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Sustainable Development

Namur (Wallonia), May 5, 2023

The Regional Policy Declaration of 16 September 2019 indicated the desire of the Government of Wallonia to implement risk management tools to warn and react quickly in crises and during climate and health hazards [1]. The declaration also stated that measures would be adopted to protect water resources, particularly in the face of contamination risks, the need to maintain and develop natural wetland habitats, and supply problems [2]. There was also a need to anticipate other types of risks, such as digital and health risks (exposure to flooding [3]), risks leading to the exclusion and poverty [4], and chemical risks (phytosanitary [5]).

The major events experienced by Wallonia since the adoption of this document – the Covid-19 pandemic, climate stresses (brutal floods in 2021 with nearly 40 deaths, drought in 2022), and the multifactor energy crisis – have challenged all actors and citizens. The impacts of these events were, and still are, significant, even if they have been felt and experienced differently according to stakeholders and location. The pandemic did not affect the various regions in the same way: it had a greater impact on regions with higher population density, the flood-affected valleys where the presence of significant urbanisation and the resulting creation of artificial ground coverings was called into question, and the drought and heatwaves affected countryside and urban areas in different ways. In addition to housing density, there are other vulnerabilities and risk exposure factors, such as increasing age, the low socio-economic level of many residents, and their ability to meet the challenges, in other words, their resilience. There are also structural risk management issues across all sectors and at all administrative levels [6]. Location is also critical where the effects of the energy crisis are concerned: heating costs, travel costs, access to fossil fuels and renewable energies, etc. One could also examine the impacts of terrorism – which sometimes seems to have emerged from our intellectual outlook – in the light of location.

Photo Igor Kutnii – Dreamstime

 

1. The risks are associated with perfectly describable events

Twenty years ago, Michel Callon, Pierre Lascoumes and Yannick Barthe observed that the notion of risk is closely linked to the notion of rational decision-making. In their view, rational decision-making requires three conditions to be met before the decision-maker can draw comparisons between the options available to them. Firstly, there is the ability to draw up an exhaustive list of the available options. Next, for each option, the decision-maker must be able to describe the elements and entities that make up the world assumed by that option. Finally, an inventory must be produced of the significant interactions that are likely occur between the various elements and entities. Consequently, the authors highlight the notion of possible states of the world, which are like the scenarios used by futurists [7].

With some adjustments and amendments, the recommendations made by the OECD in its report entitled Boosting Resilience through Innovative Risk Governance (2014) could serve as the basis for a new approach to regional and territorial development matters:

– promoting future-oriented risk governance and taking account of complex risks;

– emphasising the role of trust and highlighting the long-term action taken by the public authorities to protect the population;

– adoption of a common definition of acceptable risk levels by stakeholders at all levels;

– defining an optimal array of tangible and intangible resilience measures (infrastructure measures and planning measures, for instance);

– adopting a whole society approach in order to involve all stakeholders in boosting resilience;

– acknowledging the important role played by institutions and institutional blocks in the effectiveness of risk management measures in order to increase resilience levels;

– using diagnostic frameworks to identify institutional barriers and to restructure incentives to promote resilience [8].

In Risk Society, the German sociologist Ulrich Beck (1944-2015) went further, pointing out that risks were not only about the consequences and damage that occur, but that they could also indicate a future that had to be prevented from happening. Our awareness of the risk lies not in the present but principally in the future, he writes [9]. Futurists know this: they manipulate the wild cards to identify the jokers that may appear in our trajectory, and they use them as stress tests for the system and as a means of measuring the extent to which such events can be transformed into genuine opportunities to implement a desirable vision of the future.

 

2. Uncertainty, the product of our ignorance

Although the terms risk and uncertainty are often used interchangeably, they are not the same. Risk indicates a clearly defined danger associated with the occurrence of a perfectly describable event or series of events; it is not known if such events will occur, but it is known that they may occur [10]. Where statistical tools can be employed, risk is defined as the probability of an undesirable or unwanted event occurring and the scale of the impact of such an occurrence on the variable or system according to its vulnerability. Therefore, in addition to the probability factor regarding an event occurring, there is also a severity factor regarding the consequences of the event. This results in a third, subjective, factor which, based on the first two factors, assesses, and possibly quantifies the level of risk [11].

It is because the notion of risk plays a central role in the theory of rational decision-making and in the choice it assumes between several states of the world, or scenarios, that it is sensible – as stated by Callon et al. – to reserve its use for such perfectly codified situations [12]. Consequently, in uncertain situations, use of this notion of risk makes it impossible to list and to precisely describe either the options available to the decision-maker or the possible states of the world through which reliable foresight can be developed.

Uncertainty is the product of our incomplete knowledge of the state of the world – past, present or future –, observe the economists John Kay (University of Oxford) and Mervyn King (London School of Economics) [13]. Frequently, as highlighted by their French colleague Philippe Silberzahn, uncertainty results not from our difficulty in acquiring information, but from the fact that this information does not exist – or not yet [14]. The fundamental inability to predict the result of the change based on probability diverts us from risk culture. In his work Noise, A Flaw on Human Judgment, Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, uses the concepts of objective ignorance (the absolute limit of our ability to predict), imperfect information (what could be known but is not), and irreducible uncertainty (what it is impossible to know). This form of semantic radicalisation, in which Kahneman, a professor at Princeton, uses the word ignorance where we generally use uncertainty, allows him to limit the confusion with noise. Noise, which can be conceived as random dispersal, is also a form of uncertainty. It affects not only the state of the world, but also the judgments we make. Kahneman also uses this semantic change to warn us that we systematically underestimate objective ignorance, and therefore uncertainty. The internal signal is a self-administered reward, one people work hard (or sometimes not so hard) to achieve when they reach closure on a judgment. It is a satisfying emotional experience, a pleasing sense of coherence, in which the evidence considered and the judgment reached feel right [15].

In a broadened natural, political, economic, social and cultural space and a complex world, the constant emergence [16] of new factors and actors makes it impossible to build up and to have at our disposal reasonable, if not complete, knowledge of the environment and its effects – including disruptive effects – on the system and, therefore, of how the system will evolve.

 

3. Dealing with uncertainty

As the authors of Acting in an uncertain world have shown, in uncertain situations, foresight is impossible for decision-makers due to a lack of specific knowledge about the behaviours and interactions of the elements that make up the system, and of the actors and factors that constitute the environment. But ignorance is not inevitable and thinking in terms of uncertainty will in itself help to facilitate better understanding [17].

Ignorance is not new, and it did not emerge in the 21st century. What is new, and hopefully increasing, is awareness of this ignorance. However, as highlighted in a text produced back in 1982 by Daniel Kahneman and his psychologist colleague from Stanford University Amos Tversky (1937-1996), uncertainty is a fact with which all forms of life must be prepared to contend. For Kahneman and Tversky, the inventors of Prospect Theory [18], at all levels of biological complexity there is uncertainty about the significance of signs or stimuli and about the possible consequences of actions. At all levels, action must be taken before the uncertainty is resolved, and a proper balance must be achieved between a high level of specific readiness for the events that are most likely to occur and a general ability to respond appropriately when the unexpected happens[19].

Although the disruptive shocks we have experienced since the start of 2020 could be anticipated, their magnitude and complexity have taken all analysts by surprise [20]. It is possible that disasters of this type may happen again, and that others, which are currently of little or no concern, may happen in the future.

It therefore seems essential to question the various policies adopted in the light of new emergences, disasters, or other potential risks, whether natural or anthropogenic, a distinction which is difficult to draw on account of the increasing transformation of biophysical environments [21]. The concept of disaster can be enriched not only by its etymology, which indicates a sudden, dreadful shock causing significant loss of life, but also by systemics through the works of the mathematicians René Thom (1923-2002) and Erik Christopher Zeeman (1925-2016). It is therefore a question of discontinuities [22] that may arise in the evolution of a variable or system, leading to changes in its morphological stability. Consequently, disasters have more to do with system inputs and parameter space than with the changes they bring about. For Zeeman, a disaster occurs where a continuous variety of causes leads to a discontinued variation in effects [23].

The French geographer Jérôme Dunlop notes, in turn, that whereas a risk results from the combination of a vulnerability and a hazard, whose possible occurrence would destroy all or part of the stakes exposed to it (humans and wealth), the term disaster is used where the destroyed stakes are considered significant by the human group affected. The magnitude of the risk itself varies according to how high the stakes are and how probable it is that the hazard will occur. Human occupation also increases the probability of risks occurring in natural environments. The risk of flooding is generally increased through urbanisation of the major river basins and water courses and through the impermeablisation of the ground resulting from development of road networks and urban growth, and through changes in agricultural landscapes.[24] Consequently, the historian Niall Ferguson, professor at Oxford and at Harvard, rightly observes that the distinction between natural disasters and disasters caused by humans is purely artificial. There is, he notes, constant interaction between human societies and nature. The example he gives is one we have highlighted previously when referring to the Lisbon disaster: an endogenous shock destroyed human life and health according to the proximity of residents to the place of impact [25].

 

Conclusion: disruptive shocks as opportunities for structural transformations in a system that is initially cumbersome or blocked

There is a new focus on the global impact of humanity on the earth system as a whole. This is what we refer to today as the Anthropocene, interpreting this era as a rupture[26]. One could argue, therefore, that if human activity has affected nature in such a way that natural, hydrometeorological and geophysical disasters are on the rise, resulting in large numbers of victims, it is today essential for us to gain a clearer understanding of disasters and to anticipate risks [27].

For several decades, the research has recognised the vulnerability of territories and communities. Vulnerability, referred to above, could be described as a circumstance or a context specific to certain groups (or territories) which find themselves in a fragile situation in relation to certain risks, a situation caused by the constant social construction of risks. From that perspective, resilience would indicate the development, by the group or territory, of capabilities to deploy processes – which affect practices – to reduce their vulnerability to certain risks [28]. Researchers have created new concepts for understanding this phenomenon and identifying its various types: differential or differentiated vulnerability, accumulated vulnerability, and global vulnerability, etc. Now that our focus has been increased through the shocks we are experiencing in practice, we need to translate these questions into public and collective anticipation and prevention policies by determining, space by space, territory by territory, which risks we are facing, what our vulnerabilities are, and how the global vulnerabilities vary from place to place. Lastly, although there are links between vulnerability, underdevelopment and poverty, it appears that the ability to recover from a disaster and prepare for risks is more critical than the level of poverty [29] Analysis of risk factors, including climate-related [30], is encouraged by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR, formerly UNISDR) [31]. The works produced by this institution, particularly its assessment reports, may help to construct a helpful methodological framework.

In addition, we cannot ignore one of the conclusions of the works of the anthropologist and historian Virginia Garcia-Acosta, namely that the recurring presence of certain natural phenomena, such as storms, has led certain groups of humans to make cultural changes in their lives and in their material organisation, which may result in the implementation of survival strategies and adaptation possibilities [32]. As previously indicated by Edgar Morin in La Méthode, when mentioning the concept of disaster, the rupture and disintegration of an old form is the very process by which the new form is created [33]. In other words, disruptive shocks may represent genuine opportunities for structural transformations in a system that is initially cumbersome or blocked.

Any approach to risks and disasters involves grasping the issue of acceptable risk in a strategy and its implementation in practice, and therefore also addressing the difficult question of the precautionary principle, with the multiple regional development and land management tools [34].

Equipping ourselves with predictive tools, devices and processes for confronting uncertainty represents basic good sense for all forms of contemporary governance in our societies [35]. This approach would also mean that disruptive shocks could be regarded as opportunities for structural transformations in a system which initially seems cumbersome or blocked when faced with the scale of the challenges.

 

Philippe Destatte

@PhD2050

[1] Déclaration de Politique régionale wallonne, 2019-2024, Namur, 16 septembre 2019, 122 p., p. 75. https://www.wallonie.be/sites/default/files/2019-09/declaration_politique_regionale_2019-2024.pdf

[2] Ibidem, p. 82.

[3] Ibidem, p. 90.

[4] Ibidem, p. 117.

[5] Ibidem, p. 118.

[6] In his report Boosting Resilience through Innovative Risk Governance, OECD Reviews of Risk Management Policies, p. 16, Paris, OECD, 2014, OECD writes: Nearly all OECD countries systematically consider disaster risk in sectoral public investment strategies and planning. the importance attributed to the local responsibilities, including risk sensitive regulation in land zoning and private real estate development – Also see: Bassin de la Loire, France, Étude de l’OCDE sur la gestion des risques d’inondation, Paris, OECD, 2010.

[7] Michel CALLON, Pierre LASCOUMES & Yannick BARTHES, Acting in an uncertain world: An essay on technical democracy, Harvard, MIT Press, 2009. p. 37-39 of the Paris, Seuil, 2001 edition.

[8] Boosting Resilience through Innovative Risk Governance, OECD Reviews of Risk Management Policies, p. 17-18, Paris, OECD, 2014.

[9] Ulrich BECK, Risk Society, Towards a New Modernity, London, SAGE, 1992. – La société du risque, Sur la voie d’une autre modernité (1986), p. 60-61, Paris, Flammarion, 2008.

[10] M. CALLON, P. LASCOUMES et Y. BARTHES, op. cit., p. 37.

[11] Carl L. PRITCHARD, Risk Management, Concepts and Guidance, p. 7-8, Arlington VA, ESI, 1997.

[12] Ibidem, p. 39.

[13] John KAY & Mervyn KING, Radical Uncertainty, p. 37, London, The Bridge Press, 2021.

[14] Philippe SILBERZAHN, Bienvenue en incertitude ! Survivre et prospérer dans un monde de surprises, p. 82, Paris, Diateino, 2021.

[15] Daniel KAHNEMAN, Olivier SIBONY, Carl R. SUNSTEIN, Noise, A Flaw in Human Judgment, p. 144-146, New York, Little, Brown, Spark, 2021..

[16] Emergence can be defined as the unexpected appearance or evolution of a variable or system that cannot result from or be explained by the system’s constituents or previous conditions. The microbiologist Janine Guespin sees in this the existence of singular qualities of a system that can only exist under certain conditions: they can possibly be inter-converted while the system retains the same constituents subject to interactions of the same nature, if a parameter regulating the intensity of these interactions crosses a critical threshold during its variation. Janine GUESPIN-MICHEL coord. , Lucien SEVE e.a., Émergence, Complexité et dialectique, Sur les systèmes dynamiques non linéaires, p. 42, Paris, O. Jacob, 2005.

[17] M. CALLON, P. LASCOUMES et Y. BARTHES, Acting in an uncertain world…, p. 40sv.

[18] See: Frédéric MARTINEZ, L’individu face au risque : l’apport de Kahneman et Tversky, dans  Idées économiques et sociales, vol. 161, no. 3, 2010, p. 15-23. https://www.cairn.info/revue-idees-economiques-et-sociales-2010-3-page-15.html

[19] Uncertainty is a fact with which all forms of life must be prepared to contend. At all levels of biological complexity there is uncertainty about the significance of signs or stimuli and about the possible consequences of actions. At all levels, action must be taken before the uncertainty is resolved, and a proper balance must be achieved between a high level of specific readiness for the events that are most likely to occur and a general ability to respond appropriately when the unexpected happens. Daniel KAHNEMAN, Paul SLOVIC & Amos TVERSKY, Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases, p. 509-510, Cambridge University Press, 2001.

[20] See: Philippe DESTATTE, We are expected to look far ahead even though the future does not exist, Namur, Wallonia, August 28, 2021. Blog PhD2050, https://phd2050.org/2021/08/28/anticipation-3/

[21] Cyria EMILIANOFF, Risque, in Jacques LEVY et Michel LUSSAULT, Dictionnaire de la Géographie, p. 804-805, Paris, Belin, 2003. The definition of risk in this book is: the probability of a danger threatening or affecting the life and, more generally, the environment of an individual or a group. – See also: Yannick LUNG, Auto-organisation, bifurcation, catastrophe… les ruptures de la dynamique spatiale, Talence, Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 1987.

[22] Discontinuity refers to rapid and significant shifts in trajectories without the aspect of being mostly unanticipated or deeply surprising. Ozcan SARITAS & Jack SMITH, The Big Picture – trends, drivers, wild cards, discontinuities and weak signals, in Futures, vol. 43, 3, April 2011, p. 292-312.

[23] E.C. ZEEMAN, Catastrophe Theory, Selected Papers, 1972-1977, p. 615-638, Addison Wesley Publishing Co, Reading, Mass. – London – Amsterdam, 1977. – R. THOM, Paraboles et catastrophes, Entretiens sur les mathématiques, la science et la philosophie, p. 59sv, Paris, Flammarion, 1983.

[24] Jérôme DUNLOP, Les 100 mots de la géographie, p. 71-72, Paris, PUF, 2009.

[25] Ph. DESTATTE, We are expected to look far ahead even though the future does not exist…, https://phd2050.org/2021/08/28/anticipation-3/

[26] Clive HAMILTON, The Anthropocene as rupture, in The Anthropocene Review, 3, 2, 2016, p. 93-106.

[27] Virginia GARCIA-ACOSTA, Catastrophes non naturelles et anthropocène, Leçons apprises à partir de perspectives anthropologiques et historiques, dans Rémi BEZAU & Catherine LARRERE dir., Penser l’anthropocène, p. 325sv, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2018.

[28] V. GARCIA-ACOSTA, Catastrophes non naturelles et anthropocène…, p. 33.

[29] V. GARCIA-ACOSTA, Catastrophes non naturelles et anthropocène…, p. 329-330.

[30] And the links between climate and health : Jacques BLAMONT, Introduction au siècle des menaces, p. 505sv, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2004

[31] The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction was established in 1999 to ensure the implementation of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.  https://www.undrr.org/

[32] V. GARCIA-ACOSTA, Prevencion de desastres, estrategias adaptivas y capital social, in Harlan KOFF ed., Social Cohesion bin Europe and the Americas, Power, Time and Space, p. 115-130, Berne, Peter Lang, 2009. – Catastrophes non naturelles et anthropocène…, p. 332.

