains elusive and will be a considerable innovation in itself. Indeed, Peccei (1982) thought that persuasion alone would never achieve the necessary mind shifts – a crisis or worse would be necessary. In the political and policy world, the notion of cascades of interdependent situations is a strange one that poses the need for a reversal of humankind’s tendency to ‘consider ourselves not as lodgers

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on the earth, but as landlords’ (Ward and Dubos 1972: 24): even a partial a change in mindset in this direction, in the policy-cum-political world, will be a major achievement. Complex situations, such as sustainability and sustainable development, are fascinating but unwelcome intrusions into the political and media worlds, unless they can be reduced to simplistic headlines and a television or radio sound bite, as is currently the case in Spring 2007 for ‘climate change.’ The emphasis on the need for a change in mindset, by so many past and present contributors to the debate about sustainability or future of humankind, has promoted the view, among its antagonists, that sustainability and sustainable development are ephemeral concepts lacking a theoretical basis and numerical validation. Indeed, a mind-shift is seen as ‘hand waving’ to escape the ‘realities’ of reductionist problem solving, considered by the arch antagonists as the way ahead. Their views, some of which were reviewed briefly earlier, bear this out. Meanwhile, independently of the antagonists, in the 1970s modelling prompted a rising concern for humanity’s future voiced by the authors already mentioned, particularly by Ward and Dubos (1972), Peccei (1982) and the Club of Rome. The only similarity shared between the modelling and the antagonist’s viewpoint is the underlying theme of economics in many of the models. However, their purpose was not to support the economics of ‘growthmania,’ but to reverse it and to see what role there might be for ‘world models’ in policy making. Inescapably, the international political climate of the 1960s and 1970s influenced the way these modelling programmes were either welcomed or played down if not rejected outright as, with or without justification, some were seen to have distinct political undertones: this arose from the acknowledged notion that ‘[i]mplicit in every global modelling project is the idea that some images of the future are preferable to others’ (Meadows et al. 1982: 44). It was not thought possible to build models of this kind without reflecting on deep and broad qualitative questions relating to humankind’s future. However, in a summary table (ibid.: 101) the way in which the modellers drew the boundaries of the systems of interest to them indicates the increasing influence of economist’s thinking and an absence of qualitative influences in a wider range of fields. Indeed, Meadows et al. comment that: ‘The zealotry and leaps of faith that characterised the early global models have now been supplanted’ (ibid.: 100). They go on to conclude that, ‘a model is a synthesis of science, art and technology. The modeller is the synthesiser’ (ibid.: 105), a reasonable view on the matter. Essentially, world modelling is concerned with sustainability and sustainable development, but in a defined and structured way that the modelling processes used enforces and make explicit. Their authors are well aware of the limitations of the process of boundary setting and of how many less quantifiable and qualitative matters lie outside their boundaries. The essential step accomplished by the world modelling of the 1970s and by its critics (e.g. Cole et al. 1973) was to place

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Carrying capacity

Population Climate

TFR a W

Earthas a Livingsystem

ysof living Belief systems

Supportinginfrastructureof: -energy ,fuelandfueltechnology -securityoffoodsupply -availabilityofwater -naturalresources Figure 7.3 Kernel of a model of sustainability

the ‘world problematique’ and sustainability (its outgrowth) firmly in the public domain. Sadly, the political and media worlds, particularly the former, chose to ignore the possible characteristics of the ‘world problematique’ that the models revealed, but continued to promote an unsustainable philosophy of economic ‘growthmania’ based on ever-rising expectations, consumerism and debt, which remains the central plank of economic policy in most OECD countries. I propose to use a simple model (Figure 7.3) as the basis of the closing part of this chapter. The basic premise is that sustainability and sustainable development arise from the inter-working of a kernel of seven essential themes (population, carrying capacity for all species, the Earth as a living system, climate, human ways of living, belief systems and the human total fertility rate) each of which is itself interconnected with many other themes that are themselves interconnected with many others (see Appendix 7.1) to form a complex situation, subject to explicit and implicit boundaries. The seven themes of the kernel are mostly qualitative, but similar to those used in world modelling and is placed against a background of pervasive influences that include:

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• The possibility of huge volcanic explosions or the eruption of a giant caldera • The probability of impact(s) by asteroids of kilometre dimensions: these events are of low probability (referred to earlier); their destructiveness is indicated by the Torino scale (Schilling 1999: 655) • The effects of solar flares, particularly those associated with the solar maximum and coronal mass ejections, that occur at intervals of between seven and eleven years. The next maximum is due in 2012. In other respects the effects of changes in solar irradiance remain uncertain in relation to climate change • War, especially when it involves thermonuclear weapons, is an everpresent background, more so than the use of biological weapons where their less directed delivery and lack of selectivity may make them less serious contenders to extinguish most life on the Earth.   (All of these events, when they occur with sufficient magnitude, may lead to extinction phenomena affecting many species or to potentially highly disruptive events for extended periods of time, for human societies in particular, especially if two or more were to occur at about the same time or within a few years of each other) • Continuity of energy in the Einsteinian sense to maintain the Earth as a living system. Some explanatory comments follow; their order is of no significance in this interactive set: • Population includes mammalian and non-mammalian species. The human population is a subset of the mammalian part and its size depends on its interaction as both predator and prey in the interaction between the mammalian and non-mammalian groups (the latter includes disease vectors) • Carrying capacity is the conventional notion of the quantity of life of all forms that the Earth can support and depends especially on the Earth’s climate, and on human ways of living • Climate is the emergent outcome of all those factors that influence the population’s living space and depends on the Earth as a living system resulting from the behaviour of the: • • • • • •

Solar system Earth crust and core Earth atmosphere Earth vegetation Population Carrying capacity

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• Earth remains a living system in the manner described by Lovelock (2000), Margulis and Sagan (1995), Margulis (1998) and Wilson (2002) • Ways of living are the geographical distribution of socio-culturaleconomic-political patterns of human societies across the world. In world modelling there have been various attempts to reflect ways of living, but with an emphasis on their economic character. In some models the world was divided into fifteen different regions. However, in the wider context indicated, Peccei comments ‘… as long as society is organised as a system of sovereign states, human activities will continue to be regulated at the national level … to harmonise more than 150 selfish nationalisms in a serious and constructive manner is almost impossible’ (Peccei 1982: 142). Since 1982, the time of Peccei’s comment, the world has divided still further through the break-up of the USSR in 1989 into new independent states, while Russian influence at first retreated throughout the old Eastern bloc as its component states became sovereign but may now be re-emerging. At the time of writing there are 192 states that are members of the UN • Belief systems include all the world’s major identifiable codes of values and norms that guide significant groups of people, independent of their nationality, in the conduct of their daily lives and are likely to bring reproach or punitive action if they are transgressed by individuals. These are entirely human constructs that may or may not be concerned with humanity’s relationship with the Earth as a living system, though this has shaped these constructs indirectly through human ways of living and will continue to do so. Belief systems both shape and are shaped by ways of living • Total fertility rate (TFR) applies to human societies and adopts the conventional demographic meaning, which in its simplest form is ‘the average number of children expected to be born to a woman during her [reproductive] lifetime.’ The reference to ‘reproductive lifetime’ has become necessary following the introduction of IVF treatment that may enable a woman to bear a child after her normal reproductive age. The kernel set of factors outlined form a dynamic situation and cannot be discussed in the reductionist way; they have to be discussed as a set. Population and ‘carrying capacity’ may capture immediate attention by seeming to lie at the heart of sustainability and sustainable development. Wallace’s concern for these two matters in 1761, a time when the Earth’s human population was in the region of 1 billion people, was foresight-full. Human population is far from the whole story in the search for sustainability. Carrying capacity is indeterminate and is only recognisable after its ‘emergence’. Hardin’s classic paper on the ‘tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin 1968) drew attention to the class of ‘problems’ for which there are ‘no technical solutions’; the ‘population problem’ is one of them (ibid.: 2). From earlier chapters it will be obvious that the current interactive set is a ‘situation’ amenable to amelioration in which

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population is an embedded element. Hardin’s work is deep and attempts interdisciplinarity by cutting across many themes despite its reference to the population ‘problem’. The interdependencies within and beyond the remainder of the kernel set, some of which are not amenable to the quantification so frequently expected to sanctify ideas, ensure that changes in population alone will simply reshape and ameliorate the situation; it will not resolve it because situations cannot be resolved. Many authors, from the 1960s onwards, have commented that the compound growth in population, energy and expectations cannot continue. Hubbert argued convincingly against the ever rising expectations of ‘growth’ concluding that: It now appears that the period of rapid population and industrial growth that has prevailed during the last few centuries, instead of being the normal order of things and capable of continuance into the indefinite future, is actually one of the most abnormal phases of human history. It represents only a brief transitional episode between two very much longer periods, each characterized by rates of change so slow as to be regarded essentially a period of non-growth … [that] … poses no insuperable physical or biological problems, it will entail a fundamental revision of those aspects of our current economic and social thinking which stem from the assumption that the growth rates which have characterized this temporary period can be permanent. (Hubbert 1969: 238) Few people have demurred, but Kahn initially countenanced world a population of 20 billion only to moderate this later in a well-judged explanation of how the world population might change under the influence of a decline in the total fertility rate and the ‘demographic transition’ (Kahn et al. 1976: 27), presenting a picture that virtually repeated Hubbert’s of some years earlier. The demographic transition is a well-established trend in many regions of the world in which rising economic well-being (assessed by gross national product per capita) in a nation is accompanied by a decline in the crude birth rate to below the replacement rate. When this trend is associated with a rising death rate, a characteristic of ageing populations, it leads to expectations of declining indigenous populations. The accumulation of Hardin’s ideas on the ‘commons’, Hubbert’s work on energy and Kahn’s futuristic study (Kahn et al. 1976), together with the outcome of ten years of world modelling ought to have provided sufficient warning concerning humankind’s future to counteract economic growthmania based on consumerism and an industrial society based on the extractive destruction of human and natural resources. But, no – the disastrous opinions, for that is all they are, of conventional economic thought and growthmania continue to dominate human societies to create ways of living that cannot be sustained.

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All of these studies reiterate the need to look at the future of humankind over much longer time scales than those that usually prevail in human societies. Hubbert’s study, based on energy, the key to the carrying capacity, population and climate triangle, and to the ways of living, is instructive: it led him to propose three possible courses for the human population over the next few centuries, provided a nuclear holocaust is avoided: 1 2 3

‘It could continue to rise for a brief period and then gradually level off to some stable magnitude capable of being sustained by the world’s energy and material resources for a long period of time It could overshoot any possible stable world and then drop back and eventually stabilise at some level compatible with the world’s resources Finally, as a result of resource exhaustion and a general cultural decline, the curve could be forced back to a population corresponding to the lowest energy consumption level of a primitive existence.’

