To quote the famous science-fiction film trilogy Back to the Future: “ If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.”
How do we prepare for the unknown? How do we think, value, and utilize the future for a sustainable tomorrow? If, as Samuel Butler said, self-preservation “is the first law of nature”, how do we reconcile this claim with human behaviors that can result in injury and destruction?
Our imaginations can be used as powerful time machines fostering accomplishments and scenarios of change.
UNESCO Regional Science Bureau for Asia and the Pacific in Jakarta, UNDRR Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, UNDP Accelerator Lab Indonesia, and U-INSPIRE Alliance are implementing a series of activities on Future Thinking in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Resilience.
In March 2022, the series concluded with Let’s Talk DRR -3 on the Futures of Human Behaviour and Hazards in 2045. Previous events highlighted The Futures of Disaster Risk Governance, and The Futures of Disaster Knowledge, in 2045.
The present DRR strategies and activities are based on perceptions, choices, and decisions made in the past. The current COVID-19 pandemic showcases that the pre-pandemic “normal” had never been suitable to face novelty. Our quest for certainty and repetition created the conditions for a vulnerable society facing a plethora of multiple disasters that we were unequipped for. Considering unforeseen mutations or novel human behaviours can enlarge our scope of preparedness. By rethinking the way we imagine the future, embracing uncertainties and complexity, we become more futures literate, able to shape our response to probable scenarios differently.
UNESCO, as a global laboratory of ideas advocates for futures literacy, to empower people to exercise their imaginations, and improve their ability to explore and use the future freely and effectively. As we become more futures literate, our capacity to be more agile and resilient is also enhanced.
Futures Literacy Labs in DRR are a unique tool, providing youth and young professionals, our emerging future leaders, with a space to share views and ideas to implement change for desirable futures. It uses the “learning by doing” approach and foresight activities to generate new insights that can be integrated in policies and concrete actions. Designed to enable participants to reveal, rethink and challenge their anticipatory assumptions, in order to build futures capacity, they introduce the latest advancements in anticipatory system thinking and collective intelligence processes.
How to be more creative with limited resources, by leveraging artificial intelligence, within communities in Disaster prone areas and go towards systemic transformation through collective action? How to engage more effectively in cross-disciplinary collaboration and knowledge-sharing across geographies while cultivating more meaningful partnerships with and between various stakeholder groups in society?
Youth and Young Professionals engaged with system thinking processes on specific DRR topics, to contribute to capacity-building in response to the inevitability of increasing hazards, by novel approaches. 30 participants from 11 countries in Asia and Africa, were part of the five teams who brainstormed and shared their collective thoughts on Human Behaviour and Hazards in 2045, discussing probable, desirable and reframed futures as part of their involvement in the third Futures Literacy Labs on Disaster Risk Reduction (FLL-DRR-3).
Some explored disaster risk reduction’s applications in specific fields like hospitality, urban planning, and sustainable facilities management, to name a few. Others compelled us to reconsider issues like enduring trauma and economic loss, gender equality, biodiversity, and ethics in this context.
Results of their work will be shared at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in Bali, in May 2022.
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