[33] Edgar MORIN, La Méthode, 1. La nature de la nature, p. 44, Paris, Seuil, 1977. – René THOM, Stabilité culturelle et Morphogénèse, Essai d’une théorie génétique des modèles, Paris, Ediscience, 1972.

[34] An acute and difficult question if ever there was one in the “risk society”. See in particular: Dominique BOURG et Jean-Louis SCHLEGEL, Parer aux risques de demain, le principe de précaution, Paris, Seuil, 2001. – Ulrich BECK, Risk Society, Towards a New Modernity, London, Sage, 1992. – François EWALD, Aux risques d’innover, Les entreprises face au principe de précaution, Paris, Autrement, 2009.

[35] All governments, international bodies, universities and companies should have their own Cassandras, their “National Warning Office”, to identify worst-case scenarios, measure risks and design protection, prevention and mitigation strategies. See: Niall FERGUSON, Doom, The Politics of Catastrophe, New York, Penguin Press, 2021.

Paris, Cloud Business Center, March 30, 2023

The question posed to me by the French Ministry of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion during the fourth meeting of their national land-use planners’ network (RNA) concerns the innovative or even disruptive lessons that are emerging from the European foresight work on the cities of the future[1]. Among the multitude of works undertaken within the European Commission – particularly by the Directorate General for Regional Policies and the Directorate General for Research –, the Committee of the Regions and networks such as ESPON, some drastic choices have been necessary to try, at the same time, to find a common thread for this intervention. As with any foresight process, this contribution will start with aspirations and imagination and end with the genuine anticipation strategy: how to act before events occur, to trigger them or prevent them? [2]

 Consequently, after reviewing the very creative, community-based Stories from 2050, we will examine two structured foresight reports, Cities of Tomorrow (2011) and The Future of Cities (2020), which, along with other sources, helped to construct the New Leipzig Charter of 30 November 2020. I shall conclude with the issue of the means for the policies advocated, which I believe to be a fundamental issue in most European countries and especially in France and Wallonia.

 

1. Stories from 2050

Although, as a rule, I am not particularly keen on the use of individual storytelling in foresight, preferring collective intelligence as a methodological principle, it is important to acknowledge the interest in the initiative launched by the DG Research and Innovation of the European Commission concerning the stories from 2050 [3]. From listening to their authors, these are radical, inspiring, and stimulating accounts of the challenges and opportunities presented by our future. Some of them focus on the future of cities. Written in 2020 and 2021, they are largely characterised by the traumas caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and by the increased awareness of the challenges arising from this new period in global history which is called the Anthropocene [4].

The European Commission conceived this work as a process for listening to society. Our duty observes Jean-Éric Paquet, is not only to tell but also to listen [5]. Thus, the Director-General for Research is increasingly of the opinion that foresight constitutes a space for engaging with citizens and listening to what they have to say. This approach is consistent with the efforts made by his department to fall within the scope of citizen science.

In the dozens of texts gathered and drafted in a variety of formats and with wide-ranging content, the Commission has faced a few observations. Firstly, the fact that creativity and innovation are needed more than ever to deal with the challenges of this century. Next, the idea that searching for another Earth, which features prominently in these stories, is an important ambition, but that what humans need to focus on most of all is to protect the only planet we currently have. Lastly, the notion that the European research and innovation policy can make good use of these works, as mentioned by Nikos Kastrinos and Jürgen Wengel [6].

These two DG Research managers note that the narrative that technology and innovation will solve problems and bring happiness for everyone in cities where life is good and where businesses flourish without detrimental externalities does not exist. This discourse has become pointless and obsolete. Nikos Kastrinos and Jürgen Wengel also observe that, according to the foresight stories, the source of the problems lies not in a lack of creativity and innovation, but rather in the primary and egoistical reality of human beings, who are fundamentally predatory. The community stories themselves seem to express notions of empathy, respect for others and constant striving. While this distances us from Research and Innovation, this society of the future certainly brings us closer to a better humanity [7].

I have picked out three of these stories which I think are characteristic of the effort made. The first is entitled The Foresighter Pledge and places great emphasis on anticipation [8]. The second story I have chosen concerns the construction of the city of Nüwa, on Mars, and highlights local autonomy and self-sufficiency [9]. The third is the story of the future protopians, who focus on a non-violent, inclusive world made up of “radical tenderness”, tolerance and celebration of life [10].

The Stories from 2050 project demonstrate the capacity of citizens to engage in long-term reflection and generate useful ideas for shaping a new society. The citizens themselves really enjoyed this exercise [11]. For the European Commission’s DG Research and Innovation, the interest in the initiative helps to move away from a model of technological and scientistic thought in which all the problems of the future can be solved and instead, by listening to society, demonstrate that the challenges are complex and that, in a modest way, human beings have a central role to play in solving the problems.

 

2. A European model of urban development

Moving from foresight to strategy, which is itself an integral part of foresight, there are two works on the future of cities that should be mentioned. The first is called Cities of Tomorrow, Challenges, visions, ways forward, a work in which my colleagues of The Destree Institute and I were involved as foresight experts for the Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission in 2010 and 2011, under the direction of Corinne Hermant – de Callattaÿ and Christian Svantfeldt [12]. The second, more recent work, entitled The Futures of Cities, was overseen by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in 2019 and published in 2020.

 

2.1. Cities of Tomorrow (2011)

The first exercise addressed several issues, including the question of whether a European urban development model existed [13]. The response was positive, and this model was clearly described in the work: an integrated and long-term approach, advanced places for social progress, platforms for democracy, places for green regeneration, and mechanisms for attractiveness and economic growth.

The shared vision of the European urban development model is an integrated approach which takes account of all aspects of sustainable development. Thus, the European cities of tomorrow are:

– advanced places for social progress;

– platforms for democracy, cultural dialogue and diversity;

– places for green, ecological or environmental regeneration;

– attractive places that are engines of economic growth [14].

 This vision brings together the main aims behind all the European policies in the 2010s, incorporating sustainability, territorial balance, polycentrism, limited urban sprawl, and quality and well-being of habitat and environment. The authors state as follows: The future urban territorial development pattern reflects a sustainable development of Europe based on balanced economic growth and balanced territorial organisation with a polycentric urban structure; contains strong metropolitan regions and other strong urban areas, such as regional centres, especially outside the core areas of Europe, which provide good accessibility to the services of general economic interest; is characterised by a compact settlement structure with limited urban sprawl through a strong control of land supply and speculative development; enjoys a high level of protection and quality of the environment around cities – nature, landscape, forestry, water resources, agricultural areas, etc. – and strong links and articulation between cities and their environments [15].

The issue of climate change and its energy corollary may not appear prominently, as has generally been the case in most works since the Paris Agreements of 12 December 2015, although they do feature heavily in the earlier works and in the report itself. In the preface by European Commissioner Johannes Hahn, the city is still regarded as an essential asset for mitigating the impact of climate change[16]. Thus, continues the report, cities have a critical role to play in reducing CO2 emissions and tackling climate change. It goes on to explain that energy consumption in urban areas is associated mainly with transport and housing and is therefore responsible for a large proportion of CO2 emissions. Referring to the World Energy Outlook, the report observes that around two thirds of final energy demand is associated with urban consumption and up to 70% of CO2 emissions are generated in cities. The authors are therefore able to conclude that the urban way of life is both the problem and the solution [17].

The most promising model is that of the diverse city, a place of social cohesion and cultural and human diversity in which the different spatial and social perspectives of the inhabitants are taken into account [18]. The Leipzig Charter on the Sustainable European Cities, adopted in 2007, is used to design a compact, environmentally friendly city: grouped habitats, planning methods to prevent urban sprawl, management of land supply, restriction of speculative trends, district diversity, involvement of stakeholders and inhabitants, and so on [19].

 

2.2. The Future of Cities (2019)

At least three of the key messages of the report entitled The Future of Cities, produced in 2019 by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, are of interest to us in the first instance: the performance of cities in terms of resource use and their energy efficiency, the imbalances, disparities and even divergences that affect them, and the interaction which they can develop with themselves, in other words, their inhabitants. The three messages are as follows:

The fight for sustainability will be greatly influenced by what happens in cities. While cities usually place greater pressure on natural resources, they perform better in the use of resources and have a greater potential for energy efficiency. Actions on environmental sustainability, including climate change, are already being taken by many cities.

(…)

– There is a risk of polarisation both within and between cities. On the one hand, being unable to take stock of the issues highlighted will lead to even more inequalities within a city. On the other hand, a diverging path between cities falling behind and cities capitalising on emerging trends may cause additional social and economic imbalance between different urban areas.

– The close linkage between space/service/people is at the core of cities’ capacities to respond to people’s needs and to manage new challenges in a wider context, beyond administrative boundaries and sectorial domains.  A truly holistic approach is needed to optimise the provision of services and create an intelligent interaction between the city and its inhabitants while maintaining or enhancing quality of life. [20]

The report helpfully presents the challenges faced by cities in the form of a system, with fourteen subsystems in which health, climate, resilience, environmental footprint, urban governance and innovation coexist with mobility, housing, services, the environment, etc.

The exercise conveys the ambitions set out during the 2018 European Mayors’ Convention [21], which linked the climate and energy objectives with the European time frames for reducing carbon emissions. At the Convention, the 8,800 ambitious cities pledged to contribute to the objectives to reduce CO2 emissions by 20% by 2020, by 40% by 2030, and to decarbonise their cities by 2050.

Governance is placed at the service of the climate and energy objectives, with strategic guidelines for achieving them:

– government by offering services and especially financial resources;

– co-construction and civic facilitation of policies;

– municipal autonomy;

– regulation and planning for the transport, mobility, lighting, urban planning, development, and renewable energy sectors.

It is also the responsibility of these cities of the future to exploit their innovation potential. The report highlights the Future Agenda 2017 formula, whereby cities are often places of great energy and optimism and that is where most humans choose to live, work, and interact with each other. Consequently, according to this same source, cities are places of innovation, where ideas are generated from which, to a large extent, economic growth emerges [22]. Thus, the Joint Research Centre report emphasises the fact that, within a co-construction rationale, citizens can play a major role in identifying and solving urban challenges.

 

3. The New Leipzig Charter (2020)

The New Leipzig Charter of 20 November 2020, which is familiar to all developers and urban planners, is partly the result of the foresight works to which it refers. The Charter calls for alignment of European urban development policies in a model highlighted through its three priority areas: the just city (inclusive, cohesive, learning), the green city (decarbonised, low-waste, regenerative) and the productive city [23] At the heart of its vision, its purposes are the common good, public well-being, quality of services and empowerment of the actors who enable participation, deliberation, and co-construction of collective policies.

The integrated, place-based approach, which had already been included in the 2007 Charter, is still the guiding principle in the 2020 text. However, the perspective is widened to incorporate deprived neighbourhoods, functional areas and the entire urban context.

Multilevel governance highlights the need for strong, coordinated urban policies, in other words, sound financial policies, from European to local level, that are consistent with sustainability.

Citizen participation must be combined with co-creation, co-design and tackling inequalities and social breakdown in cities, by employing tools and mechanisms in the areas of housing, attractiveness for business, land-use planning, and environmental regeneration.

For its implementation, the signatories of the charter sought a stronger strategic alignment between the Union’s Territorial Agenda 2030 [24], the urban aspect of the cohesion policy, the national urban policy frameworks, and the Urban Agenda for the European Union [25].

 

4. Conclusion: a city which generates economic and financial value

The idea that cities contribute to both problems and solutions is well established today in our mental landscape. Although they may be places with a concentration of problems – idleness, unemployment, social breakdown, transmission of disease, exclusion, segregation, racism, xenophobia, violence –, they are also the preferred places for curing such ills by mobilising the appropriate resources.

The urban governance survey carried out in 2016 by the London School of Economics, before the most recent spate of crises, showed that half of city representatives regarded the lack of funds as the greatest challenge in urban governance, followed by politicisation of local issues, the complexity of managing contemporary urban problems, and inadequate or outdated political silos [26]. The JRC report also noted that the inadequacy of budgetary resources was one of the major challenges in urban governance [27].

Cities which do not produce economic or financial excesses are, and will be, incapable of coping with the current and future challenges, which, as we know, are vast. I hardly need to restate that decarbonisation will be very expensive. The effects of climate change will require costly repair and preventive work.

The crises already suffered, the “whatever it costs” mentality in the public responses to social rebellions [28], the Covid-19 pandemic, and the effects of the war in Ukraine and its consequences in terms of energy regulation and military investment, have considerably exacerbated a major public finance crisis. This has already been part of our political, economic, and social landscape since the beginning of the century and has been amplified by the major shock of 2008-2009, whose consequences continue to affect us today. In addition to the budgetary deficit, there is, as we have seen, the egotism of societal individualism which, in some people – both rich and poor –, goes as far as refusing to pay tax. The worries are real when one measures the scale of our countries’ debt and the negative primary balances of our budgets.

Budgetary depletion leaves the door open to developers who go against the common interests highlighted by the New Leipzig Charter. The elected representatives, formerly builders, and today transients, as one mayor pointed out, could tomorrow be financially powerless. Some of them already are, those who have no purpose other than trying to give meaning to the predations of those who supplant them and the common interest they hold.

The main remedy for this problem lies in multilevel participation, which ranges from traditional consultation to discussion, community deliberation and co-construction with stakeholders [29]. In his concept of the plural city, the sociologist Jan Vranken, from the University of Antwerp, invited us as citizens, or as mere residents, to several forums in which the city’s financial issues could be discussed freely since, as he pointed out, the public budgeting exercise affects everyone [30].

The remedy can also be found in the productive city section in the New Leipzig Charter. This implies, as in the 1987 Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, an economy that produces excesses as a guarantee of its sustainability. Thus, maintaining high levels of productivity will be critically important in retaining production within city boundaries. As highlighted in a 2020 report by the European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion (ORATE), if we wish to maintain and develop productive activities in cities in the long term, it is essential to understand the reasons why manufacturing activities have been able to take place in cities and to promote innovation and entrepreneurial activities. Identifying and developing appropriate sites should promote the return of industry in cities[31].

This is certainly the price of ensuring the autonomy and well-being of the inhabitants of our European cities and their elected representatives.

 

Philippe Destatte

@PhD2050

 

[1] Quatrième rencontre du Réseau national français des Aménageurs (RNA), Ministère de la Transition écologique et de la Cohésion des Territoires, Paris, March, 30 2023.

[2] Philippe DESTATTE, What is foresight? Blog PhD2050, Brussels, May 30, 2013.

https://phd2050.org/2013/05/30/what-is-foresight/ – Ph. DESTATTE, From anticipation to action: an essential foresight path for businesses and organisations, Blog PhD2050, Namur, February 1st,  2014. https://phd2050.org/2014/02/01/anticipation-2/

[3] Tanja SCHINDLER, Graciela GUADARRAMA BAENA, ea, Stories from 2050, Radical, inspiring and thought-provoking narratives around challenges and opportunities of our futures, Brussels, European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, October 2021.

https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/news/all-research-and-innovation-news/stories-2050-radical-inspiring-and-thought-provoking-narratives-around-challenges-and-opportunities-2021-12-09_en

https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/87769c66-5d5a-11ec-9c6c-01aa75ed71a1/language-en/format-PDF/source-245938989

[4] We live in the Anthropocene, the geological age where humans have the most significant impact and influence on climate, the environment, and the entire planet. Biodiversity on Earth is shrinking at a frightening pace. The extinction of animal species caused by human activity may lead to the next wave of mass extinction since the disappearance of the dinosaurs. No wonder space travel has always fascinated humankind, therefore fictional space travel was used in this process to question whether it is one – possible and second – desirable, to leave Earth behind and disrupt another planet. Furthermore, space travel fantasies and aspirations are linked to the quest for knowledge and exploration, encouraging participants to go beyond their usual thinking and leave current barriers and obstacles behind. Stories from 2050…, p. 13.

[5] Our duty is not only to tell, but also to listen, Jean-Eric PAQUET, Foreword, in Stories from 2050…, p. 5.

[6] Nikos KASTRINOS & Jürgen WENGUEL, Epilogue: What can EU R&I policy lean from Stories from 2050? in Stories from 2050…, p. 107sv.

[7] Ibidem, p. 108-109.

[8] The Foresight Pledge, in Stories from 2050, p. 75, EC, DG Research, 2021.

[9] Totti KONNOLA, Inside the first self-sustainable city on Mars, ready for humans in 2100, March 24, 2021. https://www.storiesfrom2050.com/discuss/message-from-the-future/inside-the-first-self-sustainable-city-on-mars-ready-for-humans-in-2100

[10] Protopian Future, in Stories from 2050…, p. 95. – Protopia refers to a society that, instead of solving all its problems as in a utopia, or falling into severe dysfunction as in a dystopia, progresses gradually over a long period of time, thanks to the way technological advances reinforce the natural process of evolution. Kevin KELLY, What Technology wants, London, Penguin, 2011.

[11] Tanjia SCHINDLER, Stories from 2050, Project Overview and Process, Mutual Learning Exercise, Research and Innovation Foresight, Policy and Practice, Citizens’ Engagement Approaches & Methods on good practices in the use of Foresight in R&I policy planning and programming, Strengthening the role of foresight in the process of identifying research priorities, 31 January, 1 & 2 February 2023.

[12] Corinne HERMANT- de CALLATTAŸ et Christian SVANTFELDT, Cities of Tomorrow, Challenges, visions, ways forward, Brussels, European Commission, Directorate General for Regional Policy, 2011. https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/a806c8d9-321e-4b2d-9fdf-6d86e5226cd6 – See also: Chr. SVANFELDT, C. HERMANT- de CALLATAŸ, La “ville de demain” vue par l’Union européenne, in Les Cahiers du Développement social urbain, 2012/2 (N° 56), p. 52-54.

https://www.cairn.info/revue-cahiers-du-developpement-social-urbain-2012-2-page-52.htm

[13] The ‘European model of the city’ is a fascinating issue. On the one hand, it captures essential features of European cultural history, and it is deeply rooted in the past and, hence, related to the identity question. On the other, it captures essential aspects of the political vision of the European Union and, hence, of the future as envisaged by the underlying society. Cities of Tomorrow…, p. 1.

[14] Cities of Tomorrow…, p. 10-11.