The one type of behaviour for this curve that is not possible is that of continued and unlimited growth (Hubbert 1969: 238). It is here that Gunderson and Holling’s ‘panarchy’ metaphor, described in Chapter 5, offers insights into the population situation and its interdependence with the other six aspects of the model. The panarchy metaphor involves the r and K strategies that are common in ecology and relate to Hardin’s notion of commons; both stem from the Verhulst equation used in population dynamics. Gunderson and Holling (2002) proposed an extension to the simple r and K strategies by incorporating them into an adaptive cycle that incorporates the additional features (described in Chapter 5) that allow reorganisation and transformation in a system. Panarchy can also recur as a series of nested cycles, illustrating that the ‘functioning of those cycles and the communication between them determines the sustainability of the system’ (Holling 2001: 396). In a socio-ecological system the panarchy metaphor can interpret the ability of such a system to ‘invent and experiment, benefiting from inventions that create opportunity while it [the system] is kept safe from those that destabilize the system because of their nature or excessive exuberance’ (Holling 2001: 398), a phenomenon reminiscent of Holling’s earlier safe-fail principle (Holling 1977: 114). Because the whole panarchy is creative and conserving it helps to clarify sustainability as being the capacity to create, test and maintain adaptive capability. Development is the process of creating, testing and maintaining opportunity. The phrase that combines the two, ‘sustainable development’, therefore refers to the goal of fostering adaptive capabilities while simultaneously creating opportunities. It is, therefore, not an oxymoron but a term that describes a logical partnership. (Holling 2001: 399)

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Perhaps panarchy, through its breadth and depth, is another step in the considerable body of similarly broad and deep theory or metaphor to rebut the accusations of the antagonists of sustainability and sustainable development that it is without a theoretical base. There is little experience in modern times (if at any time during humankind’s existence) of the behaviour of low birth rate populations and none at all of countries facing declining indigenous populations over an extended period of decades, by comparison with the short-term effects of major epidemics. So far, the most common feature has been migrations from poorer to apparently richer countries, as the latter struggle to perpetuate economic growth that is their characteristic. This is the picture painted by the ardent antagonists of sustainable development, as described earlier. In many of the wealthy OECD countries TFRs are well below replacement rate. If the trend continues, as seems likely from current ways of living, then the outcome later in this century will bring striking changes to ways of living, especially if demographic change is accompanied by significant changes in climate (Day 1992). These are complex matters involving personal choices that depend on belief systems, another member of the kernel set of the model outlined earlier, and physical factors that influence the reproductive capability of human beings. These matters will be discussed again in Chapter 8. Belief systems and ways of living (see Appendix 7.1) influence each other – both are influenced by all the themes in the kernel of the model and by all the themes in the STEEPV set, where there are interactions embodied in the principles of ecological economics and its close relations industrial ecology, and behavioural economics (see Appendix 7.2). Perhaps belief systems and ways of living are driving the development of these three themes in economic thought as classical economics continues to become less relevant to sustainability and sustainable development. Indeed, since the 1980s real events on the Earth have enabled ecological economics, industrial ecology and behavioural economics to gain credence and relevance to policy making, finally weakening conventional economic opinion (but not by much!) as the basis of policy making. The emergence of these three themes of economic thought in their nascent form over 35 years ago and their persistent development is surely enough to indicate that all is not well in the economic camp. It may seem odd to include the ‘Earth as a living system’ as part of the kernel of the model as, in its broadest sense, the other six elements are elements of the ‘Earth as a living system’ set. However, there is a purpose in making the distinction. There has been a good deal of unwillingness in some quarters to accept that the Earth is a living system, not of the reproductive kind that some people (Dawkins 1982: 234) strangely wished upon Lovelock’s original Gaia theory, which Lovelock rebutted through the ‘Daisyworld’ model (Watson and Lovelock 1983). One of the benefits of world modelling and climate modelling, perhaps the latter more than the former, has been to push the notion of the Earth as a living system toward the forefront of appreciation in Vickers’ sense.

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It is now more widely accepted that the Earth is a complex system in which living and inanimate matter work together to create, maintain and destroy life and its support systems in a continuous process that can be likened to an extreme version of panarchy. In that sense the Earth’s carrying capacity is ever changing according to the outcome of this continual ‘battle’ between mutually supportive and mutually destructive forces, a battle in which humanity has chosen to intervene on the basis of (unavoidably) incomplete understanding. Indeed, humanity is unlikely ever to possess the breadth and depth of understanding needed to ‘manage’ the ‘Earth as a living system’ yet that is what is being proposed and where the ‘successful management’ of the recovery of the ozone hole may have provided humanity with a false sense of competence. One benefit of recognising the presence of the mutually supportive and mutually destructive forces at work in the world as a living system, ought to be the recognition of the predator–prey interaction between viruses and bacteria, and other parts of the living system, meaning that the eradication of ‘disease’, while remaining a human ambition, is one that is unlikely to be realised. The second reason for including the ‘Earth as a living system’ in the kernel set is to direct thought to the wider systems in which the Earth resides and that make up its behaviour. Huggett (1995, 1997) directs attention toward the inanimate geophysical and geo-ecological aspects stepping carefully round the notion of the Earth as a living system. It fell first (remarkably) to James Hutton (1785) to make that controversial step with Lovelock (1972), Ward and Dubos (1972), Margulis and Lovelock (1974), Capra (1996), Wilson (2002), and others to follow, perhaps unknowingly, in Hutton’s footsteps. Of these authors, Ward and Dubos (1972: 290) retain the view of humanity’s need to ‘manage’ the Earth through a ‘strategy for Planet Earth’ while acknowledging the ‘infinitely sensitive issues of divisive economic and political sovereignty’ that concerned Peccei (1982) so much. Wilson, in particular, doubts the wisdom of entrusting humanity with such a task maintaining that ‘[t]he human species is, in a word, an environmental abnormality. It is possible that intelligence in the wrong kind of species was foreordained to be a fatal combination for the biosphere’ (Wilson and Baird 1999). Underlying any appreciation of the ‘Earth as a living system’ is the principle of bounded rationality: the human mind simply cannot cope with the complexity involved. Sustainable development, in its real meaning, is not ‘manageable’ in the sense of achieving an expected outcome in the form of successful continuity of the human species interactively with the multiplicity of other species on which humanity depends, nor can the Earth’s inanimate resources be managed to the same end because of the complex interdependencies involved between the animate and inanimate worlds. What role is there for modelling in appreciating the ‘Earth as a living system’? All models are incomplete, by definition: were it to be otherwise each would be a ‘duplicate’ (Riggs 1970), in this case of the ‘Earth as a living system’, which is absurd and would render the model superfluous. All models also have a purpose (Meadows et al. 1982: 44) and begin as a matter of opinion with statements

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like ‘I believe this can be modelled.’ Thereafter, opinion intercedes throughout until the model is finally completed, warts and all. Opinion is often the only way to navigate through the complexities of what is being modelled and of the model building itself. So, for the ‘Earth as a living system’ the Daisyworld model (Watson and Lovelock 1983) demonstrates how homeostasis can occur in a complex system like the ‘Earth as a living system’ and how it can change stepwise to a different stable state, the phenomenon of homeorrhesis (Lovelock 2000:  141). The purpose of the model was to demonstrate this effect, as an essential part of the Gaia theory. Homeorrhesis is not often mentioned in the debate arising from climate modelling as their purpose is to model the behaviour of the atmosphere physically and chemically with an objective function of global mean temperature related to the chemistry of the atmosphere. Similarly, the world models set out purposely to test the role of this form of modelling, as an aid to policy making, by demonstrating the nature of the ‘human predicament’ through the models behaviour represented by a defined set of outputs – in the terms of the model builder’s intentions the outcomes were successful. Other models that throw some light on the vexed question of sustainable development include Hardin’s ‘tragedy of the commons’ and Gunderson and Holling’s, idea of ‘panarchy’ with the possibility of linking these two sets of ideas. Varela et al. (1974) and later (Maturana and Varela 1980) created ideas that emerged as autopoiesis (an autopoietic organisation is an autonomous and self-maintaining unity which contains component-producing processes, i.e. (self-producing)), has obvious attractions when considering the ‘Earth as a living system’. There is a drawback as autopoiesis will create its own boundaries within which to maintain the system. The drawback arises from Dempster’s query (1998: see Chapter 1) about autopoeisis as a phenomenon as she was concerned that self-learning based on the metaphor of an organism is often inappropriate and misleading when applied to complex systems: this led her to propose a ‘new concept [sympoietic systems] based on an interpretation of ecosystems’ (Dempster 2000: 1) which has been extended recently (Dempster 2007: 93). Dempster described sympoietic systems as ‘complex, self-organizing but collectively producing, boundaryless systems’ as distinct from autopoietic systems that create their own self-defined boundaries that are organisationally closed, whereas sympoietic systems are organisationally ajar. Other charac­ teristics arise from these differences in as much as autopoietic systems are ‘homeostatic, development oriented, centrally controlled, predictable and efficient. Sympoietic systems are homeorhetic, evolutionary, distributively controlled, unpredictable and adaptive’ (Dempster 2000: 1). These descriptions are set at the opposite ends of a conceptual spectrum and present a useful aid to self-learning by drawing attention to many, often neglected, complex system characteristics providing a means for recognising trade-offs between the sets of characteristics that are associated with autopoiesis and sympoiesis, and their application to situations, that include social, political, economic and cultural elements. The ‘Earth as a living system’ is then not autopoietic but sympoietic

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with fuzzy rather than well-defined boundaries. Dempster’s proposition of a system with collectively produced, uncertain or fuzzy boundaries would be typical of any attempt to model a real-world situation. The application of systems thinking to situations, which are unstructured and complex, with boundaries that are fuzzy and subject to intense philosophical debate and depend on an individual’s perception and appreciation of the situation (see Chapter 1), has much to learn from Dempster’s proposal as sympoiesis seems more fitted to assist understanding than autopoiesis. Perhaps synergies between Hardin’s tragedy of the commons, Gunderson and Holling’s panarchy and Dempster’s sympoiesis may provide new ways to appreciate the ‘Earth as a living system’ alongside the Gaia, World and climate models. The kernel set of the model I have used may well be criticised for apparently lacking many of the physical necessities of sustainable development by concentrating on elements of the situation that are qualitative. In addition to their complexity, these elements have very different time scales. For example: • the ‘Earth as a living system’ and climate have very long time scales • population and carrying capacity have time scales comparable to that of species generations, which can vary widely but lie within human comprehension • in the human world, belief systems are not coherent in as much as the underlying codes may endure for centuries but their interpretation may well alter from generation to generation • the TFR tends to follow the influence of the demographic transition that, once completed, has so far not been reversed, giving a time scale of decades and is apparently independent of generations • the time scale in the important matter of ways of living is volatile and within generations. Bearing in mind the conceptual and perceptual nature of model creation (Chapter 1) I can offer a second model (Figure 7.4), related to sustainable development, created in the mid-1970s with the objective of providing a set of elements likely to influence business until the next millennium at least (Note  2). The interactions that form the background to the model are illustrated in Figure 7.5: the interrelatedness of the main elements is typical of systems models and of systemic foresight, a term coined by Saritas (2006: 6) to link systems thinking and foresight more explicitly. Both models are systemic, displaying properties that have been referred to in similar, but different ways by different authors (Varela et al. 1974; Maturana and Varela 1980; Checkland 1981: 75). The common threads are organisation, the shape of the interrelationships between the elements that map out the situation, and its structure, which describes the characteristics of each element as far as that is possible within the fuzzy boundaries of a situation. Checkland extends

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Suficiency Recycling Access Newtechnology Definedproperties Quality

Growth/decline Fertility Distribution Employment Literacy Longevity

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C hange Deforestation Desertification Waterquality Resources Winds Erosion

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Food Growth Comunication Security Homes, Industry Services, Retailing

Domestic Industrial Abatement Water Air Land

Agriculture Horticulture Mariculture Animalhusbandry Processing Quality/diversity Eficiency Productivity

