In the last decades a number of political movements have won rural voters with promises to defend local farmers against global capitalism, commonly known as “Food Populism and Politics”. This has been easy enough, as farmers perceive agricultural policy to be an existential issue, whereas the (much more numerous) consumers of food products have, until […]

If you are currently despairing, try “The ministry for the future” by Kim Stanley Robinson. It is a work of fiction that does not fall into the trap of being utopian. Each step forward is assorted with caveats, resistance, and steps back. But it suggests how a combination of human action, technology, and new thinking […]

When I first (officially) started working on multi-stakeholder foresight work 30 years ago, the community was not so big. Fast forward to today, and the numbers engaged has rocketed – and correspondingly it has become harder to know everybody else. It was therefore a great pleasure to see how the Nomads Foundation and I were […]

A great pleasure to have co-moderated the Union for Mediterranean’s trade and investment forum today for the third time. I had the pleasure of two excellent panels – on trade facilitation and sustainable investment – brimming with expertise. Among the many gems, the things that struck me were: 1. Progress on trade facilitation in the region […]

I very much enjoyed facilitating an on-line conversation of foresight managers from four companies with global reach earlier this week. It would be impossible to do justice to everything that was said, but three new insights for me were: 1.      How we measure success: A. Did we get it right? We will never be able to predict […]