[15] Cities of Tomorrow…, p. 12.

[16] Cities of Tomorrow, p. III.

[17] Cities of Tomorrow, p. 5. – The report highlights that 2/3 of final energy demand is linked to urban consumption and up to 70% of CO2 emissions are generated in cities, even though they are inhabited by 50% of the world’s population in 2010), referring to the World Energy Outlook 2008. Let us note that according to the World Energy Outlook 2022: 70% of the world’s population could be living in cities in 2050, i.e. an increase of 2 billion inhabitants in cities worldwide (p. 110 and 464 – This analysis can be found in the report Futures of Cities in 2019: While being responsible for a high level of energy consumption and, therefore, generating about 70% of global GHG emissions, cities are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Cities are most effective at taking measures to tackle climate change when aligned with each other and with national- and regional-level actors with whom they can share greater climate ambition and capacity. In the last two decades, city ambition has risen remarkably to go beyond the national governments’ climate-change targets as the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C warns that current nationally determined contributions for the Paris Agreement are not sufficient. Cities need support from their partners in national and regional governments, the private sector, academia, and civil society to fully meet and exceed these ambitious targets. The Future of Cities, JRC, 2019, p. 82.

[18] Cities of Tomorrow, p. 35.

[19] Cities of Tomorrow, p. 43-48.

[20] The Future of Cities, Main messages, European Commission, Urban Data Platform, 2019. https://urban.jrc.ec.europa.eu/thefutureofcities/executive-summary#the-chapterThe Future of Cities…, p. 8-9.

[21] Covenant of Mayors: cities at the forefront of climate action, February 19, 2018.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/eu-affairs/20180216STO98009/covenant-of-mayors-cities-at-the-forefront-of-climate-action

[22] Cities are often places of great energy and optimism. They are where most of us choose to live, work and interact with others. As a result, cities are where innovation happens, where ideas are formed from which economic growth largely stems. Future of Cities, Insights from Multiple Expert Discussions Around the World, p. 3, London, Futureagenda 2017. https://www.futureofcities.city/pdf/full/Future%20of%20Cities%20Report%202017.pdf – The Future of Cities, p. 105.

[23] The New Leipzig Charter, The Transformative power of cities for the common good, 30 November 2020.

https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/brochure/new_leipzig_charter/new_leipzig_charter_en.pdf

[24] Territorial Agenda, A future for all places, December 1st 2020. https://territorialagenda.eu/

[25] Implementing the New Leipzig Charter through multi-level governance, Next Steps for the Urban Agenda for the EU, p. 4, EU2020.de, 2020. https://futurium.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2021-03/new_leipzig_charter_implem_en.pdf

[26] The Urban Governance Survey, 2016, Cities UN Habitat and the United Cities and Local Governments, London School of Economics, 2016. – The Future of Cities…, p. 129 & 149. https://unhabitat.org/the-urban-governance-survey-by-un-habitat-uclg-and-lse-cities

[27] The Future of Cities…, p. 106.

[28]According to Anne de Guigné, the budgetary impact of the Yellow Vests crisis amounted to €17 billion in new expenditure or lower revenue.. Anne DE GUIGNE, Emmanuel Macron et la dette : six ans de rendez-vous manqués, dans Le Figaro Économie, 29 mars 2023, p. 24.

[29] Michel FOUDRIAT, La co-construction en actes, Savoirs et savoir-faire pratiques pour faciliter sa mise en œuvre, Montrouge, ESF, 2021.

[30] Cities of Tomorrow…, p. 35.

[31] Europe’s productive cities and metros, Policy Brief, p. 2, Luxembourg, European Union, ESPON, 2021.

Washington, September 8, 2021

200 Leaders Call for New UN Office to Coordinate Global Research to Prevent Human Extinction

Earth’s magnetic shield weakening, ocean-poisoning hydrogen-sulfide gas from advanced global warning, out-of-control nanotech and AI, are among the possible future threats to humanity, warn The Millennium Project, World Futures Studies Federation, and the Association of Professional Futurists.

In an open letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, internet pioneer Vint Cerf, Nobel Prize Laureate Oscar Arias, and other technological, business, political, technological, environmental, and academic leaders around the world are calling for a new UN Office of Strategic Threats to coordinate global research on long-range strategic or existential threats to humanity, and to their prevention.

The letter [attached] requests that the UN Secretariat conduct a feasibility study for the proposed UN Office. “The immediate crises always seem to overrule the long-term concerns about the future of humanity. So, we need a specific UN Office that just focuses on what could make us go extinct and how to prevent it,” said Jerome Glenn, CEO of The Millennium Project.”

The UN already has agencies that are addressing many of the serious trends today—such as decreasing fresh water per capita, concentration of wealth, and ethnic violence—but these do not pose a threat to the survival of our species.

Long-term threats

However, there are long-term threats that do, such as the ten below:

  • Weakening of the Earth’s magnetic shield that protects us from deadly solar radiation
  • Massive discharges of hydrogen sulfate (H2S) from de-oxygenated oceans, caused by advanced global warming
  • Malicious nanotechnology (including the “gray goo” problem)
  • Loss of control over future forms of artificial intelligence
  • A single individual acting alone, who could one day create and deploy a weapon of mass destruction (most likely from synthetic biology)
  • Nuclear war escalation
  • Uncontrollable, more-severe pandemics
  • A particle accelerator accident
  • Solar gamma-ray bursts
  • An asteroid collision.

“There is no single point for collaboration in the UN system that addresses such long-term threats to human survival,” said Ambassador Héctor Casanueva, former Chilean Ambassador to UN multilateral organizations in Geneva. “A UN Office on Strategic and Existential Threats to humanity could identify, monitor, anticipate, and coordinate strategic research on a global scale to prevent these threats, he suggested. “It would serve international agencies, multilateral organizations, nation-states, and humanity in general.”

The idea of a new UN Office was raised during the celebration of the annual “World Future Day” on March 1, 2021, a global online conference of nearly a thousand experts from 65 countries. The Millennium Project, which hosts World Future Day, suggested that a resolution be offered at the next UN General Assembly, to be held in September 2021. It would give the UN Secretariat the mandate to conduct a feasibility study of the proposed UN Office of Strategic Threats.

Open letter to the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for feasibility study of a UN Office of Strategic Threats

September 8, 2021

Dear Mr. Secretary General,

Long-range strategic threats to the survival of humanity are well-documented, ranging from the potential of advanced artificial intelligence growing beyond human control to weakening magnetic fields that protect life on Earth.

Although the United Nations includes agencies that are addressing many of the problems facing humanity today, there is no central office to identify, monitor, anticipate, and coordinate research on long-term strategic threats to humanity.

A UN Office on Strategic Threats, which would centralize and coordinate information and prospective studies on a global scale, could serve international agencies, multilateral organizations, nation-states, the private sector, academia, and humanity in general. We think that the Office could be created without putting pressure on the budget of the organization, reallocating resources and coordinating its work with universities and research centers around the world.

This idea was raised and discussed in detail during World Future Day, March 1, 2021, a 24-hour conversation of nearly a thousand experts from 65 countries, organized by several international associations of futurists and think tanks to discuss strategies for improving the global future.

The signatories of this open letter – academics, diplomats, scientists, and experts in foresight and strategy from different countries and sectors – ask Your Excellency to welcome and facilitate the adoption of a UN General Assembly Resolution at this September’s General Assembly that would give the General Secretariat the mandate to conduct a feasibility study on establishing a UN Office on Strategic Threats.

Sincerely,

  1. Asanga Abeyagoonasekera, Author, Geostrategist, Former Dir. of Foreign Policy & Security Think Tank, Sri Lanka
  2. Nancy Ellen Abrams, Author, Philosopher of Science, Attorney at Law, USA
  3. Sergio Abreu, Secretary General, Latin American Integration Association (ALADI), Uruguay
  4. Philip Omoniyi Adetiloye, Professor, Federal University of Agriculture, Nigeria
  5. Rosa Alegria, Representative, Teach the Future Brazil, Brazil
  6. Soledad, Alvear, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Former Senator, Chile
  7. Jan Amkreutz, Author, futurist, speaker, The Netherlands & USA
  8. Janna Q. Anderson, Executive Director, Imagining the Internet Center, Elon University, USA
  9. Yul Anderson, President, African American Future Society, USA
  10. Amara D. Angelica, Editor-at-Large, KurzweilAI, USA
  11. Shahar Avin, Senior Research Associate, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk University of Cambridge, UK
  12. Diana Baciuna, Local Councillor, Bucharest Borough 4, Romania
  13. Guillermina Baena Paz, VP Latin America WFSF, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico
  14. Ying Bai, Vice President, Academy of Soft Technology, China
  15. SJ  Beard, Academic Programme Manager, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk Cambridge, UK
  16. Clem Bezold, Co-Founder, Institute for Alternative Futures, USA
  17. James Boyd, Complex Systems, SingularityNet, USA
  18. Pedro Bretes Amador, CEO and Co-Founder, NewWay, Foresight, Portugal
  19. Gregory Brown, Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University, Senior Analyst, CENTRA Technology, USA
  20. Steve Brown, Founder, The Futures Collaborative, USA
  21. James E. Burke, Foresight and Solutions Navigator, DeepDive Foresight, USA
  22. Iurie Calestru, Program Director, Institute for Development and Expertise of Projects, Moldova
  23. Franklin A. Carrero-Martinez, Sr. Dir. Global Sustainability, National Academy of Sciences, Eng., and Med., USA
  24. Hector Casanueva, VP Chilean Council of Foresight and Strategy, Former Amb. Geneva, Prof.-Res. University of Alcalá, Chile & Spain
  25. Shiela R. Castillo, Futures Learning Advisor, The Center For Engaged Foresight, Philippines
  26. Vint Cerf, Internet Pioneer, Google, USA
  27. Sadok Chaabane, Former Min. of Justice & Higher Educ., GM, Polytechnique Internationale University, Tunisia
  28. Richard J. Chasdi, Professorial Lecturer, George Washington University, USA
  29. Puruesh Chaudhary, Founder &President , AGAHI, Pakistan
  30. Marvin Cheung, Board Member, Unbuilt Labs, USA
  31. Thomas J. Christiffel, Principal, Regional Intelligence-Regional Communities, USA
  32. Epaminondas Christophilopoulos, Deputy Chair Foresight Team, Office of the President of  Greece, Greece
  33. Reynaldo Treviño, Cisneros, Consultant, Systems and Strategic Planning, Mexico
  34. Anthony Clayton, Professor, University of West Indies, Jamaica
  35. Deborah Clifford, Head of Finance, Woolworths, South Africa
  36. Jose Cordeiro, Executive Director, Ibero-American Foresight Network, Venezuela and Spain
  37. Raluca Coscodaru, Consultant/Professor, Innovation and entrepreneurship, Romania
  38. Catherine, Cosgrove, Futurist, Canada
  39. William Cosgrove, Former Vice President, World Bank, Canada
  40. Shermon Cruz, Executive Director, Center for Engaged Foresight, Philippines
  41. Cornelia Daheim, Founder & Dir. Future Impacts; Chair, Futures Circle, Min. of Educ. and Res., Germany
  42. Jim Dator, Professor Emeritus, University of Hawaii, Manoa, Hawaii
  43. Philippe Destatte, Director, The Destree Institute, Belgium
  44. Mara Di Berardo, Technologist, Institute Nanoscience of the National Research Council , Italy
  45. Simone Di Zio, Associate Professor, University G. d’Annunzio, Italy
  46. Pedro Miguel Diegues, Consultant, Foresight & Strategy, Portugal
  47. Peachie Dioquino-Valera, Advisor, Center for Engaged Foresight, Philippines
  48. Hugh T. Dugan, Former Special Assistant to the President, National Security Council, USA
  49. Paul Epping, Chairman, Xponential, The Netherlands
  50.  Jelel Ezzine, President, Tunisian Association for the Advancement of ST&I (TAASTI), Tunisia
  51. Daniel Faggella, CEO, Emerj Artificial Intelligence Research, USA
  52. Horacio Martin Ferber, Faculty, National University of Avellaneda, Argentina
  53. Elizabeth Florescu, Director of Research, The Millennium Project, Canada
  54. Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, Former President of Chile, Chile
  55. Michael Friebe, Prof. Health Tech., Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany
  56. Caroline Figuères, Former Director, International Inst. for Com. and Dev.(IICD), The Netherlands
  57. Luciano Gallón, Professor, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Colombia
  58. Adolfo Arreola García, Professor, Anáhuac University, Mexico
  59. Banning Garrett, Faculty, Singularity University, USA
  60. Lydia Garrido Luzardo, UNESCO Chair Anticipation and Resilience, SARAS Institute, Uruguay
  61. Jose María Gil Robles, Former President , European Parliament, Spain
  62. Fausto Carbajal Glass, Member, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)., Mexico
  63. Jerome C. Glenn, CEO, The Millennium Project, USA
  64. Willis Goldbeck, Founder, Foresight Education, USA
  65. Blaž Golob, CEO GFS Institute, Chair, Forum on Future of Europe, Slovenia
  66. Abhik Gupta, Vice-Chairperson, Tripura State Higher Education Council, India
  67. Antonio Gutelli, Docente, Juan A. Maza University, Argentina
  68. Miguel Angel Gutierrez, Director, Centro Latinomericano de Globalización y Prospectiva, Argentina
  69. Mohammad Habib, Partner, Director, MENA Region, Siegel® MCAN, Jordan
  70. Cathy Hackl, Chief Metaverse Officer, Futures Intelligence Group, USA
  71. William E. Halal, CEO, TechCast International, USA
  72. Aharon Hauptman, Fellow, Zvi Meitar Institute for Implications of Emerging Technologies, Israel
  73. Peter Hayward, Co-host, Futurepod.org, Australia
  74. Sirkka Heinonen, Professor Emeriti, Finland Futures Research Centre, Finland
  75. Lucio Mauricio Henao Vélez, CEO, Prospectiva.org, Colombia
  76. Éva Hideg, Professor, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
  77. Brock Hinzmann, Partner, Business Futures Network, USA
  78. Cyrus Hodes, Chair AI Initiative, The Future Society, France
  79. Razvan, Hoinaru, Former Chief of Staff, EPP Romanian Delegation, EU Parliament, Romania
  80. Philip Horvath, Partner, Luman, Germany
  81. Adriana Hoyos, Professor/Senior Fellow, Instituto de Empresa (IE) Harvard University, Spain & USA
  82. Arnoldo de Hoyos, Professor, Pontificial Catholic University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
  83. Claudio Huepe, Director, Center of Sustainable Energy, Universidad Diego Portales, Chile
  84. Barry B. Hughes, Professor, University of Denver, USA
  85. Jan Hurwitch, Director, Visionary Ethics Foundation, Costa Rica
  86. Asif Iftikhar, Teaching Fellow, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan
  87. Enrique V. Iglesias, Former President, Intern-American Development Bank, Uruguay
  88. Lester Ingber, CEO, Physical Studies Institute LLC, USA
  89. Jose Miguel Insulza, former Secretary General, Organization of American States (OAS), Chile
  90. Silvia Iratchet, Institutional Relations, Suma Veritas Foundation, Argentina
  91. Abulgasem Issa, Associate Professor, Libyan Authority for Scientific Researches, Libya
  92. Garry Jacobs, President & CEO, World Academy of Art and Science, India
  93. Maciej Jagaciak, Member of the Board, Polish Society for Futures Studies, Poland
  94. Alejandro Jara, Former Associate DG WTO Geneva, Former Ambassador, Chile
  95. Robert E. Jarrett, Senior Fellow (ret.), US Army Environmental Policy Institute, USA
  96. Weiquing Jiang, Chairman, UN Ethics Chinese Union, China
  97. Zhouying Jin, Prof. and Former Director, Center for Technology Innovation and Strategy, Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China
  98. Maria João Rodrigues, Pres. Foundation for European Progressive Studies, Former Min. Employment, Former MEP and VP of the Group of the Socialists and Democrats, European Parliament, Portugal
  99.  Christopher B. Jones, Faculty, Walden University, USA
  100.  Michel Judkiewicz, Managing Director, Silver-Brains, Belgium
  101. Ted M. Kahn, CEO, DesignWorlds for Learning, USA
  102. David Kalisz, Head of Department , Management & Strategy, Paris School of Business, France
  103. Nikolaos Kastrinos, (signed in personal capacity) Foresight Team Leader, DG Research & Innovation, European Commission, Belgium
  104. Charlotte Kemp, Vice President, Global Speakers Federation, South Africa
  105. Stephen Killelea, Founder & Executive Chairman, Institute for Economics and Peace, Australia
  106. Tony Kim, President, Future Design Lab, South Korea
  107. Yusuke Kishita, Associate Professor, University of Tokyo, Japan
  108. Eric Klien, President, Lifeboat Foundation, USA
  109. Dana Klisanin, CEO, Evolutionary Guidance Media R&D, USA
  110. Norbert Kołos, Managing Partner, 4CF, Poland
  111. Tamás Kristóf, Associate Professor, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
  112. Martin Kruse, Senior Executive Advisor & Futurist, Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, Denmark
  113. Osmo Kuusi, Adjunct Professor, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland
  114. Annah Kyoya, CEO, Leadership Impressions Ltd, Kenya
  115. Mounir Labib, Academy of Scientific Research & Technology, Egypt
  116. Patricio Leiva Lavalle, Dir. Latin American Inst. of Intl Relations, Miguel de Cervantes Univ., Chile
  117. Gerd Leonhard, CEO, The Futures Agency, Zurich, Switzerland
  118. Tiziano Li Piani, R&D Engineer, Leonardo Labs, Italy
  119. Marilyn Lienbrenz-Himes, Assoc. Prof. Emeritus , George Washington University, USA
  120. Lt-Gen Naeem Khalid Lodhi, Former Secretary of Defence, Pakistan
  121. Thomas Lombardo, Director, Center for Future Consciousness, USA
  122. José A. LugoSantiago, Chief Futurist, Institute for Leadership & Strategic Foresight, USA
  123. Pavel Luksha, Founder, Global Education Futures, Russia
  124. Patricia Lustig, Chief Executive, LASA Insight Ltd, UK
  125. François Mabille, General Secretary, International Federation of Catholic Universities, France
  126. Luciano Rodrigues Marcelino, Director General, Interinstitutional Relations, DGRI, Private Technical University of Loja – UTPL, Ecuador
  127. Carlos Alonso von Marschall Murillo, Head, Prospective Analysis and Public Policy, Min. of Planning and Political Economy, Costa Rica
  128. Jorge Máttar, Executive Director, Centro Tepoztlán Víctor L. Urquidi, Mexico
  129. Philip McMaster, Co-Founder, World Sustainability Coop, China
  130. John F. Meagher, Consultant, Futurist/Occupational and Environmental Health, USA
  131. Ricardo Torres Medrano, Professor, Catholic University of La Plata, Argentina
  132. Alvaro Mendez, Co-Dir. Global South Unit, London School of Economics, United Kingdom
  133. Maria Mezentseva, Member of Parliament, Chair of Ukrainian Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Ukraine
  134. Alvaro Cedeño, Molinari, Former Ambassador in Geneva, Costa Rica
  135. Cesar Monsalve Rico, Consultant, Development and Innovation Professional, Colombia
  136. Caryl Monte, CEO, International Wisdom Academy, Curaçao
  137. Iván Alonso, Montoya-Restrepo, Professor, National University of Colombia, Colombia
  138. Luz Alexandra Montoya-Restrepo, Professor, National University of Colombia, Colombia
  139. Juan Carlos Mora Montero, Professor of Planning & Foresight, National University, Costa Rica
  140. Morne Mostert, Director, Inst. for Futures Research, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
  141. Victor V. Motti, Director, World Futures Studies Federation, USA
  142. Leopold P. Mureithi, Professor of Economics, University of Nairobi, Kenya
  143. Eric Noël, Founder, Canada Towards 2030, Canada
  144. Kacper Nosarzewski, Partner, 4CF, Poland
  145. Pavel Nováček, Head Development & Environmental Studies, Palacký University, Czech Republic
  146. Erzsébet Nováky, Professor Emeritus, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
  147. Concepcion Olavarrieta Rodriguez, Pres. Nodo Mexicano. El Proyecto del Milenio; Exec-Sec, RIBER, Mexico
  148. Erick Øverland, President, World Futures Studies Federation, Norway
  149. Karla Paniagua Ramírez, Head of Futures Studies, Center of Design and Communication, Mexico
  150. Ioan Mircea Pașcu, Former V.P., European Parliament; Former Minister of Defence of Romania, Romania
  151. Robert A., Pavlik, Futures/Environmental Studies, Marquette University, USA
  152. Martha Beatriz Peluffo Argón, Dean, Faculty of Education Sciences, Universidad de la Empresa, Uruguay
  153. Charles Perrottet, Principal, Futures Strategy Group, USA
  154. Jahna Perricone, Director of Mindfulness Programs, Center for Conscious Creativity, USA
  155. Jeremy Pesner, Doctoral Student, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
  156. Adrian Pop, Professor, National University of Political Science and Public Administration, Romania
  157. Mila Popovich, Founder, EVOLbing leadership, USA & Montenegro
  158. Patty Rangel, Author, International Astronautical Congress, Australia & Germany
  159. Kristian Ravić, Advisor, Office of the Mayor of Zagreb, Croatia
  160. Andrew W. Reynolds, Adjunct Professor, University of Virginia and DOS (ret.), USA
  161. Álvaro Ramírez Restrepo, Director, Futurion Ltda, Colombia
  162. Roman Retzbach, CEO, FutureInstitute Zukunftsinstitut, Germany
  163. Saphia Richou, Chercheur au LAREQUOI, Conseil en Prospective Stratégique et Coopétition, France
  164. Xiaobing Rong, Deputy Secretary General, UN international collaboration & coordination agency, China
  165. Stuart Russell, Center for Human Compatible Artificial Intelligence, University of California, USA
  166. Torben Riise, CEO, ExecuTeam; Founder, Institute for Futures Studies, Copenhagen, USA
  167. Clarissa Rios Rojas, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge, UK
  168. Stanley G. Rosen, Consultant, Strategy Analyst, USA
  169. Rebecca Ryan, Founder, CEO, NEXT Generation Consulting, USA
  170. Paul Saffo, Professor, Stanford University, USA
  171. Óscar Arias Sánchez, Former President of Costa Rica (1986-1990, 2006-2010), Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Costa Rica
  172. Rocco Santoro, Senior Statistician, Daccude, Italy
  173. Ramón Santoyo, President, WFS Mexican Chapter, Mexico
  174. Carlos Alberto Sarti Castañeda, Director, Fundación Propaz, Guatemala
  175. John M. Schmidt, Founder, CANSYNTH, Australia
  176. Kamal Zaky Mahmoud Shaeer, Chair, Council of Futures Studies and Risk Management, Academy of Scientific Research and Technology, Egypt
  177. Yair Sharan, Director, FIRS2T, Israel
  178. Mario Silberman, Former Ambassador, CTA, UNIDO/UNDP, Chile
  179. Mihaly , Simai, Former Chairman, United Nations University, Hungary
  180. Alexandra Sokol, Chief Sustainability Officer, EnviroDynamix, Santa Monica, CA, USA
  181. Roger Spitz, Founder, Disruptive Futures Institute, USA
  182. Maarten Steinbuch, Professor, Technical Univ. Eindhoven, Netherlands
  183. Veerappan Swaminathan, Founder & CEO, Sustainable Living Lab Pte Ltd, Singapore
  184. David Tal, President, Quantumrun Foresight, Canada
  185. Amos Taylor, Project Researcher, Finland Futures Research Center, Finland
  186. Rohit Talwar, CEO, Fast Future, UK
  187. Sadia Tariq, Research Associate, Sanjan Nagar Institute of Philosophy and Arts, Pakistan
  188. Paul Tero, Principal Consultant, Dellium Advisory, Australia
  189. Mohan Tikku, Journalist, Author, Futurist, Former Senior Fellow, Indian Council of Soc. Sci. Res., India
  190. Nicoleta Topoleanu, Human Resources Coach and Consultant, Romania
  191. Peter VanderWel, Principal Futurist, FutureVision, Netherlands
  192. Koen Vegter, Founder, Might Futures Design, Netherlands
  193. Sanja Vlahovic, Former Amb. of Montenegro to Italy, Malta and UN organizations in Rome, Montenegro
  194. Paul Werbos, Program Director(ret.), National Science Foundation, USA
  195. Jeremy Wilken, Broadcaster, Design for Voice podcast, USA
  196. Wilson Wong, Head of Insight & Futures, Horizon Scanning UK, UK
  197. Peter P Yim, CEO (retired), CIM3, Hong Kong & USA
  198. Jesús E. Caldera Ynfante, Dir., Intl and Interinstitutional Relations, La Gran Colombia University, Colombia
  199. Amy Zalman, CEO, Prescient, USA
  200. Xialin Zhang, Secretary-General, Intl. Cooperation Center for Future Strategic Research, China
  201. Duoyin Zhou, Deputy Director, UN International Collaboration &Coordination Agency, China
  202. Ibon Zugasti Gorostidi, Director, Prospektiker, Spain