Figure 7.4 Long duration world needs

Energy & Fuel Raw & processed materials

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LongT erm hu m an need s

Climate & water

Food

Health Urbanization Figure 7.5 Interrelatedness of world needs

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the description of organisation describing it as ‘emergence and hierarchy’ and similarly for structure, which is described as ‘communication and control.’ Capra (1996) and Lovelock (2000: 141) invoke the notion of homeorrhesis, the process through which living things ‘change while staying the same’ (Waddington 1974: 231), as the process through which living systems change dynamically from one stable state to another. As a result Capra sets out his ‘Key Criteria of a Living System’ as being composed of its pattern of organisation, its structure and its life process, matters that flow from autopoiesis, dissipative structures and cognition. The models suggested here are systemic and their properties are quite general to systems thinking and to systemic foresight with the possible exception of the invocation of homeorrhesis as an important process linking organisation and structure. Once again the interrelationship is clear between the notion of the ‘commons’, panarchy, autopoiesis and its outgrowth to sympoiesis, and the systems ideas summarised by Capra’s criteria; all are searching for ways to enable the amelioration of situations, which are strange waters for policy makers. Is there then a viable way for policy makers to think about sustainability and sustainable development? The question seems nonsensical as many people already do while others claim to do so. These claims vary between complex, as described, and simplistic with all shades in between. No one knows what the conditions are for sustainability or sustainable development nor is there any clarity about how decisions can be made that are thought likely to promote the emergence of some unknown set of conditions or who will take these decisions and how they will make them, since they may not happen in the same place or involve the same people (Loveridge 1979: 22). Is it true to say that the conditions of sustainability are ‘unknown’? Surely they are those that exist now that favour the continuance of life as we know it? Maybe, but maybe not. After decades of wasted opportunity humanity has woken up to the idea that it and its societies are not separate from all the Earth’s other life forms, but rely intensely on the resources the Earth provides, including the aerobic atmosphere, and on the solar insolation that drives the Earth as a living system. However, the idea that humanity is not essential to life on Earth nor does it control or manage life on Earth, is a hard one to grasp, even though the evidence is clear enough. For presentation purposes the notion of a constriction is a useful metaphor for a way of compressing, sorting and discarding ideas to create an output including a sustainable human species as part of a wider Earth-bound living system. Humanity’s self-interest is in maintaining successful continuity for itself for as long as possible for the populace and the activities it indulges in, until the human population exceeds the Earth’s carrying capacity, where that is created by both terrestrial and extra-terrestrial events. At that point the species will either crash to a much smaller number or go into extinction. For smallscale, reasonably well-defined problems, a constriction or filtering metaphor is often used to describe a change from one state to another, provided the output

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Swarmsofideas relatingto sustainability

Emergentbehaviour ofsystem

Figure 7.6 Symbolic representation of Venturi-like process for sorting ideas flowing from thought experiments

can be defined. For larger systemic situations the constriction metaphor fails, because of the veritable swarm of intelligent, interrelated ideas and entities, presented to it. The swarm is of unknown size and complexity, consequently the emergent outcome cannot be specified or easily appreciated as manifesting either sustainability or successful continuity for humanity (Figure 7.6) except retrospectively. What, if anything, can humanity do to promote the successful continuity of its own species? Perhaps the first step is a change in mindset among policy makers and humanity as a whole (Peccei (1982) had little faith in this), to recognise the interdependence of all life and that predator–prey relationships are endemic in living systems: the search for sustenance is paramount. In that respect, humanity is in tune with the rest of the planet’s life forms. However, humanity claims to be different through its ability to choose how to support its ways of living as though this can be done without paying due regard to the natural world – this is sophistry. Despite the complexity of humanity’s modern life-ways, the search for food, and the other basics of life so well described as ‘survival’ in Maslow’s hierarchy (Maslow 1954), is the ultimate objective of all human activity; transgressions of this basic intent result in feasts for the Four Horseman: Pestilence, War, Famine and Death. The key elements of human survival seem obvious; that some are not universally available in today’s human societies indicates that they are not sustainable. Global indicators, mostly economic and monetary, of this or that element thought to be relevant to the emergence of sustainable living systems, are irrelevant. It is local disparities that hold the key, simply because, for example, an ‘over populated’ city or geographic region is an extremely vulnerable one liable to be winnowed by

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any combination of the Four Horsemen. The emergence of any sustainable region then depends on situations that are shaped by the interrelated activities of billions of organisms, including humanity, in which the latter, the minority, believes it alone can shape the emerging situation. Whether individuals or policy makers recognise this dilemma is a moot point, but it is suggested that the latter might, either knowingly or unwittingly, recognise and make use of the matrix illustrated in Figure 7.7, itself an evolution of the policy maker’s dilemmas described by Barker and Peters (1993). Each element in the situation needs to be presented to the front face of the matrix to appreciate its relevance and to face policy makers with the dilemmas regarding their appreciation of their capabilities to exert, through policy, either control or partial control over that element of the situation and to determine whether it is outside their control. The multifaceted choice for the policy maker is likely to be an uncomfortable one requiring admissions of ignorance rather than one of omniscience. The initial step into the matrix is the easiest for the policy maker. The next step is to recognise that the matrix applies to each node of the interdependent STEEPV set in the manner illustrated in Figure 7.8. Each step at one node requires the consideration of the interdependencies with the other five nodes. The complexity of this process is subject to bounded rationality and is perhaps why emergence is the key property of the evolution of sustainable living systems. If the first step into the use of the matrix looks reductionist, the second step should remove all illusions about the complexity Policymakersbeliefsabout theirabilitytocontrol Uniquely u nknow

n

Barelypossible muchunknowable Dificulteven forexperts

ing s ma yris lmpexit rsdile Dificultbut e k o yma c on polic non-expertscope uSitati Recognisab le complication

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Controllable Whatis possible? Whatis feasible? Whatis desirable?

Partialcontrol

Nocontrol

on nts trol& ituatui e m u r n t yins lofco olic toleve ultyofs p ble g f fic tifia in Iden cord ofdi ac ree deg Primaryassessmentofsituationelements

Figure 7.7 Notional policy matrix (Repeat of Figure 2.5)

218  Scenarios and sustainability Uniquely unknown Difficulty near unknown Difficult for experts Difficult for non-experts Recognisable complexity Elaborate detail

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Human values

Technological

Uniquely unknown Difficulty near unknown Difficult for experts

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Uniquely unknown Difficulty near unknown Difficult for experts Difficult for non-experts Recognisable complexity Elaborate detail

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Difficult for experts

Ecology

Difficult for non-experts Recognisable complexity Elaborate detail Controllable

Partiial control

No control

What's possible

What's feasible

What's desirable

Figure 7.8 Interrelatedness between the notional policy matrix and the STEEPV set

of the cascade of situations that comprise sustainability and its dependence on emergence. There are three other interdependent questions that policy makers need to have constantly and simultaneously in mind as they work systemically on the cascade of situations humanity now faces: • What is possible? • What is feasible? • What is desirable? The three questions were originally set down for product development, but they are applicable much more widely. In its original context, ‘What is possible?’ related to known science and what that would allow. Human ways of life are about much more than science so there are other matters that concern, more generally, what is possible in human interrelations between individuals, groups of many different kinds and beliefs, nations and the Earth as a living system. In product development ‘What is feasible?’ relates to technology that ought to (the policy ‘ought’ described in Chapter 1) enable the creation of artefacts, both products and services. Again, these notions are applicable more widely in human affairs, becoming visible in the physical world through many aspects of politics, multitudes of agreements, international bodies to regulate trade and, more recently, human interaction with the natural world. The latter is still not seen as the kind of communication interface referred to earlier in this chapter, but rather as a dominant controlling influence over an unintelligent world

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instead of communication with a world that humanity depends on absolutely and has far more inbuilt ‘intelligence’ than at one time imagined. Perhaps CSR and the GRI are the beginnings here of an appropriate information protocol. The latter issue leads on naturally to the last of the three questions, ‘What is desirable?’ Thus far, the response by humanity has been to require satisfaction of human wants in the ‘developed world’ and human needs in those regions where survival and sustaining, in Maslow’s hierarchy (1954) are daily preoccupations. To paraphrase Gandhi, ‘to a poor man God comes in the form of bread,’ whereas the rich look to gadgetry on which to spend their excess wealth, ultimately with the hope of achieving either time-occupying activity, or perhaps, the transhumanist’s aim of everlasting youthful life. These relationships can be represented conveniently by the Venn diagram (Figure 7.9). Desirability covers that area of contention in the kernel set of the model where people discuss and argue about what kinds of belief systems and ways of living may be expected by, and be acceptable to, society within the constraints and opportunities of the other equally important elements of the set. Desirability is then the most socially oriented (also the most public and politicised) of these three interrelated questions that will influence the evolution of human societies. The complexity of these matters has been illustrated in Figure 2.5. All the foregoing ways of thinking about sustainability and sustainable development imply that policy makers can no longer think in terms of decisions with their background of problem solving, but in terms of steps, knowing that all policies fail, some immediately as is happening now with the market for carbon off-set credits, while some are partially successful. Humanity’s approach Socio-economics,Politics & V alues Feasible&Desirable butNO T possible

Feasible

Desirable

Possible&Desirable butNO T Feasible

Possible

T echnolo gy &Economics

Possible&Feasible butNO T Desirable

Science &Ecology

Possible,Feasible &Desirable

Figure 7.9 Venn diagram illustrating role of possibility, feasibility and desirability in sustainability

220  Scenarios and sustainability

to sustainability and sustainable development will depend heavily on Holling’s notion of systems remaining ‘safe-fail’ (Holling 1977: 129) while ‘listening’ intently to the signals flowing across the communication interfaces between the ‘Earth as a living system’ and the other six elements of the kernel set of the model. For policy makers the often unrecognised dilemma is that humankind is but one species that is part of the Earth as a living system with no guarantee that it will not suffer extinction just like many past species have done and present ones are doing. In this chapter I have endeavoured to illustrate the necessity for systemic thinking and systemic foresight in order to learn the language of cascades of situations in relation to sustainability and sustainable development. In the initial, broad learning about a situation many threads go un-revealed, this comes later during deeper exploration. Throughout, Vickers’ (1963) notion of appreciation, with its intonation of complexity and fuzziness, is a powerful one within the limits of bounded rationality. My second purpose in this chapter has been to show that sustainability and sustainable development are far from being short of theoretical bases, but their extreme complexity makes a ‘complete’ theory nigh on impossible. In 1999 Wilson and Baird posed the question ‘Is humanity suicidal?’ Their answer was given in terms of two extreme viewpoints ‘exemptionalism’ and ‘environmentalism’. The first means: ‘that since humankind is transcendent in intelligence and spirit, so must our species have been released from the iron laws of ecology that bind all other species. No matter how serious the problem, civilised human beings, by ingenuity, force of will and – who knows – divine dispensation, will find a solution.’ In other words, the viewpoint of those whom I have classed as antagonists to sustainability. The second, environmentalism, is the antithesis of the first, proposing: that human physical and spiritual health depends on sustaining the planet in a relatively unaltered state. Earth is our home in the full, genetic sense, where humanity and its ancestors existed for all the millions of years of their evolution. Natural ecosystems … maintain the world exactly as we would wish it to be maintained. When we debase the global environment and extinguish the variety of life, we are dismantling a support system that is too complex to understand, let alone replace, in the foreseeable future. Wilson and Baird (1999: 55) conclude that ‘in its neglect of the rest of life, exemptionalism fails definitively’ whereas ‘the environmentalist vision, prudential and less exuberant than exemptionalism, is closer to reality’, though it is not one that the protagonists of sustainability or sustainable development accept in all its aspects. Sombrely, they conclude ‘[y]et the awful truth remains that a large part of humanity will suffer no matter what is done.’

