A future for planetary health and human wellbeing 2050

UNEP has embarked on a strategic foresight initiative to institutionalise foresight and horizon scanning to establish a future-oriented culture. The initiative includes global-level horizon scanning and analysis, followed by regional workshops where stakeholders further validate global insights with regionally specific issues.

In partnership with UNEP and as part of a series of regional foresight workshops, in December 2023, the Asia Centre of the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI Asia) facilitated the Asia-Pacific regional workshop with over 40 participants from countries across the region. This report documents the content of the discussions and critical insights from a series of backcasting exercises. It is accompanied by a process report, separately submitted to UNEP, capturing the methods and steps taken during the workshop. 

The workshop took place over two days, where participants reflected on four global scenarios through an Asia-Pacific lens (Sensemaking), explored and assessed the emerging changes under these scenarios (Change pathways), and identified potential areas for interventions (Intervention planning) (See Annex 1 for the methods). This report captures general reflections on the scenarios in Section 2, key insights and narratives from the Sensemaking and Change pathways of each scenario in Section 3, and common areas for interventions in Section 4. Section 5 then summarises major recurrent themes that emerged during the workshop.