Namur (Wallonia), August 28, 2021

Anticipating means visualising and then acting before the events or actions occur. This implies taking action based on what is visualised, which just goes to show how complex the process is and how problematic our relationship is with the future. The saying “to govern means to foresee” is at odds with this complexity principle. It also refers to individual responsibility. Blaming politics is a little simplistic and unfair, as it is up to each of us to govern ourselves, which means we must “anticipate”. Yet we are constantly guilty of not anticipating in our daily lives.

 

1. Our relationship with the future

 Our relationship with the future is problematic. There are five different attitudes, of which anticipation is merely the fifth. The first is common: we go with the flow; in other words, we wait for things to happen. We hope everything will go well. It is business as usual, or we have always done this as they say in Wallonia. We can also echo the words used by the miners whenever the colliery tunnels were shored up: it can’t hurt, it’s not dangerous, it’s strong, it’s reliable, etc. My father taught me to ridicule this cavalier attitude and, above all, to challenge it.

The second attitude is more active: it involves playing by the rules and working within the norms. The elected officials pay close attention to this, and so do we all. We have to have an extinguisher in our car in case of fire, but mostly to comply with the legal obligations, regulations, technical checks, and so on. Note that public buildings and businesses are also required to have them and to ensure that they are checked regularly. Very few people have one or more fire extinguishers in their house or apartment, and, even if they do, they may not be in working order or suitable for the different types of fire that may occur. We know that it is not a legal requirement, so most people don’t bother about it.

The third attitude towards the future is responsiveness: we respond to external stimuli, and we adapt quickly to the situations that arise. Images of firefighters and emergency workers come to mind, of course, and entrepreneurs as well. Responsiveness may be a virtue, but we know that it is sometimes ineffective in the face of fast-moving events. In defence of their discipline, futurists often quote a saying which they attribute to the statesman Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754-1838): when it’s urgent, it’s already too late.

The fourth attitude towards the future is preactivity: our ability – or lack of – to prepare for changes once they are foreseeable. The word foreseeable is clearly related to forecasting, in other words, an assumption is made about the future which is usually quantified and associated with a confidence index based on an expectation. This involves taking a number of variables and system elements into account against a background of previous structural stability and analysing them and their possible evolutions. The likelihood of these possible evolutions is then calculated. Validation is always uncertain due to the complexity of the systems created by the variables. A common example is the weather forecast: it gives me a probability of rain at a given time. If I am preactive, I take my umbrella or I pile sandbags in front of my doors.

The fifth attitude towards the future is proactivity. In his work on the Battle of Stalingrad – 55 years after the event –, British historian and former officer Antony Beevor criticises the German general Friedrich Paulus (1890-1957) for not, as the military commander, being prepared to confront the threat of encirclement which had been facing him for weeks, particularly by not retaining a strong, mobile, armoured capability. This would have enabled the Sixth Army of the Wehrmacht to defend itself effectively at the crucial moment. But, Beevor adds, that implied a clear assessment of the actual danger [1]. This means that, faced with expected and identified changes (I would say exploratory foresight), or even desired changes, which I will cause or create (I would then say normative foresight), I will take action. Anticipating means both visualising and then acting in advance, in other words, acting before the events or actions occur. That is why we could also say, with Riel Miller, that if the future does not exist in the present, anticipation does. The form the future takes in the present is anticipation [2].

 

2. A threefold problem to comprehend the future

We are all faced with a threefold problem when confronting the future. The first problem is that, in the tradition of Gaston Berger (1896-1960) [3], we are expected to look far ahead but, in reality, the future does not exist as an object of knowledge. Clearly, it does not exist because it is not written and is not determined, as Marx believed or as some collapse theorists today believe.

We are also expected to take a broad view and to reflect systemically. But forecasts only focus on a limited number of variables, even in the era of Big Data. Yet we find ourselves faced with systems which are all complex and interwoven in a tangle of unlikely events. We are all familiar with emergences [4] or sudden occurrences linked to the relationships between participants and factors within the system. When driving my car, I can anticipate a puddle, to avoid aquaplaning, or a patch of ice by telling myself that I must not break. But, in reality, I never know what my reaction will be when I feel my wheels shaking, or how my car, my tyres or the road surface will react. Similarly, I never know what the reaction will be of the drivers in front of me or behind me, or in the other lanes, or of the bird that happens to strike my windscreen at that precise moment. So, I have to deal with the complexity, but I cannot reduce it.

The third problem is that, faced with world systems of such complexity, my own knowledge tools are limited. We are trained in disciplines, epistemologies, knowledge methods, vocabularies, and scientific jargon which do not encourage multidisciplinarity (studying one discipline through several disciplines), interdisciplinarity (transferring methods from one discipline to another) or transdisciplinarity (a demanding approach which moves between, across and beyond disciplines), to echo the distinctions expressed by the Franco-Romanian physicist Basarab Nicolescu in response to the works of Jean Piaget (1896-1980) [5]. Our narrowmindedness and reluctance to open up affect our humility, encourage received ideas, create ambiguity (words do not have the same meanings), prevent the necessary constructive dialogue, and adversely affect collective intelligence.

A key achievement of the French economists and futurists Jacques Lesourne (1928-2020) and Michel Godet was to demonstrate the limits of forecasting, which looks to the past for invariants or relationship models to suggest its permanence or its relatively constant evolution in the future, leading to conditional forecasts: ceteris paribus, all things being equal”. Michel Godet’s major work is entitled The Crisis in Forecasting and the Emergence of the “La Prospective”, (Pergamon, 1979). In it, he writes that it was on account of the philosopher Gaston Berger, who was himself nurtured on the reflections of Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) and Maurice Blondel (1861-1949), and numerous Anglo-Saxon sources of inspiration, that the foresight approach developed. This intellectual stance involves taking the past and future into consideration over the long-term, comprehending the entire system in a seamless way, and exploring capabilities and means of action collectively.

Against our cultural, mental, intellectual, scientific, social and political background, this approach is not encouraged. It does, however, move us on from the question “what is going to happen” to the question “what may happen” and, therefore, “what if?”. This is also linked to one of our major preoccupations: the short-, medium-, and long-term impact prior analysis of the decisions we take.

Foresight has developed methods based precisely on the issue of these emergences. In addition to analysing trends and trajectories – which can identify crises such as the global financial crash in 2008 –, it also works with wildcards: major surprises and unexpected, remarkable, and unlikely events, which may have significant impacts if they occur: the 9/11 attacks, the Icelandic volcano in April 2010, the Covid crisis in 2019, the floods in July 2021, and so on.

There is also much talk today of black swan events as a result of the work of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, formerly a trader and now professor of risk engineering at the University of New York. This involves identifying events that are statistically almost impossible – so-called statistical dissonance – but which happen anyway [6].

 

3. Constructing a political agenda for complexity

First of all, we must be sceptical about the retrospective biases highlighted by the economist, psychologist and future Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman and his colleague Amos Tversky, which involve exaggerating, retrospectively, the fact that events could have been anticipated. These biases are linked to the need we all have to make sense of things, including the most random events [7]. When the unpredictable happens, it is intellectually quite easy for us to see it as predictable.

Next, it should be noted that political leaders are faced with the core issues of appropriation, legitimacy, and acceptability – especially budgetary – of a decision taken at the end of a dialogue and negotiation process involving multiple participants. The public will not necessarily be in favour of the government spending significant amounts on understanding problems they cannot yet visualise. Like St. Thomas, if they can’t touch it, they won’t believe it. At the outset, the population is not ready to hear what the politicians have to tell them on the matter, whether it involves a “stop-concrete” strategy or a perishable supply of masks. For experts and elected officials alike, it is no longer enough to make claims. They now have to provide scientific proof, and, above all, avoid denial, as the emotional link can be considerable. The significant role played by the media should also not be overlooked. For a long time, it was thought that a pandemic was an acceptable risk, as in the 1960s with the Hong Kong flu which caused at least a million deaths globally between 1968 and 1970, whereas the sight of Covid-19 victims in intensive care is unbearable and makes us less willing to accept the number of deaths. Remember how, in France, Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot was criticised and accused of squandering public money when she bought health masks and vaccines for swine flu (H1N1 virus) in 2009-2010. At the same time, humans have a great capacity to become accustomed to risk. Think of the nuclear sword of Damocles that was the Cold War, which continued until the early 1990s. We should also question whether this military nuclear risk – the anthropic apocalypse – has disappeared.

We constantly find ourselves needing to agree on the priority of the challenges facing us. Constructing a political agenda for such complexity is by no means clear, and political leaders wonder whether they will be criticised for starting works that may not seem urgent or sufficiently important to merit sustained attention, stakeholder mobilisation, and the resulting budgets.

Finally, governing not only means solving organisational problems, allocating resources and planning actions over time. It also means making things intelligible, as the French historian Pierre Rosanvallon points out [8]. The political world does not appreciate the importance of the educational aspect. In Belgium, politicians no longer go on television to talk to people directly and explain an issue that needs to be addressed. Government communications have disappeared; now, there are only televised addresses from the Head of State, who in this way becomes the last actor to communicate values to the public in this way.

 

Conclusion: uncertainty, responsibility, and anticipation

In May 2020, during the Covid-19 lockdown, the host of Signes des Temps on France-Culture radio, Marc Weitzmann, had the bright idea of recalling the first major debate of the Age of Enlightenment on natural disasters and their consequences for human populations [9], a debate between Voltaire (1694-1778) and Rousseau (1712-1778) about the Lisbon disaster of 1755 [10].

HRP5XD Lisbon Tsunami, 1755 – Woodcut – The Granger – NYC

On 1 November 1755 (All Saints Day), Lisbon was hit by a huge earthquake. Three successive waves between 5 and 15 metres high destroyed the port and the city centre [11], and tens of thousands of inhabitants lost their lives in the earthquake, tsunami and huge fire that followed. When he heard the news, Voltaire was deeply affected and, several weeks later, in view of the gravity of the event, he wrote a famous poem in which his intention was to go beyond mere evocation of the disaster and compassion for the victims.

Come, ye philosophers, who cry, “All’s well,”

And contemplate this ruin of a world.

Behold these shreds and cinders of your race,

This child and mother heaped in common wreck,

These scattered limbs beneath the marble shafts—

A hundred thousand whom the earth devours,

Who, torn and bloody, palpitating yet,

Entombed beneath their hospitable roofs,

In racking torment end their stricken lives.

To those expiring murmurs of distress,

To that appalling spectacle of woe,

Will ye reply: “You do but illustrate

The iron laws that chain the will of God”? [12]

In this “Poem on the Lisbon disaster”, from which these lines are a short excerpt, Voltaire ponders the appropriateness of attributing the event to divine justice, when, according to some so-called optimistic philosophers at the time, everything natural is a gift from God and, therefore, ultimately good and just [13]. Without calling divine power into question, Voltaire counters this concept, rejects the idea of a specific celestial punishment to atone for vices in the Portuguese capital, and instead declares fate responsible for the disaster.