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Appendix 7.1

A n otion of int er-rel a t ionships i n s us tainability

Figure A7.1  A notion of inter-relatedness for sustainability

Appendix 7.2

E cological economics, industrial ec o l o g y a n d b ehavioural economics: brief desc r i p t i o n s a n d s yn thes is Costanza (1992) has described how ecological economics is conducted in a ‘systems’ framework addressing the sustainability of interactions between economic and ecological systems, while acknowledging the fundamental conservation laws. It is a conceptually pluralistic discipline based on shared assumptions and theory. Ecological economics represents a commitment by natural and social scientists and practitioners, to develop a new understanding of how different living systems interact with one another, drawing lessons from this for both analysis and policy. The complexity of ecological economics requires the inclusion of some aspects of environmental economics, traditional ecology, ecological impact studies and several other disciplinary perspectives. The systemic approach encourages new, and hopefully more integrated, linkages between ecological and economic systems, under the premise that

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these two themes are complex, adaptive, living systems that need to be studied as integrated, co-evolving systems to be adequately understood (Holling 1986:  292; Proops 1989: 59; Costanza et al. 1993). ‘Consumer sovereignty’, on which most conventional economic opinion is based, is only acceptable to the extent that it does not threaten the overall system or the welfare of future generations. By contrast, ecological economics focuses on the complex interrelationship between ecological sustainability (including system carrying capacity and resilience), social sustainability (including distribution of wealth and rights, and co-evolving preferences) and economic sustainability (including allocative efficiency), playing down consumer sovereignty. Industrial ecology is a near relative of ecological economics and is systemic in its approach to understanding the interaction between industrial systems and natural systems. The design of manufacturing systems is based on natural or ecological principles; its concerns are wider than the alleviation of pollution. The methodology stems from in the 1960s and 1970s (Forrester 1961) and was used in world modelling (Meadows et al. 1972) to highlight the unsustainable course of the then-current industrial system. In 1989, Ayres developed the concept of ‘industrial metabolism’ (Ayres 1989: 23) through which inefficient products and processes could be identified through mass and energy balances. Subsequently, Frosch and Gallopoulos developed the concept of industrial ecology proposing that an ideal industrial ecosystem would function as an analogue of a natural living system, ‘nature as a model.’ The view is of ‘the industrial plant or system as an integrated set of cyclical processes’ in which the consumption of energy and materials is optimised, waste generation is minimised, and wastes from one process serve as feed-stock for other production processes’ (Frosch and Gallopoulos 1989: 144). In his discussion of eco-accounting Smith (1999: 337) records how Ayres (Ayres 1993) ‘views industrial production as a “metabolic” process’ that attempts to ‘close the “open materials cycle” characteristic of industrial society … by eliminating waste from production processes. The ‘nature as a model’ metaphor is fundamental to industrial ecology indicating that the waste produced by one company should be usable by another. Waste would be eliminated together with its destructive influences on natural systems. In a further evolution, the interdependence between companies, stressed in the above metaphor, promotes an ecology of industries characterised by networks of companies with different purposes to facilitate the minimisation, if not the elimination, of waste from the network. The techniques used in industrial ecology are now becoming well established. Behavioural economics is the most recent addition to the fragmenting field of economics and is a combination of psychology and economics relating to markets, which display human and irrational limitations and complications. Do some combinations of market forces, learning and evolution make human qualities irrelevant? There are three important ways in which humans deviate from the standard economic model. Bounded rationality reflects the limited cognitive abilities that constrain human problem solving. Bounded willpower

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captures the fact that people sometimes make choices that are not in their long-run interest. Bounded self-interest incorporates the comforting fact that humans are often willing to sacrifice their own interests to help others. These concepts can be applied in two settings: finance and savings. Financial markets have greater arbitrage opportunities than other markets, so behavioural factors might be thought to be less important here, but even here the limits of arbitrage create anomalies that the psychology of decision making helps explain. Since saving for retirement requires both complex calculations and willpower, behavioural factors are essential elements of any complete descriptive theory.

Chapter 8

The wo rl d of 2 0 3 0 , 2050 an d b e yon d

DOPELER EFFECT (n), the tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly. Neologism submitted to ‘The Washington Post’s Style Invitational’, 2007 The intention of this chapter is demonstrate, as far as is possible in a few pages, how many of the ideas discussed earlier can be used. The title may convey the impression of a series of scenarios but that is not my intention, and scenarios will not figure in the text. The intention of the title is to convey the notion that situations run in cascades and that frequently a ‘scenario for 2030’ is nothing other than a static photograph of a set of ideas, this despite that a scenario should be the skeleton of a play that demands dynamism. There is a second reason for not presenting scenarios: the magnitude of the task. To develop a set of dynamic scenarios exploring the cascade of situations indicated in the chapter’s title is a book in itself. With the purpose of the title in mind, the chapter begins with a necessarily short résumé of how humanity has arrived at the position it is in at mid-2007; from most points of view it will be incomplete, to some people woefully so, but it is the first step towards appreciating the unknown territory of the future. It will be followed by that nebulous notion of ‘understanding the present’, before moving on to longer horizons indicating some markers at a level of generality that may enable appreciation of the unknown territory of the future. Distant horizons are always hazy; the hotter the immediacy of the day the more remote and hazy horizons become. The tendency to regard thinking beyond the next election or next day as part of the ‘Dopeler Effect’ is ever present. It has led humanity into many blind alleys and perhaps worst of all, has led to the blindingly obvious being wilfully ignored in favour of a cheap short-term gain or to satisfy some form of ‘messianic’ belief. In principle at least, and often in great detail, the major causes of the current complex of situations have been known since the mid-1940s and in some instances for 250 years or more. When some world leaders announce that national security is more important than securing fuel or food supplies for the societies they represent, then the extent of their mis-appreciation of the situation becomes obvious.

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Denial of fuel supplies, especially the secondary form, electricity, is a certain way of strangling a modern society very quickly – only thermonuclear attack will be quicker and more devastating. Food supplies seem secure until harvests fail globally as they did in 2007 and have done many times before, for example in 1972. A recent report claimed that ‘In an age of uncertainty, peering 15 years into the future may seem like hubris’ (Anon 2006). To look further forward, as I shall (and as is done frequently, e.g. Kahn et al. 1976 is but one example among many from authors with widely different interests), must place such writings in the Dopeler class? Fortunately, for those who indulge in such speculations and conjectures, that is not the case. Given the current lengthening of life expectancy my daughter will live until the mid-2050s and my granddaughter until past 2080; am I wrong to have an interest in the world in which they may live? Their world is being formed now. Uncertainty has always accompanied human endeavour; it is far from new, and declarations that the present is different in this respect from the past is simply ‘trendy’. Too often the interworking of the fast, short-term and the slow, long-term situations, as indicated by Gunderson and Holling (2002), are conveniently forgotten or ‘overlooked’ when credit is sought by dignitaries for this or that ‘success’. The dynamics of the present fractured, but generally upward trend in the world economy, is painted in the colours of the Kondratieff or long-cycle (Kondratieff 1935) that is believed to join invention and innovation to economic activity. Measures of the long-cycle are fuzzy, vague and arguable, but a discernible cycle varies in length between 45 and 60 years: the trough of the last cycle occurred round about 1992 so that the upward part of a new cycle is now well established.

A brief summary of how Earth’s sit u a t i o n h a s ev olv ed There is a hoary old joke about the traveller who is lost and stops to ask someone the way to a destination only to receive the advice, ‘If I was going there I wouldn’t start from here!’ Humanity cannot exercise the advice given to the traveller. So how did humanity arrive where it is? It is one of the tenets of situations, or systems, that have emergent properties that these arise from the inter-working of a small cluster of factors; this will be in my mind constantly in the rest of this section as a way of looking for markers to use later. Note the plural of the word property, as what emerges is multi-headed like the Hydra referred to in Chapter 5. How has social life reached its present condition? Social change is a continuum punctuated, often drastically, by discontinuities. One such discontinuity occurred in the early sixteenth century with the advent of the Copernican revolution (more will be said about this shortly), which effectively divided the old world of classical Greece from the new world now characterised by ‘modernity’ (Chapter 2). The Copernican revolution was much more than an astronomical one in which it was recognised that the

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Sun, and not the Earth, occupied the central position in the solar system. The Copernican revolution forced people to change their whole mode of thought and appreciation of their position in the ‘universe’, really the solar system. While the cleavage between the old world and the new took several centuries in its evolution, almost every aspect of life changed eventually as the modern world evolved. Despite this discontinuity the basis of human behaviour has remained unchanged for millennia and that will be my starting point. Many authors claim that the instinctive behaviour of homo sapiens remains unchanged from that needed during the frightening eras when survival, a trait developed in the earliest days of hunter-gatherer tribes in the Mesolithic period (Note 1), was of paramount importance. Has humanity’s behavioural capability kept pace with its creative counterpart that has resulted in art, music, theatre and, above all, tools that have multiplied and extended human capabilities so significantly? Again, many authors say ‘no’, pinpointing this mismatch as a major cause of the present situation. Skipping over several thousand years my next marker would be the last millennium bc, the period of the pre-Socratic and later Greek philosophers whose influence persists into the present time. Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes and Euclid made the last 500 years bc, the classical Greek period, particularly noteworthy. The coincidental birth of the Roman Republic (509 bc) and Empire (27 bc), Buddhism and Confucianism during the same period and the subsequent birth of Christianity and Islam (seventh century ad) made the 1300 years from approximately 600 bc to 700  ad one of the most influential periods in shaping human development and history. The collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century ad (the eastern part of the empire lasted until 1453 ad as the Byzantine Empire) was followed in Europe by the so called ‘dark ages’, the period of warfare between 500 and 1000 ad in which urban societies virtually disappeared. The late Middle Ages from 1000 ad onwards saw the rebirth of urban life and a renewal of interest in learning that led to the Renaissance, the beginning of the modern period in Europe. At the end of the Middle Ages the church in Europe was the established authority in all forms of knowledge, a situation that began to change during the early Renaissance. To begin to grasp the nature of the change that took place what began as discrete micro-events became macro scale, not characterised through a single event, but rather by a cluster of events spread over one or two lifespans. Opinions differ about the important micro-events that brought about the change, but to my mind the end of the era of pre-modernity was brought about by three events. The first was in 1450 when Gutenberg brought together the various aspects of the then-current printing technology to build the world’s first printing press. The appearance of the Gutenberg Bible in 1455 was an event of staggering social importance, as up to that time books of any kind, and especially the Bible, were possessed by very few people and literacy was at a very low level. Many unforeseeable outcomes followed, one of which was a direct challenge to the authority of the church. The second event was the publication of Copernicus’ book

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on heliocentricity (Copernicus 1543) challenging Ptolemy’s theory of epicycles and the establishment’s tenet that the Earth was at the centre of the solar system. The third was Vesalius’ book on anatomy (Vesalius 1543) that presented a careful examination of the organs and the complete structure of the human body, none of which would have been possible without many of the advances, including artistic developments and the technical development of printing that had been made during the Renaissance. Because of this, Vesalius was able to produce illustrations superior to any that had been come before. Amongst these three identifiable events Leonardo da Vinci’s immense talents also made their mark, beautifully illustrating the intense relationship between art and invention. While no one person would have lived through all three events, a select few, whose lifespan even then exceeded ‘three score years and ten’, would have built the bridge between the old world and the new. They would have witnessed the great surge of scientific activity, over a period of about 150 years from the mid-sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries, by Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo and Newton. In parallel with the trilogy of events – printing, heliocentricity and the new view of anatomy – the social scene had its own particular discontinuity, created in 1517 by Martin Luther’s 95 theses (these were distributed widely through the use of the new printing processes) that initiated the Reformation with its subsequent enduring influence on the Christian church. Here, then, is a primary cluster of events that by the end of the seventeenth century led to a movement that posed an undeniable challenge to the existing modes of social life and organisation that had been based largely on principles handed down by ‘authority’. However, despite the intellectual fervour, modernity was only in its infancy. Throughout this period it is both common and natural to focus attention on Europe as the cradle of intellectual and technical evolution, but the influence from wider spheres, including the Middle and Far East, for example in the creation of algebra, arithmetic, the Arabic number system and the concept of zero, are among important developments that filtered through to Europe. The next turning point in social life and organisation started in the first half of the eighteenth century as the industrial revolution began with ‘deep’ coal mining, the arrival of the steam engine (e.g. Newcomen’s in 1712) and Darby’s blast furnace (1740), and came to a climax some 60 years later in the early 1800s. The Industrial Revolution was initiated by a stream of technical inventions that, in the UK initially, led to the creation of factories and factory work, and the steady depopulation of rural areas, a feature that has spread globally since then. At this point in the UK there was an age cohort who could remember, from first-hand experience, the forms of social life and organisation that prevailed before the mass migration to towns and cities; subsequent generations could not share this experience so the conditions of industrialism and its separation from rural life, forming one of the main planks of modernity, was laid firmly by then. The second major plank was the steady increase of technical knowledge and the acceptance of its certainty. These

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characteristics demonstrated that social change is about the ‘destruction’ of the existing basis of the organisation of social life in favour of a new form. In the world of pre-modernity, appearances formed the basis of authoritative knowledge, handed down without question. In contrast, modernity embraced technical knowledge, created through science, and rejected ‘handed down’ authority (science soon became its substitute owing to the restricted cohort that understood science). If the nineteenth century was regarded as one of certainties, the twentieth was just the opposite. Two ‘global’ wars and many smaller conflicts represented clashes between different ideological groups. Ideologies came and went: notably Nazism in Germany and Fascism elsewhere; Bolshevism in Russia; the Chinese form of Marxism (Maoism) that has mutated into a form of ‘controlled free market’ ideology. Though Adam Smith’s and Marx’s ideas in economics and social organisation dated from earlier centuries, the battle between them was joined in the twentieth. By the end of the century it had largely, but not entirely, been settled in Smith’s favour in modified formats. Modern social organisation and ways of living were formed on the platform of the staggering technological and engineering achievements of the nineteenth century; based on the extractive and fuel technologies of solid, liquid and gaseous fossil fuels that enabled their widespread extraction and distribution. The widespread generation and distribution of electricity and coal gas, and, more recently, natural gas and gas liquids, followed to create the current dominant fossil fuel supply infrastructure. In turn, these developments in fuel availability and use enabled industrial processes, all of which depended on temperature, pressure and concentration gradients to transform materials from one form into another to create usable products. Nuclear electricity generation is but the latest in this armoury. All products, ways of life and the continuation of scientific research have depended ultimately on these fuel technologies and they still do. The rate of change seemed to accelerate in the second half of the century as some trends, moving at an almost ecological pace (Gunderson and Holling 2002), were able to release their accumulated potential to influence social organisation and ways of life. The ‘sudden’ influence of television as a major source of information, agenda setting, arts and entertainment, particularly direct, real time reporting of all kinds of events, typifies this release of accumulated potential. The rapid growth of intercontinental flight, following the evolution of the jet engine (an extension of liquid fuel technology) from the 1930s onwards, the evolution of space and satellite technologies (also uniquely dependent on fuel technology), and the evolution of the Internet and the World Wide Web over a period of some 50 years, has further added to the influence communications technologies can exert in all themes in the STEEPV set. Similarly, developments in genetics, with the unravelling of the human genome, in biotechnology, biomimetics and bioinformatics,

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and the general merging of biology and genetics with mathematics and, perhaps, medical science (including new procedures in organ replacement, IVF, pharmacology and prostheses), have further extended the influence of these fields over social life and ways of living. Perhaps it is these influences, growing in presence from the 1930s, that have created, from the early 1990s onwards, the upswing in the Kondratieff cycle, with the evolution of other influences yet to make their contribution as their potential accumulates. The foregoing led some commentators and authors to regard the second half of the twentieth century as an era of significant change. Toffler, in a trilogy of books (1970, 1980, 1990), was perhaps the most expansive of these authors. Bell (1974) presented a substantial case for the transition from an industrial to a so-called post-industrial society. Touraine (1971) announced the end of the industrial society and the arrival of the promise of the Enlightenment. Giddens (1990: 1) described ‘the modes of social life or organization that emerged in Europe from the seventeenth century onwards’, as a ‘first approximation’ to modernity. Fukuyama (1992) declared the turning point to be the ‘end of history’, while Giddens also claimed, perhaps overambitiously, that these European modes ‘… subsequently became more or less worldwide in their influence.’ Concepts such as modernity (Chapter 2) are important because they associate modes of social life with distinct times and starting places, and enable the developing and changing modes to be seen in a broad context, which itself may change under the influence of another discontinuity of ‘Copernican’ magnitude. Modernity destroyed appearances and the form of social organisation they supported in Western societies, paving the way for new forms of social life and organisation based on new knowledge that grew to have its own format and credibility. The unresolved question is whether new discontinuities are ending modernity, creating ‘post-modernity’ and even whether the concept of a discontinuity can cause a major revolution in thought processes, leading to new modes of social life and organisation. It is these notions of a classical Greek era, the era of modernity and its evolution into post-modernity, each separated by discontinuities that are markers in themselves.

U n der s tanding t he present From newspaper columnists to social scientists, from politicians to bishops, the message seems clear: since the 1970s British society has undergone … dramatic changes. Indeed, for some, the changes are so dramatic, so wide-ranging, that the United Kingdom has become “a different country … You have to blink and rub your eyes.” (Jacques 1987) The quotation from Jacques’ article in the UK’s The Guardian newspaper (Note 2), points to many of the essentials of change that are embodied in

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the present. First, change is easily recognised in retrospect. For example, at the beginning of the 1980s the monarchy in the UK was held in high esteem and few questioned its continued existence. By 1992 the role of the monarchy was under continuous scrutiny. Again in the UK, rising crime rates (particularly violent crime, burglary, car theft and sexual offences), rising numbers of single parent families, the increasing frequency of divorce and a multitude of other social changes in a matter of four decades at the most, are all evidence by which social change can be recognised in retrospect. Second, is the emphasis on the drama of change, implying a precipitate speed of change if not a discontinuity in modes of behaviour. The rising number of single parent families, the advent of organ transplant surgery, the arrival of IVF, the acceptance of homosexuality, including parenthood, and other changes in social life and organisation have all, in their own ways, faced society with major changes in modes of thought and behaviour, and continue to do so apace. Third, the reference to ‘for some’ implies the personal nature of the perception of social change. What is shocking to one person may go unnoticed by another. Lastly, the reference to the UK implies that social change is not only a matter of personal perception, but is also a mass or group phenomenon. Changes in social organisation and ways of living often appear to be dramatic, but their drama represents the release of potential that has accumulated over decades or longer, during which time faster, short-term and short-lived events have come and gone in a pseudo-random fashion, each representing an organisational or policy failure. The present era incorporates significant changes in the nature of scien­ tific knowledge and of technology: these have been caused by the internal momentum of science and technological development, or through sociocultural expectations and market forces, or have given rise to feedback mechanisms (advertising, over-optimistic scientific and technological reports and experiments, political manipulation and pronouncements made to raise expectations in the polity for political ends, cultural changes brought about by new modes of communication) that influence the directions taken by science and technology. Similarly, new modes of production have brought major changes in working practices and work opportunities; these are reflected in changes in economic life globally in a multitude of ways and also in challenges to economic theory, and the almost total collapse of Marxist ideas, at least for the time being. The phenomenon of globalisation, ‘ the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa’ (Giddens 1990: 64) is now clear to everyone, if only through the actions of organisations like OPEC and countries, such as Russia, to influence the world supply of oil and natural gas and of the World Wide Web in shaping social expectations and behaviour. The way unedited real-time televised images now bring world events into every home, as they happen, has also simultaneously created a heightened awareness of world and local events and a dulling of

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response as awareness turns into mind-numbing familiarity and indifference to their reality however shocking that may be. As I indicated in Table 5.2, the root of humanity’s situation begins with the human population, its geographic distribution allied with the total fertility rate. In the 1960s–1970s it was clear that the highly skewed nature of economic development in human societies, favouring the USA and the EU, was not sustainable in the long term. The fast, short-term exploitation of this mal-distribution was occurring against a slow-moving accumulation of sociotechnical-economic potential allied with political potential elsewhere. These phenomena, discussed at length by Kennedy (1988), virtually ensured a shift in international politics and international relations once that accumulated potential began to be released. Japan was the first to release its potential in ways that shook US and European manufacturers to their core. Now it is being released in China, India and the Pacific Rim ‘tigers’ of the ASEAN group of countries, with growing and intense competition within this group. Perhaps most striking has been the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the accompanying social and economic resurgence of its component countries. As anticipated (foresight) the pieces of the socio-technical-economic-political chess board are beginning to be rearranged. No longer can any country claim ubiquitous leadership in science and technology, as essential skills are widely distributed with, for example, national initiatives in nanotechnology (an inappropriate but commonly used term to describe the production of artefacts at the nanometre scale) being promoted by a wide spectrum of large and small countries. Creative skills and deep learning have never been the preserve of particular countries whatever their political posturing might endeavour to portray. Significant skills now lie in some surprising places. It is almost a relief for me, after so many years, to know that at least one public figure, Jeffrey Sachs, admits that changes in geopolitics will lead to ‘a fundamental shift of economic power, and the political power that goes with it’ (Sachs 2007). The enormity of the changes now occurring globally seems to defy understanding while a new world evolves. The form of broad analysis followed above is open to much criticism. It ignores very significant events that shape social life and organisation – that cannot be denied. The question is how is one to perceive the development of change in social life and organisation in its formative stages? How can the consequences, intended and unintended, of new knowledge and new legislation be recognised? The outcome of both may be more far reaching than either intended or thought possible, feasible or desirable. The characteristics of the current and continuing attack on modernity, the ‘destruction’ of meaning, history, criticism and other features of knowledge that underpinned modernity, have been identified and some of its consequences seem to be apparent in retrospect. Will broad or ‘holistic’ or systemic forms of study enable hypotheses of the possible new forms of social life and organisation to be developed? Or must evolutionary processes be followed blindly? In reality neither of these two extreme positions is likely to be relied upon to the total

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exclusion of the other: humanity has been shaping its natural environment for so long that it is unlikely to stop doing so now. Rather, some change will occur because differing hypotheses have been advanced, while the adaptation to any one hypothesis may be partial so that there is some semblance of an evolutionary process. However, in absolute terms the future can only evolve from the present, while the seeds for change must necessarily be found in the past. The strangely philosophical writing of social thinkers is in itself influenced by this process of thought and interpretation; these are two phenomena that compose Vickers’ notion of appreciation that can be grown through reflexive appropriation of knowledge (the thought process) and as a double hermeneutic (the double process of interpretation) (Argyris 1977: 115; Giddens 1990: 15). As the discussion moves into anticipation (or foresight) of the future, there is one important feature to grasp about the sets of philosophical ideas used earlier, and described in Chapter 2, namely: they form the basis of day-to-day living and social organisation. Pervasiveness is their characteristic – they have penetrated modern society in subtle ways through the diverse modes of communication now available. The lay person is mostly not aware of the concepts that lie behind modernity and post-modernity, or even with those terms, but has absorbed their influences through the processes of reflexive appropriation of knowledge and its interpretation via the double hermeneutic. Elsewhere I have described the process of appreciating, rather than under­ standing, the present as being two stages of learning: the first being broad, the second directed (Loveridge 1996: 546). Broad learning has dominated so far; directed learning is related to scenario building as described in Chapter 6, but my purpose in the remainder of the chapter is anticipation of possible events over long and fuzzy horizons.