As mentioned by Jean-Paul Deléage, who, in 2005, published in the Écologie et Politique review the letter which Rousseau sent to Voltaire on 18 August 1756, Voltaire went on to propose a new concept of human responsibility. This concept was social and political rather than metaphysical and religious. Thus, in his reply to Voltaire, Rousseau states as follows:

 (…), I believe I have shown that with the exception of death, which is an evil almost solely because of the preparations which one makes preceding it, most of our physical ills are still our own work. Is it not known that the person of each man has become the least part of himself, and that it is almost not worth the trouble of saving it when one has lost all the rest Without departing from your subject of Lisbon, admit, for example, that nature did not construct twenty thousand houses of six to seven stories there, and that if the inhabitants of this great city had been more equally spread out and more lightly lodged, the damage would have been much less, and perhaps of no account. All would have fled at the first disturbance, and the next day they would have been seen twenty leagues from there, as gay as if nothing had happened; but it is necessary to remain, to be obstinate around some hovels, to expose oneself to new quakes, because what one leaves behind is worth more than what one can bring along. How many unfortunate people have perished in this disaster because of one wanting to take his clothes, another his papers, another his money?  Is it not known that the person of each man has become the least part of himself, and that it is almost not worth the trouble of saving it when one has lost all the rest? [14] 

Whereas, for Voltaire, the Lisbon disaster was an accident and an unfortunate combination of circumstances, Rousseau feels that the natural seismic effects were compounded by the actions, urban choices and attitude of the people during the disaster. It is the responsibility of human behaviour that Rousseau highlights. In essence, he believes that, although Lisbon was destroyed, this was linked to the human decision to build a city on the coast and near a fault line. A lack of anticipation, perhaps.

Rousseau returned to these matters in his Confessions, in which he again absolves Providence and maintains that, of all the evils in people’s lives, there was not one to be attributed to Providence, and which had not its source rather in the abusive use man made of his faculties than in nature [15].

In the appropriately named Signes des Temps, or Sign of the Times, programme, Marc Weitzmann established a link between this debate, the question of uncertainty, nature and mankind, and the thoughts of French urbanist Paul Virilio (1932-2018). Scarred by the blitzkrieg and his lost childhood, and the idea that acceleration prevents anticipation and can lead to coincidence, Virilio, author of Speed and Politics (MIT Press, 2006), The Original Accidentl (Polity Press, 2007), and The Great Accelerator (Polity Press, 2012), emphasised that industrial and natural disasters progressed not only geometrically but also geographically, if not cosmically. In his view, this progress of contemporary coincidence requires a new intelligence in which the principle of responsibility permanently supplants the principle of technoscientific effectiveness, which is, considers Virilio, arrogant to the point of delusion [16].

Thus, as in Rousseau, our natural disasters seem increasingly inseparable from our anthropic disasters. All the more so since, as we now know, we have through our human and industrial actions altered the course of time in all its meanings: climate time, as well as speed time, or acceleration.

The fine metaphor used by futurists on the need to have good headlights at night – the faster we travel, the brighter they need to be – seems somewhat outdated. While, today, we are collectively wondering whether the road still exists, we can still enjoy inventing, plotting, and carving out a new path. For, in the words of Gaston Berger, the future is not only what may happen or what is most likely to happen, but is also, and increasingly so, what we want it to be. Predicting a disaster is conditional: it involves predicting what would happen if we did nothing to change the situation rather than what will happen in any event [17].

Risk management will remain a fundamental necessity on the path we choose. What is more, any initiative involves a degree of uncertainty which we can only ever partially reduce. This uncertainty will never absolve our individual and collective responsibilities as elected representatives or citizens. This uncertainty, in turn, creates a duty of anticipation [18].

Anticipation culture must feature at the heart of our public and collective policies. To that end, we must employ foresight methods that are genuinely robust and operational, along with impact prior analyses for the actions to be taken. That is the only way to tackle a new future without false impressions.

In his conclusions of The Imperative of Responsability, Hans Jonas decreed that, facing the threat of nuclear war, ecological ravage, genetic engineering, and the like, fear was a requirement for tackling the future [19]. We must treat anticipation in the same way. Thus anticipation meets hope, each being a consequence of the other.

 

 

Philippe Destatte

@PhD2050

Related paper: Increasing rationality in decision-making through policy impact prior analysis (July 12, 2021)

 

Direct access to PhD2050’s English papers

 

[1] Free translation from: Antony BEEVOR, Stalingrad, p. 231-232 et 252 , Paris, de Fallois, 1999.

[2] Riel MILLER, Futures Literacy: transforming the future, in R. MILLER ed., Transforming the Future, Anticipation in the 21st Century, p. 2, Paris, UNESCO – Abingdon, Routledge, 2018.

[3] Gaston BERGER, L’attitude prospective, dans Phénoménologie et prospective, p. 270sv, Paris, PUF, 1964.

[4] According to the systemist Edgar Morin, emergence is an organizational product which, although inseparable from the system as a whole, appears not only at the global level, but possibly at the level of the components. Emergence is a new quality in relation to the constituents of the system. It therefore has the virtue of an event, since it arises in a discontinuous manner once the system has been constituted; it has of course the character of irreducibility; it is a quality which cannot be broken down, and which cannot be deduced from previous elements. E. MORIN, La méthode, t.1, p. 108, Paris, Seuil, 1977. – The concept of emergence finds its origin in George Henry Lewes. To urge that we do not know how theses manifold conditions emerge in the phenomenon Feeling, it is to say that the synthetic fact has not been analytically resolved into all its factor. It is equally true that we do not know how Water emerges from Oxygen and Hydrogen. The fact of an emergence we know; and we may be certain that what emerges is the expression of its conditions, – every effect being the procession of its cause. George Henry LEWES, Problems of Life and Mind, t. 2, p. 412, London, Trübner & Co, 1874. – André LALANDE, Vocabulaire technique et critique de la philosophie, p. 276-277, Paris, PUF, 1976.

[5] See: Transdisciplinarité in Ph. DESTATTE & Philippe DURANCE dir., Les mots-clés de la prospective territoriale, p. 51, Paris, La Documentation française, 2009. http://www.institut-destree.eu/wa_files/philippe-destatte_philippe-durance_mots-cles_prospective_documentation-francaise_2008.pdf

[6] Nassim Nicholas TALEB, The Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York, Random House, 2007.

[7] Daniel KAHNEMAN & Amos TVERSKY, Prospect theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk, in Econometrica, Journal of the econometric society, 1979, vol. 47, nr 2, p. 263-291. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1914185?seq=1

[8] Pierre ROSANVALLON, Counter-Democracy, Politics in an Age of Distrust, Cambridge University Press,  2008.

[9] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lettre à Monsieur de Voltaire sur ses deux poèmes sur « la Loi naturelle » et sur « le Désastre de Lisbonne », présentée par Jean-Paul DELEAGE, dans Écologie & politique, 2005, 30, p. 141-154.

https://www.cairn.info/revue-ecologie-et-politique1-2005-1-page-141.htm

[10] Cfr Marc Weitzmann, Le Cygne noir, une énigme de notre temps, ou la prévision prise en défaut, avec Cynthia Fleury, Bruno Tertrais et Erwan Queinnec, Signes des Temps, France Culture, https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/signes-des-temps/le-cygne-noir-une-enigme-de-notre-temps-ou-la-prevision-prise-en-defaut

[11] Sofiane BOUHDIBA, Lisbonne, le 1er novembre 1755 : un hasard ? Au cœur de la polémique entre Voltaire et Rousseau, A travers champs, 19 octobre 2014. S. Bouhdiba est démographe à l’Université de Tunis. https://presquepartout.hypotheses.org/1023 – Jean-Paul POIRIER, Le tremblement de terre de Lisbonne, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2005.

[12] Translation taken from the Online Library of Liberty, https://oll.libertyfund.org/quote/voltaire-laments-the-destruction-of-lisbon-in-an-earthquake-and-criticises-the-philosophers-who-thought-that-all-s-well-with-the-world-and-the-religious-who-thought-it-was-god-s-will-1755.

VOLTAIRE, Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne (1756), Œuvres complètes, Paris, Garnier, t. 9, p. 475. Wikisources : https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Voltaire_-_%C5%92uvres_compl%C3%A8tes_Garnier_tome9.djvu/485

[13] We are talking about theodicy here. This consists in the justification of the goodness of God by the refutation of the arguments drawn from the existence. This concept was introduced by the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716) in an attempt to reconcile the apparent contradiction between, on the one hand, the misfortunes that prevail on earth and, on the other hand, the power and the goodness of God. LEIBNITZ, Essais de théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l’Homme et l’origine du mal, Amsterdam, F. Changuion, 1710. – See Patrick SHERRY, Theodicy in Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/theodicy-theology. Accessed 28 August 2021.

We know that in his tale Candide, or Optimism, published in 1759, Voltaire will deform and mock Leibnitzian thought through the caricatural character of Pangloss and the formula everything is at best in the best of all possible worlds … VOLTAIRE, Candide ou l’Optimisme, in VOLTAIRE, Romans et contes, Edition établie par Frédéric Deloffre et Jacques Van den Heuvel, p. 145-233, Paris, Gallimard, 1979.

[14] Translation from Internet Archive, Letter to Voltaire, Pl, IV, 1060-1062, p. 51.

 https://archive.org/details/RousseauToVoltairet.marshall/page/n1/mode/2up?q=lisbon,

Lettre à Monsieur de Voltaire sur ses deux poèmes sur la “Loi naturelle” et sur “Le Désastre de Lisbonne”, 18 août 1756. in Jean-Paul DELEAGE, op. cit.

[15] J.-J. ROUSSEAU, Confessions, IX, Paris, 1767, cité par Sofiane BOUHDIBA, op. cit.

[16] Paul VIRILIO, L’accident originel, p. 3, Paris, Galilée, 2005.

[17] G. BERGER, Phénoménologie et prospective…, p. 275. (Free translation).

[18] Voir à ce sujet Pierre LASCOUMES, La précaution comme anticipation des risques résiduels et hybridation de la responsabilité, dans L’année sociologique, Paris, PUF, 1996, 46, n°2, p. 359-382.

[19] Hans JONAS, The Imperative of Responsability, In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age, The University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Namur, July 12, 2021

Challenges such as the imminent strategic choices posed by the European structural funds, the Recovery programme underway within the Government of Wallonia, questions on the interest in and the value of installing 5G, and whether it is even necessary, along with issues surrounding the implementation of a guaranteed universal income, and other energy, climate and environmental issues, raise the question of the impact of the decisions made by both public and private operators [1].

In their recent work The Politics Industry, while analysing the shortcomings and failure of American democracy and the possibilities for reconstructing it, Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter call for policy innovation. Katherine Gehl, founder of the Institute for Political Innovation, argues that laboratories of democracy have a role to play in the transformations within the political and social system itself to help governments achieve their objectives and, above all, to achieve the results their citizens deserve [2]. Although the authors, who are immersed in the business and entrepreneurship culture, focus primarily on democratic engineering in order to restore its negative effects on economic competitiveness, the issue of prior, objective analysis or assessment of the impacts that political decisions can have on society and its economy is not high on their agenda. In the absence of this type of approach, we believe that criticising policymaking and its lack of rationality – along with demonstrating the absence of general interest and common good – appears futile.

The weakening of a strong impact analysis probably contributed to Philippe Zittoun’s description, based on the work of the celebrated economists, sociologists and political scientists Herbert Simon (1916-2001) and Charles Lindblom (1917-2018), of complex cognitive tinkering. In this tinkering process, the necessary rational links between problem, objective, solution, tools, values and causes are absent [3]. Ignorance, intuitions, ideology and inertia combine to give us answers that look plausible, promise much, and predictably betray us, write the recent winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo [4].

Dreamstime – Dzmitry Skazau

1. What is policy impact prior analysis?

The purpose of impact analysis is to establish a comparison between what has happened or will happen after the implementation of the measure or programme and what would have happened if the measure or programme had not been implemented. This comparison can be referred to as the programme impact [5].

Policy impact prior analysis can help to refine decisions before they are implemented and to comprehend their potential effects in different economic environments. The impact assessment provides a framework for understanding whether the beneficiaries do actually benefit from the programme, rather than from other factors or actors. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods is useful to give an overview of the programme impact. There are two types of impact analysis: ex ante and ex post. An ex-ante impact analysis attempts to measure the expected impacts of future programmes and policies, taking into account the current situation of a target area, and may involve simulations based on assumptions relating to the functioning of the economy. Ex ante analyses are usually based on structural models of the economic environment facing the potential participants. The underlying assumptions for the structural models involve identifying the main economic actors in the development of the programme and the links between the actors and the different markets to determine the results of the programme. These models can predict the programme impacts [6].

In April 2016, in their common desire for Better Regulation, the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission decided to increase and strengthen impact assessments [7] as tools for improving the quality of EU legislation, in addition to consulting with citizens and stakeholders and assessing the existing legislation. In the view of these three institutions, impact assessments should map out alternative solutions and, where possible, potential short and long-term costs and benefits, assessing the economic, environmental and social impacts in an integrated and balanced way and using both qualitative and quantitative analyses. These assessments must respect the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, as well as fundamental rights. They must also consider the impact of the various options in terms of competitiveness, administrative burdens, the effect on SMEs, digital aspects and other elements linked to territorial impact. Impact assessments should also be based on data that is accurate, objective, and complete [8].

In recent years, the European Commission has gone to great lengths to update its technical governance tools in its efforts to achieve better regulation. This concept means designing EU policies and laws so that they achieve their objectives at the lowest possible cost. For the Commission, better regulation does not involve regulating or deregulating, but rather adopting a way of working which ensures that policy decisions are taken openly and transparently, are guided by the best factual data available, and are supported by stakeholder participation. Impact assessment (or impact analysis) is an important element of this approach to policy issues, as are foresight (or forward-looking) tools, and tools used for stakeholder consultation and participation, planning, implementation, assessment, monitoring etc., which are part of the public or collective policy cycle, and even, by extension, the business policy cycle [9].

Better regulation covers the entire political cycle, from policy conception and preparation, to adoption, implementation, application (including monitoring and enforcement [10]), assessment and revision of measures. For each phase of the cycle, a number of principles, objectives, tools and procedures for improving regulation are used to build capacity for achieving the best possible strategy.

Although impact assessment is not a new tool, since it was theorised extensively in the 1980s and 1990s [11], its role in the process has been strengthened considerably by the European Commission, to the extent that, in our view, it is now of central importance. Even its content has been broadened. The Better Regulations Guidelines of 2017 highlight this transparency and draw a distinction with assessment practices: in an impact assessment process, the term impact describes all the changes which are expected to happen due to the implementation and application of a given policy option/intervention. Such impacts may occur over different timescales, affect different actors and be relevant at different scales (local, regional, national and EU).  In an evaluation context, impact refers to the changes associated with a particular intervention which occur over the longer term [12]. The Guidelines glossary also states that impact assessment is an integrated process for assessing and comparing the merits of a range of public or collective policy options developed to solve a clearly defined problem. Impact assessment is only an aid to policymaking / decision-making and not a substitute for it [13].

Thus, impact assessments refer to the ex-ante assessment carried out during the policy formulation phase of the policy cycle.

This process consists in gathering and analysing evidence to support policy development. It confirms the existence of a problem to be solved, establishes the objectives, identifies its underlying causes, analyses whether a public action is necessary, and assesses the advantages and disadvantages of the available solutions [14].

The Commission’s impact assessment system follows an integrated approach which assesses the environmental, social and economic impacts of a range of policy options, thereby incorporating sustainability into the drafting of EU policies. The impact reports formatted by the Commission also include the impacts on SMEs and on European competitiveness and a detailed description of the consultation strategy and the results achieved [15].

2. Complex, public-interest processes that make democracy more transparent

In a parliamentary context, impact studies designed as ex-ante assessments of legislation satisfy, firstly, an ambition to overhaul policy practices, secondly, an open government challenge to make public debate more transparent, and, thirdly, a desire for efficiency in the transformation of public and collective action, since assessment means better action. Generating knowledge on the objectives, the context, the resources, the expected results and the effects of the proposed policies means giving both parliamentarians and citizens the means to assess the consequences of the recommended measures. It also means supporting public decision-making by plainly revealing the budgetary impacts of the decisions policymakers want to make. These advantages are undoubtedly ways to revitalise our democracies [16].

Used for prior assessment of legislation, impact assessment aims to analyse all the behaviors and situations that present a direct or indirect causal link with the legislation being examined, to identify the unforeseen effects, the adverse effects [17]. It involves identifying the genuine changes expected in society which could be directly associated with the prescriptive (legislative or regulatory) measures implemented by the actors involved in the policy [18]. It is therefore understandable that questions relating to concerns such as the impact of technological choices on health or the extent to which the legislation is consistent with climate and sustainable development objectives are essential questions posed in impact studies [19].

Measuring the impact is therefore the key challenge of the assessment, but it is also the hardest issue to tackle from a methodological point of view [20]. As indicated in the Morel-L’Huissier-Petit report submitted to the French National Assembly in 2018, assessing the mobilisation of resources and the control of public expenditure when implementing legislation or a policy is the driving force for more effective public action which is able to innovate and evolve its management methods in order to adapt positively to the paradox of modern public action: how to do better with less, against a backdrop of cutting public expenditure, rising democratic demands and Public Service expectations, and accelerating economic and social trends [21]. This report also recommends expanding impact studies to cover tabled legislative proposals and substantial amendments in order to supplement the content, review the impact studies already accompanying the legislative proposals, develop robust impact and cost simulators and use them regularly, and, lastly, organise discussions within committees and at public hearings dedicated to assessing impact studies [22].

Concerning the low-carbon strategy, France’s High Council on Climate indicated, in December 2019, that, with regard to environmental and particularly climate assessment, the existing impact studies have not achieved their potential: they cover only a small portion of the legislation adopted (legislative proposals of parliamentary origin and amendments are not included), they are rarely used, and they are often incomplete [23].

However, these assessment works of the High Council on Climate are very interesting from a methodological perspective. When supplemented, impact prior analyses can be considered to follow a seven-stage process, guided by a compass as shown below.

Overall, it might be argued that the impact of a policy is all its effect on real-world conditions, including: 1. impact on the target situation or group, 2. impact on situations or groups other than the target (spill over effects), 3. impact on future as well as immediate conditions, 4. direct costs, in terms of resources devoted to the program, 5. indirect costs, including loss of opportunities to do other things. All the benefits and costs, both immediate and future, must be measured in both symbolic and tangible terms and be explained with concrete equivalences [24].

The main purpose of any ex-ante assessment is without doubt to clarify the political objectives from the outset, for example before voting on a law, and to help define or eliminate any incompatibilities within or between the general objectives and the operational objectives [25]. The fundamental problem seems to be that the impacts of changes brought about by public policies are often minor, or even marginal, compared with those caused by external social and economic developments. It then becomes hard to get the message across [26]. That is why demonstrating a significant public policy impact often means having to deal with a major programme, or series of programmes. The measures must be properly conceived, properly financed and made sustainable over time [27]. These measures can be discussed with stakeholders or even with citizens, as was the case with the measures in the independence insurance bill debated at the citizens’ panel on ageing, organised by the Parliament of Wallonia in 2017 and 2018 [28].

More than simply a judgment, impact assessment is a learning approach whereby lessons can be learned from the policy or action being assessed, and the content improved as a result. Any assessment requires collaboration and dialogue between its key participants, namely the representatives, assessors, beneficiaries of the policies, programmes, projects or functions, and stakeholders, in other words the individuals or bodies that have an interest in both the policy or programme being assessed and the results of the assessment. Assessment in this sense is merely a process in which the actors themselves adopt the thinking on the practices and the results of the subject being assessed [29]. The methods may be many and varied, but the key points are probably the ethics of the assessment and some essential quality criteria: a high-quality model, a large amount of robust data, meeting expectations, and genuine consideration of the common good [30].

 3. Interests and obstacles for a strategic intelligence tool

Impact prior analysis is one of the strategic policy intelligence tools promoted by the European Commission. It also respects the following principles:

principle of participation: foresight, evaluation or Technology Assessment exercises take care of the diversity of perspectives of actors in order not to maintain one unequivocal ‘truth’ about a given innovation policy theme;

principle of objectivisation: strategic intelligence supports more ‘objective’ formulation of diverging perceptions by offering appropriate indicators, analyses and information processing mechanism;

principle of mediation and alignment: strategic intelligence facilitates mutual learning about the perspectives of different actors and their backgrounds, which supports the finding of consensus;

principle of decision support: strategic intelligence processes facilitate political decisions and support their successful subsequent implementation  [31].

An impact assessment can therefore be broken down into traditional cost-benefit measures and measures relating to areas such as sustainable development, environment, technological innovation and social impact. The Sustainability Impact Assessment has been developed by the European Commission and includes a detailed analysis of the potential economic, social, human and environmental impacts of ongoing commercial negotiations. These assessments are an opportunity for stakeholders from the EU and the partner countries to share their points of view with the negotiators [32].

In recent decades, the literature on policy assessment has increased substantially and new methodologies have been developed to identify the causal effects of policies [33]. In addition, the openness approaches pursued by governments and parliaments are introducing democratic innovation aspects which need to be taken into account. Although the quality of the impact analysis methods, particularly environmental (air, water, ecological systems, socio-economic systems, etc.), has been improved and diversified considerably since the beginning of the 2000s, especially through the works of Christopher Wood [34] and Peter Morris and Riki Therivel [35], it must be acknowledged that, in practice, these processes are rarely applied and that, often, the public authorities prefer not to activate them. However, major clients such as the European Commission and the OECD are becoming increasingly demanding in this area in terms of assessment and climate/energy indicators. This is also a real opportunity to create closer links between impact assessments and public inquiries.

Beyond the technical sphere of civil servants and experts, many elected representatives tend to perceive policy impact prior analysis as an additional layer on top of the decision-making process – which generates a degree of indifference – rather than a beneficial layer which represents real added value for stakeholders.

We also know that, when taken to the extreme, impact assessment is a tool that can hinder or even prevent legislative and programme-based action. The Anglo-Saxons have an extreme vision of efficiency, even going as far as the concept – assumed – of a regulatory guillotine [36]. This fairly radical approach may involve two paths: one in which, faced with the proliferation of ex ante assessment procedures, the political system risks rigidity, the other in which, for fear of generating additional prescriptive complexity, the elected representatives avoid all legislative change. The OECD is interested in this aspect [37].

In this way, prior policy impact assessment could open a lively debate on legislative relevance. Something that is always healthy, particularly in parliamentary settings.

 

Philippe Destatte

@PhD2050

 

[1] I would like to thank Sarah Bodart, analyst and economist at The Destree Institute’s Wallonia Policy Lab, for her advice and suggestions for finalising this paper.

[2] Katherine M. GEHL & Michaël E. PORTER, The Politics Industry, How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save our Democracy, p. 179, Boston, Harvard Business Review Press, 2020.

[3] Philippe ZITTOUN, La fabrique politique des politiques publiques, p. 146, Paris, Presses de Sciences-Po, 2013. – Charles E. LINDBLOM, The Policy-Making Process, Prentice-Hall, 1968.

[4] Abhijit BV. BANERJEE and Esther DUFLO, Économie utile pour des temps difficiles, p. 439-440, Paris, Seuil, 2020. – See also Esther DUFLO, Rachel GLENNESTER and Michael KREMER, Using Randomization in Development Economics Research: A Toolkit in T. Paul SCHULZ and John STRAUSS ed., Handbook of Development Economics, vol. 4, p. 3895–3962, Amsterdam, North-Holland, 2008.

[5] Lawrence B. MOHR, Impact Analysis for Program Evaluation, p. 2-3, Chicago, The Dorsey Press, 1988.

[6] Shahidur R. KHANDKER, Gayatri B. KOOLWAL, Hussain A. SAMAD, Handbook on Impact Evaluation: Quantitative Methods and Practices, p. 19-20, Washington, World Bank, 2010.

https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/2693.

[7] The OECD defines impact as the positive or negative, primary and secondary long-term effects produced by an intervention, directly or indirectly, intended or unintended.  Niels DABELSTEIN dir., Glossaire des principaux termes relatifs à l’évaluation et à la gestion axées sur les résultats, p. 22, Paris, OECD, 2002. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/29/21/2754804.pdf

See also the EVALSED glossary: Nick BOZEAT (GHK) & Elliot STERN (Tavistock Institute) dir., EVALSED, The Resource for the Evaluation of Socio Economic Development, Sept. 2013: Impact: The change that can be credibly attributed to an intervention. Same as “effect” of intervention or “contribution to change”. – A consequence affecting direct beneficiaries following the end of their participation in an intervention or after the completion of public facilities, or else an indirect consequence affecting other beneficiaries who may be winners or losers. Certain impacts (specific impacts) can be observed among direct beneficiaries after a few months and others only in the longer term (e.g. the monitoring of assisted firms). In the field of development support, these longer-term impacts are usually referred to as sustainable results. Some impacts appear indirectly (e.g. turnover generated for the suppliers of assisted firms). Others can be observed at the macro-economic or macro-social level (e.g. improvement of the image of the assisted region); these are global impacts. Evaluation is frequently used to examine one or more intermediate impacts, between specific and global impacts. Impacts may be positive or negative, expected or unexpected. – Philippe DESTATTE, Evaluation of Foresight: how to take long-term impact into consideration? For-learn Mutual Learning Workshop, Evaluation of Foresight, Seville, IPTS-DG RTD, December 13-14, 2007. – Gustavo FAHRENKROG e.a., RTD Evaluation Tool Box: Assessing the Socio-economic Impact of RTD Policies. IPTS Technical Report Series. Seville, 2002.

[8] Better Regulation, Interinstitutional agreement between the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission, Brussels, 13 April 2016.

[9] Better Regulation Guidelines, Commission Staff Working Document, p. 5sv, 7 July 2017 (SWD (2017) 350.

[10] Application means the daily application of the requirements of the legislation after it has entered into force. EU regulations are applicable from their effective date, while rules set out in EU directives will apply only from the effective date of the national legislation that transposes the EU directive into national law. Application covers transposition and implementation. Better Regulation Guidelines…, p. 88.

[11] For example: Saul PLEETER ed., Economic Impact Analysis: Methodology and Application, Boston – The Hague – London, Martinus Nijhoff, 1980.

[12] Better regulation guidelines, p. 89, Brussels, EC, 2017.

[13] Ibidem.

[14] Szvetlana ACS, Nicole OSTLAENDER, Giulia LISTORTI, Jiri HRADEC, Matthew HARDY, Paul SMITS, Leen HORDIJK, Modelling for EU Policy support: Impact Assessments, Luxembourg, Publications Office of the European Union, 2019.

[15] Better Regulation Guidelines…, p. 13.

[16] Pierre MOREL-L’HUISSIER and Valérie PETIT, Rapport d’information par le Comité d’Évaluation et de Contrôle des politiques publiques sur l’évaluation des dispositifs d’évaluation des politiques publiques, p. 7-24,  Paris, National Assembly, 15 March 2018.

[17] Geneviève CEREXHE, L’évaluation des lois, in Christian DE VISSCHER and Frédéric VARONE ed., Évaluer les politiques publiques, Regards croisés sur la Belgique, p. 117, Louvain-la-Neuve, Bruylant-Academia, 2001.

[18] In simple terms, a successful impact assessment aims to establish the situation that society would have experienced in the absence of the policy being assessed. By comparing this fictional, also called counterfactual, situation to the situation actually observed, a causal relationship can be deduced between the public intervention and an indicator deemed relevant (health, employment, education, etc.). Rozenn DESPLATZ and Marc FERRACCI, Comment évaluer les politiques publiques ? Un guide à l’usage des décideurs et praticiens, p. 5, Paris, France Stratégie, September 2016.

Cliquer pour accéder à guide_methodologique_20160906web.pdf

See also: Stéphane PAUL, Hélène MILET and Elise CROVELLA, L’évaluation des politiques publiques, Comprendre et pratiquer, Paris, Presses de l’EHESP, 2016.

[19] This extension can also be found in the AFIGESE definition: Impact: social, economic and environmental consequence(s) attributable to a public intervention. Marie-Claude MALHOMME e.a., Glossaire de l’Évaluation, p. 77, Paris, AFIGESE- Caisse d’Épargne, 2000.

[20] Jean-Pierre BATTERTI, Marianne BONDAZ and Martine MARIGEAUD e.a., Cadrage méthodologique de l’évaluation des politiques publiques partenariales : guide, Inspection générale de l’Administration, Inspection générale des Finances, Inspection générale des Affaires sociales, December 2012

http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/rapports-publics/124000683-guide-cadrage-methodologique-de-l-evaluation-des-politiques-publiques-partenariales

[21] Pierre MOREL-L’HUISSIER and Valérie PETIT, Rapport d’information

[22] Pierre MOREL-L’HUISSIER and Valérie PETIT, Rapport d’information... p.11-13

[23] Where there is evidence that some provisions of a law have a potentially significant effect on the low-carbon trajectory, whether positive or negative, the text initiator decides to steer the text towards a detailed impact study relating to the national low-carbon strategy (SNBC). This detailed study is the subject of a detailed public opinion on its quality, produced by an independent authority with the capacity to do so. This process must be concluded before the legal text is tabled in Parliament. It is suggested that Parliament should expand detailed impact studies relating to the low-carbon strategy to cover legislative proposals. Évaluer les lois en cohérence avec les ambitions, p. 5-6, Paris, High Council on Climate, December 2019.

[24] Thomas R. DYE, Understanding Public Policy, p. 313, Upper Saddle River (New Jersey), Prentice Hall, 2002. The impact of a policy is all its effect on real-world conditions, including : impact on the target situation or group, impact on situations or groups other than the target (spillover effects), impact on future as well as immediate conditions, direct costs, in terms of resources devoted to the program, indirect costs, including loss of opportunities to do other things. All the benefits and costs, both immediate and future, must be measured in both symbolic and tangible effects. – See also: Shahidur R. KHANDKER, S.R., Gayatri B. KOOLWAL, & Hussain A. SAMAD, Handbook on Impact Evaluation, Quantitative methods and practices, Washington D.C, World Bank, 2010.

[25] Paul CAIRNEY, Understanding Public Policy, Theories and Issues, p. 39, London, Palgrave-MacMillan, 2012.

[26] Karel VAN DEN BOSCH & Bea CANTILLON, Policy Impact, in Michaël MORAN, Martin REIN & Robert E. GOODIN, The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy, p. 296-318, p. 314, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006.

[27] Th. R. DYE, op. cit., p. 315.

[28] Ph. DESTATTE, Que s’est-il passé au Parlement de Wallonie le 12 mai 201 ?7 Blog PhD2050, Namur, 17 June 2017, https://phd2050.wordpress.com/2017/06/17/panel2/

[29] Philippe DESTATTE and Philippe DURANCE dir., Les mots-clefs de la prospective territoriale, p. 23-24, Paris, La Documentation française, 2009.

Cliquer pour accéder à philippe-destatte_philippe-durance_mots-cles_prospective_documentation-francaise_2008.pdf

[30] Jean-Claude BARBIER, A propos de trois critères de qualité des évaluations: le modèle, la réponse aux attentes, l’intérêt général, dans Ph. DESTATTE, Évaluation, prospective, développement régional, p. 71sv, Charleroi, Institut Destrée, 2001.

[31] Alexander TÜBKE, Ken DUCATEL, James P. GAVIGAN, Pietro MONCADA-PATERNO-CASTELLO ed., Strategic Policy Intelligence: Current Trends, the State of the Play and perspectives, S&T Intelligence for Policy-Making Processes, IPTS, Seville, Dec. 2001.

[32] Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) https://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/policy-making/analysis/policy-evaluation/sustainability-impact-assessments/index_en.htm

[33] Massimo LOI and Margarida RODRIGUES, A note on the impact evaluation of public policies: the counterfactual analysis, JRC Scientific & Policy Report, Brussels, European Commission, Joint Research Center, 2012. (Report EU 25519 EN).

[34] Christopher WOOD, Environmental Impact Assessment, A Comparative Review, Harlow, Pearson Education, 2003. (1st ed. 1993).

[35] Peter MORRIS & Riki THERIVEL, Methods of Environmental Impact Assessment, London – New York, Spon Press, 2001.

[36] Thanks to Michaël Van Cutsem for this remark. http://regulatoryreform.com/regulatory-guillotine/

[37] La réforme de la réglementation dans les pays du Moyen-Orient et d’Afrique du Nord, Paris, OCDE, 2013.

Reims, 7 November 2017

 

An innovative, global movement

In 2008, in his Change we can believe in project, Barack Obama highlighted the need to establish greater transparency in political institutions so that all citizens have access to information they need to evaluate the performance of the leaders. The candidate wrote that finally the governance of the country must be a source of inspiration for all Americans and must encourage them to act as citizens [1]. In addition to his desire to reduce unnecessary public expenditure, cut bureaucracy and cancel ineffective programmes, the future President of the United States announced that he wanted to open up democracy. The new Obama administration, he announced, will publish on line all information on the management of the State and will employ all available technologies to raise public awareness of State expenditure. It will invite members of the public to serve and take part, and it will reduce bureaucracy to ensure that all government agencies operate with maximum efficiency [2]. In addition to these priorities he announced compliance with the obligations on natural resources and on social inclusion and cohesion. The stated objective was to restore confidence in the institutions and to clean up Washington: imposing a strict ethical code on the elected representatives and limiting the influence of the lobbies and interest groups [3].

When President Obama entered the White House, one of his first initiatives, on 21 January 2009, was to send a memorandum on transparency and Open Government to the officials at the government ministries and agencies. In this document, the new president reaffirmed his pledge to create a government of this type and asked his departments to help create a political system founded on transparency, public participation and collaboration. This openness, he wrote, would strengthen democracy and promote the effectiveness and efficiency of the government. Firstly, the president wanted the government to be transparent and to promote accountability [4] and tell the public what it was doing. Next, the government should be participatory: when knowledge is shared between the public and private spheres, it is in the common interest for the public to participate in developing policies and allow their government to benefit from their collective intelligence. Finally, the government should be collaborative, which means that it should actively engage Americans in the work of their government, harnessing innovative tools and methods to ensure that all levels of the government and the administration cooperate with each other and with the non-profit organisations, businesses and individuals in the private sector [5]. After being gradually implemented in the United States, this movement, which follows an already long-standing Anglo-Saxon tradition [6], has inspired other countries and prompted an important multilateral initiative which, incidentally, The Destree Institute joined as a civil society partner in 2017.

Thus, in 2011, the Open Government Partnership (OGP) was launched by the governments of the United States, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, the Philippines, South Africa and the United Kingdom, who adopted a joint declaration [7]. The objective of the OGP is to set up a platform for good practices between innovators in order to secure concrete commitments from governments on transparency, public action, empowerment of citizens, public participation, democratic innovation and harnessing new technologies to promote better governance.

As the years have passed, more than 70 countries have joined the initiative. As of 2017, the Belgian Federal State has not yet done so [8]. France, which was a pioneer in deliberative processes and Open Data, only joined the OGP in 2014 but has held the joint presidency since 2015, becoming co-organiser of the 4th Global Summit for the Open Government Partnership, which was held in the French capital at the end of 2016. The Paris Declaration, which was adopted on 7 December 2016, reaffirms all the founding principles and values of the OGP and undertakes to push forward the frontiers of the reforms beyond transparency, to advance meaningful participation, accountability and responsiveness. The signatories to the Paris Declaration also pledge to create innovative alliances between civil society and government leading to more collaborative public services and decision-making processes. The document also calls for the development of Open Government at the local level and the launch of local participatory initiatives to bring public policies closer to citizens [9].

A citizen-centred culture of governance

To answer the question of what open government really is, we could examine the closed model of decision-making with Beth Simone Noveck, who ran the Open Government Initiative at the White House in 2009 and 2010. This legal expert and law professor, who is a Yale and Harvard graduate, considers that the closed model is the one that was created by Max Weber, Walter Lippmann and James Madison. This model would have us believe that only government professionals and their experts, who themselves claim to be strictly objective [10], possess the necessary impartiality, expertise, resources, discipline and time to make the right public decisions. This vision, which ought to be a thing of the past, restricts public participation to representative democracy, voting, joining interest groups and involvement in local civic or political activities. Yet, today, we know that, for many reasons, professional politicians do not have a monopoly on information or expertise [11].