‘Fu z z y hori zons’ If to some people looking forward to 2020 is hubris then the longer horizons dwelt on from here onwards must truly come under the heading of the ‘Dopeler Effect’ referred to at the start of the chapter. Fortunately, there are many who disagree and look much further forward as the evolution of humanity and its interaction with the natural world demands. Anyone born today can expect to live to the 2080s and some to 2100 as life expectancy at birth continues to lengthen in the ‘developed’ world. Less fortunate are people in the ‘least developed’ parts of the world, mainly in Africa, whose life expectancy at birth remains in the low 40s; for them each day holds stark realities, never mind those likely in 2030 and 2050. For these reasons it is unwise to focus only on the excitement of short-term, fast-moving situations. Interdependencies between the natural and human worlds, the Earth as a living system, drive slower moving long-term situations that accumulate the potential to create discontinuities when that potential is released. Neglecting the presence of these

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complex situations, that are degrees five or six in difficulty for policy makers (Barker and Peters 1993), remains a source of concern for policy making. How then can any kind of map be made of this ‘two speed’ territory of the future? Starting from the present, the mapmaker faces endless uncertainties about the unknown territory to be explored. Initial scenarios help the first short and halting steps that often typify the opening act of a play. As any hill walker or mountaineer knows, finding the key vantage points that enable further exploration or upward progress is an elusive business. So it is with exploring the unknown territory of the future, where the vantage points are virtual and disputable, adding a further dimension to the ever-changing situation the explorer faces. Today mapmaking is largely done from satellite observations, the intrepid foot-slogging explorer plays a different role to the one he or she occupied in the past. Exploring the virtual territory of the future remains stubbornly in the realm of foot-slogging, in the form of intelligence gathering, thought, learning, appreciation and anticipation, despite the many elegant tools with which to plan visits to the virtual world of the future. In complex systems the interrelatedness present in a small number of elements can, and does, produce complex emerging patterns of behaviour. Historically, it seems that events and associated people can be grouped into clusters, as already described for the classical Greek era and the initial steps into modernity, indeed this is the art of the historian. Is it then possible to identify, through a learning process, sets of elements that surround the long-duration needs? Is it possible to repeat the process in a foresightful way for the remainder of this century? Not so much to identify people, which is a stunningly difficult, if not an impossible task, but to look for the hand-holds, foot-holds and mind-holds that enable the first steps in any exploration. The notions that follow are based on two ideas that there are: • Long-duration human needs, extending over decades or even centuries, that interact with the natural world which accommodates human activity into the continuous evolution of the Earth as a living system; institutional politics with a commensurate time horizon are rarely in evidence • Quintessentially human situations are shorter term, perhaps of a few years, and interact with the long-duration needs influencing them in uncertain ways as short-term institutional policies come and go. These are unexceptional ideas where ‘institutional’ needs to be read as any kind of human organisation or organised activity. Remember that my purpose here is to demonstrate foresight as anticipation at work. Foresight, real or institutional, has or ought to have a highly dynamic range of time horizons: this is a characteristic of situations as their components move at different rates, which is why the rate component of criticality is important. With this property of time horizons in mind it becomes possible to sketch out the nested range of horizons that are involved: this is done in Figure 8.1.

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Cosmos

Earth& Moonas member ofSolar system

Earth&Moon asa'living' system

'Humanworld'as partof'Earthas alivingsystem'

Figure 8.1  The Earth’s cosmological home in relation to foresight

Figure 8.1 may seem absurd to many ‘foresighters’ so some brief examples of why it is not may help to persuade the sceptic. The cosmos, the outermost horizon, is the unexplained source of very high energy cosmic rays that, when added to those of lower energy emitted by the Sun, are believed to be a cause of electronic controlled power and communication system failures. There is also considerable argument about the role that cosmic rays play in cloud formation in the Earth’s atmosphere with consequences for the climate: this is demonstrated by two recent papers published by the Royal Society that seem contradictory (Harrison and Stephenson 2006; Lockwood and Frohlich 2007). Within the solar system the Earth remains vulnerable to bombardment by large meteorites and, more importantly, asteroids: watching for any that are likely to be on a collision path is now an organised activity. The Torino scale indicates the likely effect of impact on life on the Earth by different sizes of asteroids. Similarly, space weather forecasts are now a routine part of satellite operations that play an important part in humanity’s ways of living and create a minor intrusion into the solar system. Lastly, and where the major focus will be, is the Earth and Moon as a living system in which humanity is embedded as an integral but not necessarily dominant part; anyone involved in foresight and systems thinking needs to be aware of how far reaching that grasping a feeling for existence needs to be. In Figure 8.1 the human system is indicated by a deliberately unclear boundary to convey the correct impression that humanity has, over centuries, interacted with the natural world to attempt to adapt it for its own benefit. However, that view has not necessarily acknowledged the principles of mutuality creating the feeling that humanity can effectively control the Earth system, eliminating the necessity to remember that natural forces far exceed those contrived by

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humanity. The evidence for this is ever present in the current response to the possibility, not more, of an appreciable change in the Earth’s climate. At the core of the human system, indicated in Figure 8.1, lies a region denoted as ‘Long-duration human needs’ (these were indicated in Figures 7.4 and 7.5 but are repeated here in a different order with changed emphasis): the forces acting on these is shown enlarged in Figure 8.2. The details of the long-duration set are shown in Figures 8.3 and 8.4 (Note 3): these are used here despite their age, as they remain relevant, reasonable and robust to the exploration of the unknowable territory of the future. The set of long-duration human needs are assumed to persist throughout the increasingly fuzzy horizon to 2100: they constitute the underlying strata of the map. The interrelatedness of the set of situations indicates the complexity of the entire set. Figure 8.4 expands the content of Figure 8.3 indicating some of the elements that contribute to each of the interconnected set of situations. Again completeness is not claimed, bounded rationality prohibits that, as some obvious elements are missing. While it is an obvious dictum, what is completely unknown to humanity at one time can only be revealed during the reality of a situation as it develops. It is a point that has to be made, as too often hindsight is used to denigrate foresight and systemic thinking (the exception here is the highly original thinking of Copernicus, Newton, Einstein and many others). For example, in Figure 8.4, HIV/AIDS is not referred to under health, as in the 1970s it seemed to be

Socia l cont e

xt

V a lue co /Norm nt ext

Long-term humanneeds Suficiency Recycling Access Newtechnol ogy Definedproperties Quality

Growth/decline Fertility Distribution Employment Literacy Longev ity

Preventive Compatibledrugs Non-invasive procedures Qualitydiagnos Patientcare Terminalcare Ageing

Energy & Fuel

LongTerm huma n need s

Population

Health is

Expl oration Fuel Eficiency Appl iances Produc tivity Renewabl es

Waste & pollution

Raw & processed materials

Climate & water

Food Growth Comuni Security Homes, Industry Services, Retailing

cation

Urbanization

Domestic Industrial Abatement Water Air Land

C hange D eforestation D esertification Waterqual ity R esources Winds Erosion

Agricul ture H orticul ture M aricu lt u re Animal husbandry Processing Qual ity/di versity Eficiency Produc tivity Grai nstocks Securesuppl y

cal Politi ntext co

Ecolo g con ical text

omic on xt E c onte c

Figure 8.2  Long duration human needs and forces acting on them

Science& technology context

236  Scenarios and sustainability

Energy & Fuel Raw & processed materials

W aste & pollution

LongT erm hu m an need s

Population

Climate & water

Food

Health Urbanization

Figure 8.3  Interrelatedness of long duration human needs and world needs

Suficiency Recycling Access Newtechnology Definedproperties Quality

Growth/decline Fertility Distribution Employment Literacy Longevity

Preventive Compatibledrugs Non-invasive procedures Qualitydiagnosis Patientcare Terminalcare Ageing

Energy & Fuel

W aste & pollution

Raw & processed materials

LongT erm human need s

Population

Exploration Fuel Eficiency Appliances Productivity Renewables

Health

Climate & water

Food Growth Comunication Security Homes, Industry Services, Retailing

Urbanization

Domestic Industrial Abatement Water Air Land

C hange Deforestation Desertification Waterquality Resources Winds Erosion

Agriculture Horticulture Mariculture Animalhusbandry Processing Quality/diversity Eficiency Productivity Grainstocks Securesupply

Figure 8.4  Content of long duration needs

unknown. Research (Gao et al. 1999) has established the likely route that HIV took in becoming a human disease: the first case is now believed to have occurred in the 1930s. Similarly, MRSA and the antibiotic resistant strain of TB were unknown in the 1970s, though there was much discussion about the unwanted consequences of the over-prescription of antibiotics and their then-

The world of 2030, 2050 and beyond  237

current broad use in animal husbandry. Again, the importance of public and animal health, which are increasingly intertwined as the recent SARS scare revealed, are not emphasised enough, although with the ever-rising proportion of humanity and animals that dwell in cities it is a field of increasing importance. Nevertheless with hindsight criticisms are often levelled at the ‘failures’ of foresight and systemic thinking for not identifying events that have unusual, if not strange, origins. It is now time to focus more closely on the long-duration human needs and the forces acting on them. Figure 8.3 illustrates the content of the long-duration human needs in a highly aggregated way and how the interdependencies of the elements are total. Figure 8.4 illustrates the elements believed to be important enough to make up the content of each of the long-duration needs: no attempt is made to illustrate the interdependencies within and between the sets of elements though many of them can be readily identified. However, it is Figure 8.2 that places the long-duration human needs in the context of the human system as a whole. As far as bounded rationality allows, Figure 8.1 illustrates the context of human systems as an embedded part of the Earth and Moon and wider systems whose influence is all important to the existence of the Earth– human system. The protrusion of the human system into the solar system is deliberate to acknowledge space activity, including the international space station. The inner parts of Figures 8.1 and 8.2 repay further discussion. The boundary of the human system is deliberately shown as irregular in an endeavour to indicate its dynamic properties as it continually jousts with the natural world, whose indefinably large sets of elements are not indicated. The latter range from viruses and bacteria up to astronomical dimensions, and to some events that in the past, it is argued, may have been responsible for extinctions as referred to in Chapter 7 (e.g. the dinosaurs). Some of the reasons for including the two outer systems shown in Figure 8.1 have already been mentioned. In Figure 8.2 the long-duration human needs are set in their external context drawing on the STEEPV set to give these their context. The lack of divisions between these external sets is deliberate, since not only do they have interdependencies with the long-duration human needs, but each set of elements under the STEEPV set has its own interdependencies at the contextual level and also within their content. It is the massive connectivity and interdependence between the elements of the systems of Figures 8.1 to 8.4 that place cascades of situations into categories five and six of Barker and Peters’ (1993) hierarchy of dilemmas for policy makers. Before discussing each of the contexts it is necessary to look at the role each plays and their general characteristics. Since each context is a set of elements their required characteristics must be congruent with the actual ones of the elements that make up the set that is the context. With respect to the core of long duration human needs, the following five characteristics need to be present in each context:

238  Scenarios and sustainability

• Interrelatedness at a higher level than the core to allow and create the two-way flow of influence with the core and an influence across the fuzzy boundaries with the ‘natural world’ • Time dependence, in that influences and interrelatedness may be present at one time and absent at another: continuous existence is not a necessary condition • Must be dynamic, exhibiting an ability to behave in a self-organising way, sometimes autopoietic and sometimes sympoietic • An ability to act in a rate controlling manner after the fashion of rate control in the notion of criticality • Protocols to sustain information flow in a systemic manner. The five characteristics constitute an interrelated set with a flow of infor­ mation as the common thread, as must be the case for any form of exploration. However, it is also necessary to recognise that this flow is not homogeneous but, as in turbulent flow, there are periods of quiescence interspersed among others of intense energy and rapid changes in direction. The need for dynamism arises from the general time dependence of the sets of elements that these characteristics apply to, in which some elements will be rate controlling for the set. Protocols, in the sense implied here, are sets of guidelines or rules for use in various circumstances to facilitate communication across the fuzzy and complex boundaries involved in explorations of the kind concerned here and appropriate to the element of the STEEPV set involved. The following examples from each element in the STEEPV set illustrate how the contexts work. It would be tempting to name all the elements at the outer context with the prefix ‘geo-’ as they will be global inevitably. Instead that accolade will be reserved for the entire set at each context the first of which will be geo-social change. Figure 8.5 illustrates a possible group of elements in this set. The set embodies the five criteria required by its context. Their inter­ relationships are at a higher level than the core. Time dependence is present as enclaves, under classes, crime and violence come and go in their intensity, as well as forming part of slow moving undercurrents that release their potential in reshaping society, as they may be doing now in selected regions of the world. Self-organisation is present in the evolution of the changing characteristics of societies in different parts of the world, creating protocols that interface with the natural world, which is far from being neutral in these matters. Lastly, the rate controlling factors revolve around the influences of migrations, the expectations of those people involved under the influence of the philosophical notions of modernity versus post-modernity. A possible set of elements for geo-science and technology is illustrated in Figure 8.6. The interdependent elements make up a set that has an outcome recognisable as ‘geo-science and technology’ embodying the five criteria set out earlier.

The world of 2030, 2050 and beyond  239 Human rights

Mobility, immigration & emmigration

Enclav es, underclasses, crime & v iolence

Social change Rising ex pectations & consumerism

Modernity vs . post-modernity

Povert y & relativ e poverty

Figure 8.5  Some possible elements of geo-social change End of cyberspace

Personalised medicine

Materials construction from basic principles

Bionics & ' natural' human repair

Global science & technology

Real-time natural language translation

Energy conv ersion systems

Space ev ents

Bio-mimicry production systems

Modelling &

simulation

Figure 8.6  Some possible elements of a geo-science and technology set

240  Scenarios and sustainability D ynamic stable state economies

Rise of ' new' currencies & monetary instruments

Globalisation &

glocalisation

New International Economic Order

Economics

Transition to new economic theories that mirror nature

Rise of the debt society

L ong-cycle (K ondratieff) effects

Figure 8.7  Some possible elements of a geo-economic set

In this set there is stronger persistence throughout so that time dependence emerges through the almost random occurrences of major breakthroughs, say in bio-computing, synthetic biology or energy conversion systems. The latter are likely to remain as the rate controlling factor throughout the set as without them human systems will grind to a halt. In this set modelling and simulation have a major part to play. For geo-economics the elements of the set of the economic context may include the elements shown in Figure 8.7. Some of the elements are characteristic of long-running (K-type) phenomena that have yet to release their growing potential. These include the continuing evolution of a new international economic order, first mooted in the 1970s: major changes in economic theory toward ecological economics, industrial ecology, behavioural economics, and the evolution of dynamic stable state economies. These elements will be in strong contrast to the perpetuation of the current economics of growthmania with its dependence on the rise of consumerism and the debt society. Dynamism can be interpreted from the much debated Kondratieff long cycle relating economic activity to invention and innovation. It is here that continuing innovation in information technology and myriads of inventions arising from the convergence of mathematics, biology and biotechnology may begin to

The world of 2030, 2050 and beyond  241 Longevity

Public health - pestlience, plague, pandemic & new forms of disease

Population & migration

Human - natural world interrelatedness

Aasteroid impact, giant caldera, volcanism, tsuanami & other catastrophic events

Extinction events

Earth as a living system (Ecology)

Disturbance of ocean currents and other oceanic factors Climate change

Sustainable development

Figure 8.8  Some possible elements of a geo-ecology set

have their effect. These notions lie behind the interrelationships between the elements of the set. An important rate controlling factor is likely to be the rate at which ecological economics, industrial ecology and behavioural economics begin to merge and displace conventional economic theory and practice. The elements for the set for geo-ecology (Figure 8.8) illustrates some striking differences to all the others and is deliberately taken to a lower level to illustrate this difference. First, it has influences on all the other sets so that the heading geo-ecology is a matter of convenience as that actually represents the Earth as a Living system. All the elements are time dependent, in as much as they are more in evidence at some periods than at others. All are also rate controlling factors, while each sends out signals in a systemic manner providing protocols for communication across system boundaries and between context sets. Geo-politics (Figure 8.9) is concerned with human actions globally but in many senses these are governed by how much notice is taken of the signals emerging from the natural world and those emerging from the geoecological set. All five of the characteristics required of the set are met. Time dependence is always in evidence through the short-issue attention span that is rife in political world and tends to overwhelm important, if not crucial, slow, longrunning matters that are neglected until their potential is released: perhaps this is most evident in crime and terrorism internationally and locally. Many of the elements of the set are inherently dynamic, while international justice

242  Scenarios and sustainability Centralisation v s decentralisation

Traditional democracy v s participativ e democracy v s dictatorship

W ar & war fighting capability

International crime

International & local terrorism

Geo-politics

Roles of international organisations

International j udicial bodies

Shifting balance of politico-economic power

Politics & International relations

Figure 8.9  Some possible elements of a geo-political set

and law, coupled with the constant shifting of the global balance of politicoeconomic power are the most likely rate controlling factors. Protocols exist but while information flows in a systemic manner the political issue–attention cycle limits its effectiveness. Last in the set of contexts is the most difficult one of values/norms, an area that is assiduously avoided in almost all foresight. Elements of the set are suggested in Figure 8.10. The set has a small number of elements, each of which is immensely powerful in the context of humanity and its interrelations within its ‘own’ world and with the natural world. It operates at the highest level, setting the codes for conduct within the human system and between that and the natural world. Values/norms are intensely time dependent. Long-established belief systems are slow running and only rarely release their full potential as the cause of change: by comparison norms are short running, dwelling on

The world of 2030, 2050 and beyond  243 Interaction with artificial life

Global v alues/norms

Values/norms W ays of liv ing

Belief systems

Figure 8.10  Some possible elements of a geo-value-norm change set

the immediate gratification of human wants and survival in many instances and short-term trends in fashions of behaviour as revealed by a VALSTM style exploration. Both values and norms act in a rate controlling fashion in the evolution of the human world and its relation to the natural one in which it is embedded. Interaction with artificial life forms, something that may soon become possible, is presented as a particular example of the need for a protocol in this set. Whether there is an element of globally accepted values/ norms is a moot point. The foregoing may seem to be a rather tedious trudge through the under­ growth of an exploration of the unknowable future. However, the outline map of the territory covered by Figures 8.1 to 8.10 indicate prominent features to be looking for with the expectation of finding many more elements in subsets of the major sets. Indeed, each of the major sets could be likened to the winged seeds of Sycamore trees, as the seed head contains the germ of a new tree as subsets of some complexity. As always, the ‘devil is in the detail’ which is why in Chapter 6 (and elsewhere) there has been a strong emphasis on thinking and learning as a precursor to model building to avoid the Wittgensteinian trap of formal methods. Model building is the basis on which any explorer, hill walker, mountaineer, businessman or human being, individually and collectively, begin to appreciate the difficulties, uncertainties and opportunities in the unknown territory of the future and its terrain, which is only revealed once it is underfoot; even then, bounded rationality inhibits anything more than partial understanding of its fullness. Formal methods amount to rescue missions with specific, limited objectives. The elements listed in Figures 8.1 to 8.10 are neither unique nor exhaustive, but are simply one such set to illustrate the complexity of what is involved in exploring the unknown territory of the future. Another set might include the population orientation of geo-politics. Many sets can be created along these lines to describe the content of the STEEPV contexts that interact among themselves and also with the long-duration human needs. The contexts are time dependent so that all the situations will cascade from now

World population (UN data 2006 revision)

244  Scenarios and sustainability

10

World

Population (bilions)

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005 2015 2025 2035 2045

Year

Figure 8.11  World population growth 1950–2050 (Source: UN Population data 2006)

into a different form, with changed elements, by 2030, and again by 2050 and yet again by, say, 2100. It will be a fitting way to close by outlining a possible cascade drawing in ideas from throughout the book. The starting point will be the ‘carrying capacity’ element in the Earth as a living system (ecology) context set, which refers to the interdependence between the size of the human population and the natural world, although carrying capacity is ultimately determined by the combination of all forms of life that the Earth as a living system can support. The first step is the size of the human population. Population censuses are among the most carefully and frequently catalogued data in the UN. Even so there will be errors (though error limits are not quoted). The reason for selecting the UN dataset then lies in the Assessment and Pedigree categories of the NUSAP system, with a heavy emphasis on Pedigree. The dataset runs from 1950–5 to 2000–5 with a single forecast of population parameters up to 2045–50. A possible growth of world population is illustrated in Figure 8.11. There is an indication of the beginnings of a decline in the rate of growth for the first time since the exponential growth pattern became established in the previous century. The accompanying decline in the population growth rate is illustrated in Figure 8.12. It indicates at least the possibility, no more, that sometime beyond 2050 the human population may stop growing. Apparent support for this conclusion comes from the pattern of the total fertility rate (TFR), illustrated in Figure 8.13. The forecast proposes that the TFR may fall to 2, the replacement rate, by 2050. These three illustrations create cascades of situations within themselves and throughout the remainder of the human system and its interrelationships with the natural world. Some pointers to these, mostly in question form, are as follows:

The world 2030, 2050 and beyond  245 Population growthofrate (%/year) (UN data 2006 revision)

Population growth rate (% per year)

2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5

2045-2050

2035-2040

2040-2045

2025-2030

2030-2035

2015-2020

2020-2025

2010-2015

2005-2010

1995-2000

2000-2005

1985-1990

1990-1995

1980-1985

1975-1980

1965-1970

1970-1975

1955-1960

1960-1965

1950-1955

0.0

Year

Figure 8.12 World population growth rate 1950–2050 (Source: UN Population data 2006)

Total fertility rate

2045-2050

2035-2040

2040-2045

2030-2035

2025-2030

2020-2025

2015-2020

2010-2015

2005-2010

2000-2005

1995-2000

1990-1995

1985-1990

1980-1985

1975-1980

1970-1975

1965-1970

1960-1965

1955-1960

5.50 5.00 4.50 4.00 3.50 3.00 2.50 2.00 1.50 1950-1955

Total fertility rate (children per woman)

(Children per woman UN data 2006 revision)

Year

Figure 8.13 World average total fertility rate 1950–2050 (Source: UN Population data 2006)

Within Earth as a Living system set: • Why does the human population begin to reach saturation? The human population might grow at an average rate of 0.1% per year between 2050 and 2075, leading to a world population of about 9.5 billion, and thereafter the growth rate might become zero. At one time in the 1970s and 1980s, the human population was projected to rise to 12 billion or more, so what has changed to lower expectations? A decline in the human population is rarely discussed but is feasible, so why is that possibility avoided?

246  Scenarios and sustainability

• Why may the human population growth rate decline consistently over a period of 80 years as forecast? What are the patterns of interrelationships that might support this slow moving but persistent trend? • What patterns of interrelationships might lead to a persistent decline in the TFR. Why might it asymptote to the replacement rate of two? These questions create a complex situation in which some of the patterns of relationships have implications for public health, disease control and longevity with relationships to the decline of the TFR that may involve value shifts relating to procreation. The latter can also arise from patterns of decline in human fertility, and specifically, a decline in the male sperm count and sperm quality. There are patterns in some societies indicating a decline in the quality of the male Y chromosome, but all of these relationships are being argued about in research findings. These patterns are likely to be both physical and psychological, probably relating to behavioural genetics and to slow moving, long-running subtle shifts (the K-phenomenon referred to earlier) in values and ethics relating to patterns in family size and the sanctity of life (not necessarily human) which may be related to patterns of beliefs. Family size also relates to patterns of norms relating to marriage and cohabitation, the availability of IVF treatment, the availability of abortion and contraception, divorce, homosexual and lesbian relationships and family creation within them, and simply to casual sex and prostitution. Throughout these value/norm patterns, law will develop its own patterns either to represent the value/norm patterns and endeavour to regulate their outcome or to endeavour to alter value/norm patterns and relationships to new ones that are thought to be more desirable, embodying the policy ‘ought to’ – all matters relating to legitimisation. Socioeconomic patterns of relationships also intrude as a decline in the population growth rate may also influence a decline in the TFR: empirical data seem to indicate that increasing wealth, measured by GNP per capita, is associated with a decline in the crude birth rate in discrete societies, the socalled ‘demographic transition’. The patterns and nature of economic activity then penetrate deeply into the viability of social life and organisation in any rural or urban society, with interactions between both. Figures 8.14 and 8.15 illustrate past trends in the slow moving patterns of the demographic transition. Figure 8.16 illustrates the associated pattern of the distribution of the world’s human population by six major regions. It is the latter that was established clearly, nearly 50 years ago, as a slowmoving pattern of a shift of socio-political-economic power toward the Pacific Rim countries that is now beginning to release its potential so that international relations and economic power is being altered in an ever-accelerating way. Furthermore, it has to be recognised that human capabilities in invention and innovation are widely distributed among the world’s population: no country can now claim, if they ever could, to be the leader in all areas of science or technical development. For serious study there are many more elements that