Technological innovation and what is today called Digital Social Innovation (DSI) [12] are contributing to this change. However, we do not think they are the driving force behind the Open Government concepts as they are somewhat peripheral. Although technology does have some significance in this process, it is perhaps in relation to its toolkit rather than its challenges or purposes. Open Government forms part of a two-fold tradition. Firstly, that of transparency and free access to public information on civil society. This is not new. The British parliament endorsed it in the 1990s [13]. Secondly, Open Government finds its inspiration in the values of sharing and collaboration used within the communities linked to the free software and open science movements [14]. In this sense, public expectations could be raised, as is the case with some researchers who see in Open Government the extent to which citizens can monitor and influence government processes through access to government information and access to decision-making arenas [15].

Even if we consider that the idea of Open Government is still under construction [16], we can still try to establish a definition. Taking our inspiration from the OECD definition in English, Open Government can be conceived as a citizen-centred culture of governance that utilizes innovative and sustainable tools, policies and practices to promote government transparency, responsiveness and accountability to foster stakeholders’ participation in support of democracy and inclusive growth  [17]. The aim of this process is that it should lead to the co-construction of collective policies that involve all the parties involved in governance (public sphere, businesses, civil society, etc.) and pursue the general interest and the common good.

The international OGP organisation states that an Open Government strategy can only really develop where it is supported by an appropriate environment that allows it to be rolled out. The issue of the leadership of the political players is clearly very important, as is the capacity (empowerment) of the citizens to participate effectively in public action: this is central to the reforms it brings about, as the international organisation noted. Today, governments acknowledge the need to move from the role of simple providers of services towards the development of closer partnerships with all relevant stakeholders.[18].

Thus Open Government reconnects with one of the initial definitions of governance, as expressed by Steven Rosell in 1992: a process whereby an organisation or a society steers itself, using its players [19]. It has become commonplace to reiterate that the challenges we face today can no longer be resolved, given their magnitude, by a traditional government and several cohorts or even legions of civil servants.

Nevertheless, faced with these often enormous challenges, Professor of Business Administration Douglas Schuler rightly reflects on the capacity for action of the entire society that would have to be mobilised and poses the question: will we be smart enough soon enough? To answer this question, Schuler, who is also president of the Public Sphere Project, calls for what he refers to as civic intelligence, a form of collective intelligence centred on shared challenges, which focuses on improving society as a whole rather than just the individual. The type of democracy that is based on civic intelligence, writes Douglas Schuler, is one which, as the American psychologist and philosopher John Dewey wrote, can be seen as a way of life rather than as a duty, one in which participation in a participatory process strengthens the citizenship of individuals and allows them to think more in terms of community. To that end, deliberation is absolutely essential. It can be defined as a process of directed communication whereby people discuss their concerns in a reasonable, conscientious, and open manner, with the intent of arriving at a decision [20]. Deliberation occurs when people with dissimilar points of view exchange ideas with the intent of coming to an agreement. As futurists are well aware, the intended product of deliberation is a more coherent vision of the future [21].

Contrary to what is generally believed, true deliberation processes are rare, both in the civic sphere and in specifically political and institutional contexts. Moreover, Beth Simone Noveck describes deliberative democracy as timid, preferring the term collaborative democracy, which focuses more on results and decisions and is best promoted through technologies [22]. These processes do, however, constitute the basic methodology for more participative dynamics, such as the co-construction of public policies or collective policies, leading to contractualisation of players, additionality of financing and partnership implementation and evaluation. The distance between these simple, more or less formal consultation processes or these socio-economic discussion processes can be measured using Rhineland or Meuse models, which date back to the period just after the Second World War period and which, admittedly, are no longer adequate to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

The United Nations was right when it added a Goal 17, “Partnerships for the Goals”, to the already explicit Goal 16, which is one of the sustainable development goals focussing specifically on the emergence of peaceful and inclusive societies, access to justice for all, and building effective, accountable institutions at all levels. This Goal 17 calls for effective partnerships to be set up between governments, the private sector and civil society: these inclusive partnerships built upon principles and values, a shared vision, and shared goals that place people and the planet at the centre, are needed at the global, regional, national and local level [23].

Open regions and territories

In his speech at the Open Government Partnership Forum, which was held in parallel with the 72nd United Nations General Assembly on 19 September 2017, President Emmanuel Macron stated that local authorities have an increasing role to play and are an absolutely essential part of Open Government [24]. In his election campaign, the future French president also highlighted the fact that public policies are more effective when they are constructed with the constituents for whom they are intended. And in what he called the République contractuelle [Contractual Republic], a Republic which places trust in local districts, key players and society, the former minister saw a new idea for democracy: “these are not passive citizens who delegate the governance of the nation to their political leaders. A healthy, modern democracy is a system composed of active citizens who play their part in transforming the country” [25].

In keeping with the work already carried out since the start of the parliamentary term in the Parliament of Wallonia, the Wallonia Regional Policy Declaration of 28 July 2017 embodies this change by calling for a democratic revival and an improvement in public governance founded on the four pillars of transparency, participation, responsibility and performance. Transparency concerns the comprehensibility of the rules and regulations, the operating methods, and the mechanisms, content and financing of the decisions. The aim of participation is the involvement of citizens and private actors, businesses and the non-profit sector by giving them the initiative as a matter of priority, with the State providing support and strategic direction. The text invokes a new citizenship of cooperation, public debate, active information and involvement. The responsibility thus promoted is mainly that of the representative – elected or appointed – and sees an increase in accountability. The relations between public authorities and associations need to be clarified. The text states that performance is defined by evaluating the impact of public action in economic, budgetary, employment, environmental and social matters. It establishes a desire for a drastic simplification of public institutions rightly regarded as too numerous and too costly [26].

As we can see, these options are interesting and they undoubtedly represent a step forward inspired by the idea of Open Government we have been calling for lately [27], even if they have not yet moved on to genuine collaborative governance, deliberation with all actors and citizens or co-construction of public policies beyond experiments with public panels.

Conclusion: a government of the citizens, by the citizens, for the citizens

Open Government is a matter of democracy, not technology. This model reconnects with Abraham Lincoln’s idea of government of the people, by the people, for the people, which ended his Gettysburg address of 19 November 1863 [28]. This powerful idea can be advantageous for all of the regions in Europe, for its States and for the European process as a whole. Here, as in the United States, the principle of Open Government must be adopted by all representatives and applied at all levels of governance[29]. Parliaments and regional councils, who have often already embarked on pioneering initiatives, must grasp it [30].

As Douglas Schuler stated, Open Government would make no sense if it was not accompanied by informed, conscious and engaged citizenship, if it did not mean governance fully distributed within the population, the end of government as the sole place of governance. So this observation refers back to the initial question: what skills and information do citizens need in order to understand the issues they must face? [31] We know the response of Thomas Jefferson, writing from Paris to the philosopher Richard Price in 1789: a sense of necessity, and a submission to it, is to me a new and consolatory proof that, whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights [32]. This question certainly requires a response linked to lifelong critical education, the importance of philosophy and history, and the teaching of citizenship, foresight and complexity we have discussed recently [33]. As Pierre Rosanvallon notes, it is a question of making society comprehensible for the public, of ensuring that they can have effective knowledge of the social world and the mechanisms that govern it, to enable individuals to have access to what the Collège de France Professor calls real citizenship: an understanding of the effective social relationships, redistribution mechanisms and problems encountered when creating a society of equals [34].

As we have repeatedly stated, Open Government and governance by the players require an open society [35], in other words, a common space, a community of citizens where everyone works together to consider and address shared issues for the common good. Moving from Open Government to an open State happens by extension and through the application of the principles mentioned, from the executive to the legislature and the judiciary, and to all the players upstream and downstream.

Where national governments have not yet launched their open governance strategy, they should start with the districts, cities and regions, which often have the benefit of flexibility and proximity with the players and citizens. Naturally, this requirement also implies that private organisations, too, should be more transparent and more open and become more involved.

Aligning these global ambitions, which have been adopted by the United Nations and passed on by the OECD, Europe and more than 70 nations around the world, with the expectations of our regional players appears to be within reach. It is up to us to complete this task with enthusiasm and determination, wherever we are in this society that dreams of a better world.

 

Philippe Destatte

@PhD2050

[1] Barack OBAMA, Change we can believe in, Three Rivers Press, 2008. Translated into French under the title Le changement, Nous pouvons y croire, p. 180, Paris, Odile Jacob, 2009.

[2] Ibidem.

[3] Ibidem, p. 181sv.

[4] Concerning accountability, which he prefers to translate by rendering of accounts, see Pierre ROSANVALLON, Le bon gouvernement, p. 269sv, Paris, Seuil, 2015.

[5] Memo from President Obama on Transparency and Open Government, January 21, 2009. Reproduced in Daniel LATHROP & Laurel RUMA ed., Open Government, Transparency, and Participation in Practice, p. 389-390, Sebastopol, CA, O’Reilly, 2010.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=85677

[6] For the background in the United States, see: Patrice McDERMOTT, Building Open Government, in Government Information Quarterly, no. 27, 2010, p. 401-413.

[7] Joint declaration on open government, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/d-claration-commune-pour-un-gouvernement-ouvert

[8] La Belgique n’est toujours pas membre du Partenariat pour un Gouvernement ouvert, in Le Vif-L’Express, 11 August 2017.

[9] Déclaration de Paris, 4e Sommet mondial du Partenariat pour un Gouvernement ouvert, Open Government Partnership, 7 December 2016. https://www.opengovpartnership.org/paris-declaration

[10] See Philip E. TETLOCK, Expert Political Judgment, How good is it? How can we know? Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 2005.

[11] Beth Simone NOVECK, Wiki Government: How technology can make government better, democracy stranger, and citizens more powerful, Brookings Institution Press, 2009. – The Single point of Failure, in Daniel LATHROP & Laurel RUMA ed., Open Government, Transparency, and Participation in Practice, p. 50, Sebastopol, CA, O’Reilly, 2010. For an empirical approach to Open Governance, see Albert J. MEIJER et al., La gouvernance ouverte: relier visibilité et moyens d’expression, in Revue internationale des Sciences administratives 2012/1 (Vol. 78), p. 13-32.

[12] Matt STOKES, Peter BAECK, Toby BAKER, What next for Digital Social Innovation?, Realizing the potential of people and technology to tackle social challenges, European Commission, DSI4EU, Nesta Report, May 2017. https://www.nesta.org.uk/sites/default/files/dsi_report.pdf

[13] Freedom of access to information on the environment (1st report, Session 1996-97) https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199697/ldselect/ldeucom/069xii/ec1233.htm

[14] Romain BADOUARD (lecturer at the Université Cergy-Pontoise), Open governement, open data: l’empowerment citoyen en question, in Clément MABI, Jean-Christophe PLANTIN and Laurence MONNOYER-SMITH dir., Ouvrir, partager, réutiliser, Regards critiques sur les données numériques, Paris, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 2017 http://books.openedition.org/editionsmsh/9067

[15] Albert J. MEIJER, Deirdre CURTIN & Maarten HILLEBRANDT, Open Government: Connecting vision and voice, in International Review of Administrative Sciences, 78, 10-29, p. 13.

[16] Douglas SCHULER, Online Deliberation and Civic Intelligence in D. LATHROP & L. RUMA ed., Open Government…, p. 92sv. – see also the interesting analysis by Emad A. ABU-SHANAB, Reingineering the open government concept: An empirical support for a proposed model, in Government Information Quarterly, no. 32, 2015, p. 453-463.

[17] A citizen-centred culture of governance that utilizes innovative and sustainable tools, policies and practices to promote government transparency, responsiveness and accountability to foster stakeholdersparticipation in support of democracy and inclusive growth. OECD, Open Government, The Global context and the way forward, p. 19, Paris, OECD Publishing, 2016.

[18] OECD, Panorama des administrations publiques, p. 198, Paris, OECD, 2017. – See also, p. 29 and 30 of the same work, some specific definitions developed in various countries.

[19] Steven A. ROSELL ea, Governing in an Information Society, p. 21, Montréal, 1992.

[20] Douglas SCHULER, Online Deliberation and Civic Intelligence... p. 93.

[21] Ibidem.

[22] B. S. NOVECK, op.cit., p. 62-63.

[23] Sustainable Development Goals, 17 Goals to transform our world. http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/globalpartnerships/

[24] Speech by the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron at the Open Government Partnership event held in parallel with the 72nd United Nations General Assembly (19 September 2017) – http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x61l75r

[25] Emmanuel MACRON, Révolution, p. 255-256 and 259, Paris, XO, 2016.

[26] Parliament of Wallonia, Session 2016-2017, Déclaration de politique régionale, “La Wallonie plus forte”, 28 July 2017, DOC 880(2016-2017) – No. 1, p. 3-5.

[27] Olivier MOUTON, Une thérapie de choc pour la Wallonie, in Le Vif-L’Express, no. 44, 3 November 2017, p. 35.

[28] Carl MALAMUD, By the People, in D. LATHROP & L. RUMA ed., Open Government…, p. 41.

[29] Ibidem, p. 46.

[30] David BEETHAM, Parlement et démocratie au vingt-et-unième siècle, Guide des bonnes pratiques, Geneva, Parliamentary Union, 2006.

[31] Douglas SCHULER, Online Deliberation and Civic Intelligence... p. 93.

[32] Letter To Richard Price, Paris, January 8, 1789, in Thomas JEFFERSON, Writings, p. 935, New-York, The Library of America, 1984.

[33] Ph. DESTATTE, Apprendre au XXIème siècle, Citoyenneté, complexité et prospective, Liège, 22 September 2017. https://phd2050.org/2017/10/09/apprendre/

[34] P. ROSANVALLON, Le bon gouvernement…, p. 246.

[35] Archon FUNG & David WEIL, Open Government and open society, in D. LATHROP & L. RUMA ed., Open Government…, p. 41.

Brussels, November 16, 2016

 

A brief discussion on territorial foresight involves, firstly, restating some convictions I have about these two words [1].

 

1. Territorial Foresight

The first word is foresight. As Angela Wilkinson said, and rightly so, foresight is neither about evidence-based pessimism nor about wishful thinking [2]. Foresight has to look at the actual reality, without compromising but with acuity and honesty, in order to build solid diagnoses, identify the relevant long-term issues and propose solutions to those issues with strong strategic axes in order to achieve a vision of a common desired future.

Foresight emphasises the implementation of a process that frees itself from power and doctrines, with the aim of involving a perspective of free thought, exchanges with others, open deliberation and teamwork, while affirming the requirements of methodological rigour, a cross-disciplinary approach and collaborative intelligence, which has been so difficult to achieve until now[3].

Finally, foresight is oriented resolutely towards projects and action, that is to say a series of movements aimed at a goal. And this action resulting from foresight is designed to bring change. That means the transformation of part or all of the system. If foresight is not real transformation, it’s just literature; it is simply words, words, words.

The second word is territorial. We know that territorial means regional, urban, etc. We may consider territories as political communities, economic and social areas or built-up and green living spaces: in any event, it is only because citizens are concerned and involved that they will implement a strategy of transformation aimed at sustainable harmony. To do so requires them to be co-creators who share the vision and objectives of the territory, the challenges of the environment and the correct responses needed to face them.

So Territorial Foresight is fundamentally about change. This change can only be the result of a collective, motivational process, which is hard to implement and difficult to manage.

2. Territorial and Societal Models

Next, I will look at regional and societal models. I firmly believe that the so-called New Digital Revolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution, Industry 4.0 movement, etc. are the last resurgences, the last manifestations of the change that was observed at the end of the 1960s: the Information Society of the 1970s, the Knowledge Society of the 1980s, the New Economy of the 1990s, the Learning, Creative, etc. Societies and Regions of the 2000s, and so on. We are all aware that the key factor in this shift is the convergence between, firstly, information and communication technology and, secondly, life sciences. But despite this transformation, since we are still dealing mainly with industrial society and trying to modulate it, including sustainable development and, at the same time, supporting the Cognitive Revolution, I have named this complex transition The New Industrial Paradigm [4].

Today, when some citizens and actors think that our institutions and decision-makers, from European to local level, no longer have visions and projects, it is very important to bear in mind that, specifically, Sustainable Development is still the most important ultimate aim for our societies, countries and regions, and should remain so.

In the reference definition emerging from the report of the Brundtland World Commission on Environment and Development of the United Nations (1987) entitled Our Common Future, the two key issues put forward are the concept of ‘needs’, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organisation on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs [5].

Even if, generally speaking, the majority of people using this definition stop at the first sentence, it is important to emphasise the second sentence in order to clarify the concept of sustainable development. The last paragraph of the chapter is also valuable as it not only goes substantially beyond the idea of the omnipresent three pillars of sustainable development (economic, social and environmental) but also adds the entire systemic dimension to the concept of development, represented by the major contributions made by the Club of Rome and the OECD Interfuturs report prepared by Jacques Lesourne.

  1. In its broadest sense, the strategy for sustainable development aims to promote harmony among human beings and between humanity and nature. In the specific context of the development and environment crises of the 1980s, which current national and international political and economic institutions have not and perhaps cannot overcome, the pursuit of sustainable development requires:

– a political system that secures effective citizen participation in decision-making.

– an economic system that is able to generate surpluses and technical knowledge on a self-reliant and sustained basis.

– a social system that provides for solutions for the tensions arising from disharmonious development.

– a production system that respects the obligation to preserve the ecological base for development,

– a technological system that can search continuously for new solutions,

– an international system that fosters sustainable patterns of trade and finance, and

– an administrative system that is flexible and has the capacity for self-correction.

Futurists also turn paragraph 15 to their advantage because it values sustainable development as a process of change and transformation, opening the door to global ultimate aims and complementary challenges. I quote:

  1. In essence, sustainable development is a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development and institutional change are all in harmony and enhance both current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations.