The world of 2030, 2050 and beyond  247 CBR much greater than replacement rate

Crude birth rate

N otional env el ope of al arge nu m b er of cou ntries Direction of change over several decades R epl acem ent rate N otional env el ope of aS m all nu m b er of cou ntries

GNP/capita (constant money values) increasing Figure 8.14 Notional pictorial description of the post-World War II demographic transition

Crude birth rate

CBR

m u ch greatert han repl acem entr ate

N otional env el ope ofa sm all er( and r ed u cing) nu m b er of cou ntries

Dir ection of change ov er sev eral d ecad es

N otionall ev elf or w orl d ' sri chest cou ntries R epl acem ent rate N otional env el ope of ari sing nu m b er of cou ntries

GNP/capita (constant money values) increasing Figure 8.15 Notional illustration of the demographic transition after some decades

248  Scenarios and sustainability 100.0 90.0 80.0 70.0 60.0 50.0 40.0 30.0 20.0 10.0 0.0

North America Europe Oceania LAFTA Asia Africa

1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050

Regionalpopulation (%ofworld)

Distribution of World population by regions

Year

Figure 8.16 Pattern of world population by regions 1950–2050 (Source: UN Population data 2006)

need to be added to the interacting sets of contexts to explore the territory of the future with its influence on the set of long-duration human needs. Since all of those listed in this simple illustration are time dependent, the cascade of situations involved in the evolution of the human dimension of the Earth as a living system becomes clear. The final important context is that of the Earth in the solar system and the wider universe. It might well be thought that these contexts are far outside those of explorations of the territory of the future, unfortunately that is not the case. Extinction events are a constant threat: if that were not the case monitoring of space events, including the possible impact of an asteroid of kilometre dimensions and disruption of communications and power supplies due to cosmic ray bombardment, would not be taken as seriously as they now are. Similar comments apply to more local natural events including unusually heavy rain or snow, the onset of an ice age (an overdue event geologically), tectonic plate activity causing very large earthquakes and tsunamis, or the eruption of a giant caldera are all of non-negligible probability. Human and natural societies are now so highly interconnected that the coincidence of any two or more of these types of events has the potential to create immense disruption to all the living societies on Earth, human in particular, now that some 60% of humanity is expected to be urbanised by 2030 (it was 50% in 2007), a situation anticipated by Doxiadis (1969: 199) in the form of oecumenopolis and Toynbee (1970) and discussed ardently more recently (Henaff and Feenberg 1997: 59). Human ways of living are rarely discussed much beyond their local context despite the urgent need to take the much wider context into account. The foregoing very brief illustration of the notions of cascades of situations must draw the book to a close: it may well raise a sense of frustration in the reader. The need for an emphasis on systems, appreciation with its modifier

The world of 2030, 2050 and beyond  249

of behavioural pattern, as essential parts of foresight and the exploration of the unknowable territory of the future, all rest in the end on what R.V. Jones (1978) called intelligence gathering with all its human fallibility, excitements, anticipations and actions. To some people the twenty-first century dream is of immense computational power in machines that may be incredibly small for their power. Even so, the question remains: what will these machines do? So far no-one has identified activities that were not dreamt about in outline in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. Humanity’s information and knowledge may increase beyond all expectations, but will that be accompanied by similar advances in understanding and wisdom? The answer to that conundrum lies in how humanity appreciates the notion of limits, not only of science but also of human behaviour with its tendency to vaulting ambition that may be beyond the capabilities of human evolution. The dream of improving human performance has yet to respond to two questions: For what purpose? and How? Behind the exploration of the unknowable territory of the future lie unspoken fears and excitements about what that might involve, born of the resurgent notion that humanity, through a relatively small cohort, will be able to control the Earth to its benefit. Lessons to the contrary abound but go unheeded – the need to understand limits is ever present.

E p ilogu e

Foresight: care or provision for the future or the muzzle-sight of a gun Oxford English Dictionary Foresight, the act of anticipation, is humanity’s way of attempting to answer the fascinating and age-old desire to know what the future has in store. To know the unknowable has never been assuaged since the dawn of humanity’s time on Earth. Has human foresight improved? It is a question without an answer as foresight becomes a will-o-the-wisp with the passage of time as memories fade and immediate pressures become the focus of attention. Only with hindsight is the origin of an event occasionally recognised to lie in some (distant?) past anticipation. As has been made clear, the words foresight and systems are ubiquitous in any language debasing their intent to a large extent. The import of the contrasts in the above quotation is also clear enough, as is Mark Twain’s counterpart regarding change in human societies: ‘Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.’ Mark Twain’s comment typifies the essence of Gunderson and Holling’s panarchy (2002) that has figured prominently in various parts of the book. Panarchy is one aspect of modelling which has also been an underlying theme throughout. Too often the notion of modelling immediately brings to mind computation and computers, but that is only the final and not necessarily the most important part of the story. Without an adequate model of the past and the present, anticipations (foresight) become ill-founded, a matter implied by Donald Michael (1985) in his reference to futures studies being made with ‘both feet in mid-air’. Modelling of situations can never be complete because of their dynamism and complexity allied to the influence of H. Simon’s principle of bounded rationality. However modelling is an ineluctable and vigorous part of life and foresight that emerges from learning and appreciation. It is situations that foresight must now be concerned with not problems. The notion that problems have, through reduction, solutions that solve them is now inappropriate. The point of Whitehead’s comment (1964) that despite the welter of information that permeates human societies their situation is poorly understood, while our ‘knowledge of scientific laws is woefully defective’, leading to the conclusion that of the two parts of the welter, foresight is the more difficult. It must include

Epilogue  251

both science and society. Learning about a situation and appreciation of it lead to modelling it dynamically: that also prevents an early departure into the realm of methods. The latter are mostly derived from technology and other forms of forecasting, that have become associated with foresight. I have referred to this early departure as the ‘Wittgensteinian trap’ of allowing a fascination for problem-oriented methods to supplant appreciation of the situation much to the detriment of the outcome. The rightful place for methods is as ancillaries to obtain specific information related to very well-defined parts of a situation. Modelling a situation provokes the necessity to recognise the many different kinds of information involved and the characteristics of its sources, introducing the contest between modernity and post-modernity with the intrusion of belief systems and subjective opinion. In this arena even the great theories of science, of evolution, relativity, quantum physics, cosmology and the understanding of genetics fall into a different perspective unless they are open to ‘political’ exploitation. The longest chapter in the book touches on these matters in its discussion of sustainability and sustainable development. In turn, these latter issues lead to matters that are now emerging from the slow, ecologically paced part of the panarchy cycle to begin to force a rearrangement of the chess pieces of the entire living world. Humanity either retreats towards a belonging behaviour (or those of sustaining or survival that might emerge from a broad generalisation of the VALSTM hierarchy) or to believing it can ‘manage the planet for its own benefit’, almost as an act of defiance and vaulting ambition. There is no doubt that natural forces will win what is a highly unequal duel leaving humanity to contemplate, as Macbeth (V. v. 24) did, that ‘Life is but a walking shadow.’ Without a grasp of the notion of existence that shadow can become an absurdly omniscient posture. Throughout I have stressed the importance of situations over problems with their tendency to be seen as ‘solvable’ rather than part of an ever-changing cascade. The point of the final chapter has been to emphasise first, the need for a grasp of ‘existence’. Second, that existence requires a mindset of appreciation, based on learning and anticipation. Third, appreciation is of dynamic seedlings that, as in the natural world, contain nascent linkages to diverse and interlinked pathways in their evolution to influence every aspect of life, human life in particular. All situations begin with their carrying capacity for living organisms. Because of its complexity, discussion of the Earth’s carrying capacity, for human beings in particular, has been and still is assiduously avoided in most circles: this is perhaps the key change needed in humanity’s mindset. As ever, someone’s foresight will make humanity’s future, be that for another week or for centuries to come, though whether it can alter humanity’s sleep-walking that leads to repetitive crises and crisis ridden behaviour seems unlikely given humanity’s inherited behaviour from the distant past.

No te s

Preface 1 See: Industry and Higher Education Alternatives, in Higher Education Alternatives, Stephens M.D. and Roderick G.W. (eds), Longman, 1978. 2 Homeorrhesis is a notion developed by C.H Waddington to describe a series of different but connected states of homeostasis. 3 Donald Hicks was one of the founders of operational research; he died in January 1986. 4 A phrase coined first (I think) by Roy Amara when president of the Institute for the Future. 5 Dennis Oliver, Leslie Wall and David Pilkington were Directors of Pilkington, plc. 6 Philip Holroyd was my colleague at Pilkington in the 1970s before moving to academia in 1980. 7 Andy Lipinski and Roy Amara were both at the Institute for the Future. 8 I first met Peter Schwartz at SRI International in 1974; subsequently he moved to Shell International and later still he founded, with others, the Global Business Network. 9 I met Willis Harman at SRI in the 1970s; his work and that of his associates influenced me greatly. 10 Clive Simmonds was a real doyen at the National Research Council of Canada for all the years that I knew him; it was WHCS, as he was known, who introduced me to the notion of foresight in a conversation in 1975 or thereabouts, when I realised that many of the ideas embodied in systems supported, or were, foresight. Chapter 1: Foresight and systems thinking: An appreciation 1 Saritas developed the notion of systemic foresight in his PhD thesis. 2 Reproduced by courtesy of the European Commission. 3 Gödel, in 1930, proposed a theorem that demonstrated that certain mathe­matical statements can neither be proved or disproved, they are ‘undecidable’; apologies are made here for using this notion in a very different sphere and possibly incorrectly! 4 For example, in technology assessment knowledge extensions need to be embedded in the STEEPV set of trends applicable to the boundaries defined in the objective of the assessment. 5 Boettinger has described the phenomenon of ‘handshaking’ in Moving Mountains or the Art and Craft of Letting Others See Things Your Way, as the art of leaving no space between the user’s or audience’s current perception of their world and of the world as you perceive it could be.

Notes  253 6 Writing in 1962, de Finetti asked ‘Does it Make Sense to Speak of “Good Probability Appraisers”?’ Similarly, does it make sense to speak of ‘good foresighters’? Chapter 2: Foresight and systems – epistemology and theory 1 These traits are derived from Lipinski and Loveridge (1982) ‘How we forecast: the Institute for the Future’s study of the UK: 1978–95,’ Futures, June, 205–39. 2 A comment made by the one-time UK prime minister Harold Macmillan when asked what drove government activity. 3 The options as presented are a distillation of those developed by Michael Keenan during a client-sponsored programme. Chapter 3: Institutional foresight: Practice and practicalities 1 Legitimisation is discussed in Chapter 7. Chapter 5: Generalisable outcomes 1 Gunderson and Holling derived the term ‘panarchy’ from merging the Greek God Pan, for unpredictable, and the notion of hierarchies, to represent structures ‘sustain experiments, test results, and allow adaptive evolution’. Chapter 7: Sustainable world 1 The definitions can be found at http://www.brocku.ca/epi/sustainability/sustprin. htm. Though the EPI programme is now closed the web site is still accessible. 2 Figures 7.4 and 7.5 are derived from those used earlier in the course material in ‘Foresight: a course for Sponsors, Organisers and Practitioners’ run by the University of Manchester’s Programme of Policy Research in Engineering, Science and Technology (PREST) since 1999. Chapter 8: The world of 2030, 2050 and beyond 1 The Mesolithic period lay between the Palaeolithic period (>40,000 years bc) and the Neolithic period (