So please do not say that there is no project for Europe: there is Sustainable Development, not as a doctrine but as an aim. That really is something.

 

3. Our priorities as Europeans

What we must do urgently is gather our forces, focus on the common good and work by commitment and contractualisation, from local to European and global level, in a multilevel way, as is clearly highlighted by the Committee of the Regions. We may not need to focus specifically on metropolitan areas. Incidentally, I do not want to support the idea that cities are not the engines for a new development. Perhaps they are: if we were able to understand what is happening in cities, we might be able to improve their attractiveness and competitiveness. Through its 2015 territorial reform, the French Government has expanded its regions by merging them in order to create large metropolitan areas. However, I am not really sure that developing Strasbourg will provide greater well-being and a better quality of life in Nancy, Metz and Reims. I am quite convinced that a polycentric network of cities could be as relevant as a large metropolis. There is no reason why cities which concentrate the solutions will not concentrate the problems as well. Just remember that, in the EU, 1 in 4 Europeans are estimated to be at risk of poverty and social exclusion [6]. So we may also have questions about the future of Strasbourg.

Our priority should be to address the needs of young people in relation to jobs and economic and social security. Naturally, we are all aware of this and it has been repeated many times in our common work. By addressing social exclusion[7], preventing precariat[8] and tackling Sherwoodisation [9], we will again offer hope to the many peoples of Europe in all their diversity. And, as a consequence, this method will also separate the terrorists from their social base.

This issue will also, no doubt, provide a new key and a boost to our democracy in Europe, its countries, regions and cities.

Thank you for your attention!

Philippe Destatte

https://twitter.com/PhD2050

[1] This paper was prepared within the framework of the COR/ESPAS Working Dinner at the European Committee of the Regions, on November 16, 2016, on the initiative of Béatrice Taulègne, Ian Barber and Karlheinz Lambertz.

[2] Angela WILKINSON, The Future of Foresight in Europe, Beyond Evidence-Based Pessimism to Realistic Hope, in Shaping the Future of Society and Governance, p. 51, Brussels, ESPAS (European Strategy and Policy Analysis System), November 2016.

[3] Philippe DESTATTE, What is foresight?, Blog PhD2050, May 30, 2013. https://phd2050.org/2013/05/30/what-is-foresight/

[4] Ph. DESTATTE, The New Industrial Paradigm, Keynote address at The Industrial Materials Association (IMA-Europe) 20th Anniversary, IMAGINE event, Brussels, The Square, September 24th, 2014, Blog PhD2050, September 24, 2014.

https://phd2050.org/2014/09/26/nip/

[5] http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf

[6] Stijn HOORENS, The Elephant in the Room: the many dimensions of inequality in Europe, in Shaping the Future of Society and Governance, p. 46.

[7] See The Inclusive City, in The State of European Cities 2016, Cities leading the way to a better future, p. 84-111, Brussels, European Commission – UN Habitat for a Better Human Future, 2016.

[8] Guy STANDING, The Precariat, The New Dangerous Class, p. 24-25, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2011.

[9] Bernard VAN ASBROUCK, La Sherwoodisation ou l’obsolescence de la cité, dans La Revue nouvelle, 2015, N°7, p. 9-12.

Namur, August 26, 2014

It is Professor Paul Duvigneaud, whom I met on the occasion of a private viewing of paintings in a Brussels art gallery, to whom I am indebted, at the rather belated age of thirty, for a lesson on ecosystems, industrial ecology and the principles of what nowadays is referred to as the “circular economy”. Using as a basis the example of the old Solvay sedimentation tanks near Charleroi, a case I had submitted to him with the aim of provoking him on the subject of the preservation of natural resources [1], and the manufacturing process for soda, the author of La synthèse écologique (Ecological Synthesis) [2], suddenly made these ideas make sense in my mind. At the same time, in a clear explanation typical of a skilled teacher, he linked them up with my rudimentary knowledge of the concepts of biosphere and complex system that I had found out about some ten years earlier in the Telhardian thinking [3]. In this way, reflecting in terms of flows and stocks, Duvigneaud was already supplementing the cycle of carbon and oxygen, at the level of an industrial and urban area, with that of phosphorus and heavy metals. For their part, some years later (albeit still only in 1983), Gilles Billen, Francine Toussaint and a handful of other researchers from different disciplines showed how material moved around in the Belgian economy. By also taking energy flows and data exchanges into account, they, too, provided an additional new way of looking at industrial ecology and came up with specific avenues of research for modifications to be made to the system, such as short and long recycling [4].

Today, after a few rotations of the world as well as a few more decades of our biosphere and our local environment deteriorating, the circular economy is coming back in force.

1. What is the circular economy?

A circular economy is understood as being an economy that helps achieve the aims of sustainable development by devising processes and technologies such as to replace a so-called linear growth model – involving excessive consumption of resources (raw materials, energy, water, real estate) and excessive waste production – with a model of ecosystemic development that is parsimonious in its extraction of natural resources and is characterised by low levels of waste, but which results in equivalent or even increased performance [5].

The Foundation set up in 2010 by the British navigator Ellen MacArthur, an international reference in the field of the circular economy, clarifies that the circular economy is a generic term for an economy that is regenerative by design. Materials flows are of two types, biological materials, designed to reenter the biosphere, and technical materials, designed to circulate with minimal loss of quality, in turn entraining the shift towards an economy ultimately powered by renewable energy [6]. This is a system, as the founder and navigator indicated, in which things are made to be redone.[7].

Even though the concept of circular economy may seem very recent, we have seen that it is actually in consonance with an older tradition dating back to the 1970s with the development of systems analysis and awareness of the existence of the biosphere and ecosystems and what is known as the industrial metabolism. In a work published at the Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation, Suren Erkman defined this industrial metabolism as the study of all the biophysical component parts of the industrial system. For the director of the ICAST in Geneva, the aim of this essentially analytical and descriptive approach is to understand the dynamics of flows and stocks of materials and energy associated with human activities, from extraction and production of the resources through to their inevitable return, sooner or later, in biochemical processes [8]. In a brief historical overview and inventory of schools of thought linked to the model of the circular economy [9], the MacArthur Foundation also recalls other sources such as the Regenerating Design of architect John Tillman Lyle (1934-1998), professor at the California State Polytechnic University of Pomona [10], the works of his fellow designer William McDonough with the German chemist Michael Braungart on eco-efficiency and the so-called Cradle to cradle (C2C) certification process [11], those of the Swiss economist and member of the Club of Rome Walter R. Stahel, author of research on the dematerialisation of the economy [12], those of Roland Clift, professor of Environmental Technology at the University of Surrey (UK) and president of the International Society for Industrial Ecology [13], the works of the American consultant Janine M. Benyus, professor at the University of Montana, known for her research on bio-mimicry [14], and the written works of the businessman of Belgian origin Günter Pauli, former assistant to the founder of Club of Rome Aurelio Peccei and himself author of the report The Blue Economy [15]. Many other figures could be cited, who may perhaps be less well-known in the Anglo-Saxon world but are by no means any less pioneering in the field. I am thinking here of Professor Paul Duvigneaud, to whom I have already referred.

2. The practices underpinning the circular economy

As noted in the study drafted by Richard Rouquet and Doris Nicklaus for the Sustainable Development Commission (CGCD) and published in January 2014, the objective of moving over to the circular economy is gradually to replace the use of virgin raw materials with the constant re-use of materials already in circulation [16]. These two researchers analysed the legislation and regulations governing implementation of the circular economy in Japan, Germany, the Netherlands and China, and demonstrate that, beyond the famous “three Rs” (reduction, re-use and recycling), this concept in fact leads to approaches and priorities that can sometimes differ considerably, in terms of nature and intensity, from one country to another. It could be added that within one and the same country or region, the way in which the circular economy is understood and interpreted varies very appreciably, meaning it can encompass a smaller or larger range of activities and processes.

Nonetheless, we can go along with the Agency for the Environment and the Harnessing of Energy (ADEME) when it includes seven practices in the circular economy [17].

Economie-circulaire_Dia-EN_2014-08-26

2.1. Ecodesign

Ecodesign is a strategic design management process that takes account of environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of packaging, products, processes, services, organisations and systems. It makes it possible to distinguish what falls under waste and what falls under value [18]. The good or service that has thus been eco-designed aims to fulfil a function and meet a need with the best possible eco-efficiency, i.e. by making efficient use of resources and reducing environmental and health impacts to a minimum [19].

2.2. Industrial ecology

Broadly speaking, industrial ecology can be defined as an endeavour to determine the transformations liable to make the industrial system compatible with a “normal” functioning of the biological ecosystems [20]. Pragmatically and operatively speaking, the ADEME defines it as a means of industrial organisation that responds to a collective logic of mutualisation, synergies and exchanges, is set in place by several economic operators at the level of an area or a region, and is characterised by optimised management of resources (raw materials, waste, energy and services) and a reduction of the circuits [21]. Industrial ecology is based first and foremost on the industrial metabolism, i.e. the analysis of the materials flows and energy flows associated with any activity.

2.3. The economy of functionality

As ATEMIS points out, the Economy of Functionality model meets the demand for new forms of productivity based on efficiency of use and regional efficiency of products. It consists in producing an integrated solution for goods and services, based on the sale of an efficiency of use and/or a regional efficiency, making it possible to take account of external social and environmental factors and to enhance the value of intangible investments in an economy henceforth driven by the service sector [22]. The economy of functionality therefore favours use over possession and, as the ADEME says, tends to sell services connected with the products rather than the products themselves.

2.4. Re-use

Re-use is the operation by which a product is given or sold by its initial owner to a third party who, in principle, will give it a second life[23]. Re-use makes it possible to extend the product’s life when it no longer meets the first consumer’s requirements, by putting it back into circulation in the economy, for example in the form of a second-hand product. Exchange and barter activities are part and parcel of this process. Re-use is not a method for waste processing or conversion, but one of the ways of preventing waste.

2.5. Repair

 This involves making damaged products or products that are no longer working fit for use again or putting them back into working order, in order to give them a second life. In fact, these processes run counter to the logic of disposable items or planned obsolescence.

2.6. Reutilisation

Reutilisation implies waste being dealt with in such way as to have all of it or separate parts of it brought into a different circuit or economic sector or business, with a qualitative choice and the aim for sustainability [24]. The development of the resource centres in the framework of the social and solidarity-based economy plays a part in this.

2.7. Recycling

As highlighted by the ADEME, recycling consists in a reutilisation of raw materials stemming from waste, in a closed loop for similar products, or in an open loop for use in other types of goods [25].

 

3. Policies that go from the global to the local but become increasingly concrete as and when they get closer to companies

The inclusion of the circular economy as one of the aims of sustainable development meets a special requirement. Indeed, the Brundtland Report, Our Common Future (1987), had drawn attention, in its Chapter 8, Industry: Producing more with less, to the fact that if industry takes materials out of the patrimony of natural resources and at the same time introduces products and pollution into the human being’s environment. In general, industries and industrial operations should be encouraged that are more efficient in terms of resource use, that generate less pollution and waste, that are based on the use of renewable rather than non renewable resources, and that minimize irreversible adverse impacts on human health and the environment. (…) To sustain production momentum on a global level, therefore, policies that inject resource efficiency considerations into economic, trade, and other related policy domains are urgently needed, particularly in industrial countries, along with strict observance of environmental norms, regulations, and standards. The Report recommends that the authorities and the industries include resource and environmental considerations must be integrated into the industrial planning and decision-making processes of government and industry. This will allow, writes the Norwegian Prime Minister, a steady reduction in the energy and resource content of future growth by increasing the efficiency of resource use, reducing waste, and encouraging resource recovery and recycling [26].

A major tool serving sustainable development, the industrial ecology model is also, as Christian du Tertre points out, the model of the circular economy, which innovates in the field of regional governance: it is not only an entrepreneurial model, but is also interested in transforming relations between players in a particular region. Its circular nature implies the mutualisation among different players of certain investors and resources, both tangible and intangible. For the economics professor at the Université Paris-Diderot, inter-industrial relations are no longer solely a matter of a traditional trade relationship, but concern a long-term partnership that can lead to the establishment of a collective intangible patrimony: sharing of skills, of research centres, of intangible investments, etc. [27]

The circular economy thus appears to be a major line of development with a global-to-local structure and underpinning systemic and cross-disciplinary policies pursued at European, national/federal, regional and divisional level. These policies are intended to fit together and link up with each other, becoming more and more concrete as and when they get closer to the officers in the field, and therefore companies.

This is what I will be expounding in a subsequent paper.

Philippe Destatte

https://twitter.com/PhD2050

[1] Paul DUVIGNEAUD et Martin TANGUE, Des ressources naturelles à préserver, dans Hervé HASQUIN dir., La Wallonie, le pays et les Hommes, Histoire, Economies, Sociétés, vol. 2, p. 471-495, Bruxelles, La Renaissance du Livre, 1980.

[2] Voir Paul DUVIGNEAUD, La synthèse écologique, Populations, communautés, écosystèmes, biosphère, noosphère, Paris, Doin, 2e éd., 1980. (La première édition intitulée Ecosystèmes et biosphère has been published in 1962 by the Belgian Ministery of Education and Culture.) – Gilles BILLEN e.a., L’Ecosystème Belgique, Essai d’écologie industrielle, Bruxelles, CRISP, 1983.

[3] Pierre TEILHARD de CHARDIN, L’homme et l’univers, p. 57-58, Paris, Seuil, 1956.

[4] Gilles BILLEN e.a., L’Ecosystème Belgique…1983.

[5] Jean-Claude LEVY & Xiaohong FAN, L’économie circulaire : l’urgence écologique, Monde en transe, Chine en transit, Paris, Presses des Ponts et Chaussées, 2009. – Bibliographie du CRDD, Economie circulaire et déchets, Août 2013.

Cliquer pour accéder à Biblio_CRDD_Economie_circulaire-2.pdf

[6]http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/Towards the Circular Economy, Economic and business rationale for an accelerated transition, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Rethink the Futur, t. 1, 2013.

[7] Ellen MACARTHUR, Rethink the Future, L’Economie circulaire, Ellen MacArthur Foundation – YouTube, 4 octobre 2010.

[8] Suren ERKMAN, Vers une écologie industrielle, Comment mettre en pratique le développement durable dans une société hyper-industrielle ?, p. 12-13, Paris, Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer, 2e éd., 2004 (1998). – S. ERKMAN & Ramesh RAMASWAMY, Applied Industrial Ecology, A New Platform for Planning Sustainable Societies, Bangalore, Aicra Publishers, 2003.

[9] The Circular Model, Brief History and Schools of Thought, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Rethink the Futur, 4 p., s.d. http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/

[10] John T. LYLE, Regenerative Design for Sustainable Development, New York, John Wilmey & Sons, 1994.

http://www.csupomona.edu/~crs/

[11] William Mc DONOUGH & Michael BRAUNGART, The Next Industrial Revolution, in The Atlantic, October 1, 1998. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/10/the-next-industrial-revolution/304695/ – W. McDONOUGH & M. BRAUNGART, Cradle to Cradle, Créer et recycler à l’infini, Paris, Editions alternatives, 4e éd., 2011.

[12] Walter R. STAHEL, The Performance Economy, London, Palgrave MacMillan, 2006.

[13] Roland CLIFT, Beyond the “Circular Economy”, Stocks, Flows and Quality of Life, The Annual Roland Clift Lecture on Industrial Ecology, November 6, 2013.

[14] Janine M. BENUYS, Biomimicry, Innovation inspired by Nature, New York, William Morrow, 1997. – Biomimétisme, Quand la nature inspire les innovations durables, Paris, Rue de l’Echiquier, 2011.

[15] Gunter PAULI, The Blue Economy, 10 Years, 100 Innovations, 100 Million Jobs, Taos N.M., Paradigm, 2010.

[16] Richard ROUQUET et Doris NICKLAUS, Comparaison internationale des politiques publiques en matière d’économie circulaire, coll. Etudes et documents, n° 101, Commissariat général au Développement durable, Janvier 2014.

[17] Osons l’économie circulaire, dans C’est le moment d’agir, n° 59, ADEME, Octobre 2012, p. 7. – Smaïl AÏT-EL-HADJ et Vincent BOLY, Eco conception, conception et innovation, Les nouveaux défis de l’entreprise, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2013.

[18] Sharon PRENDEVILLE, Chris SANDERS, Jude SHERRY, Filipa COSTA, Circular Economy, Is it enough?, p. 2, Ecodesign Centre Wales, March 11, 2014. http://edcw.org//sites/default/files/resources/Circular%20Ecomomy-%20Is%20it%20enough.pdf

[19] Economie circulaire : bénéfices socio-économiques de l’éco-conception et de l’écologie industrielle, dans ADEME et vous, Stratégie et études, n° 33, 10 octobre 2012, p. 2.

[20] Suren ERKMAN, Vers une écologie industrielle…, p. 13.

[21] Osons l’économie circulaire…, p. 7. – Thomas E. GRAEDEL et Braden R. ALLENBY, Industrial Ecology, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall, 1995.

[22] Atemis, Analyse du Travail et des Mutations de l’Industrie et des Services, 28 janvier 2014. – voir Christian du TERTRE, Economie de la fonctionnalité, développement durable et innovations institutionnelles, dans Edith HEURGON dir., Economie des services pour un développement durable, p. 142-255, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2007.

[23] Réemploi, réparation et réutilisation, Données 2012, Synthèse, p. 6, Angers, ADEME, 2013.

[24] The conservation of resources through more effective manufacturing processes, the reuse of materials as found in natural systems, a change in values from quantity to quality, and investing in natural capital, or restoring and sustaining natural resources. Paul HAWKEN, Amory LOVINS & L. Hunter LOVINS, Natural Capitalism, Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, Little, Brown & Cie, 1999.

[25] Ibidem.

[26] Gro Harlem BRUNDTLAND, Our Common Future, United Nations, 1987.

http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-08.htm

[27] Christian du TERTRE, L’économie de la fonctionnalité, pour un développement plus durable, Intervention aux journées de l’économie Produire autrement pour vivre mieux, p. 3, Paris, 8 novembre 2012. http///www.touteconomie.org/jeco/181_537.pdf