Inter-American Dialogue

This publication is the third in a series of newsletters dedicated to raising awareness of global trends analysis and how future scenarios may affect Latin America. It summarizes a report by the UN Economic and Social Council on the importance of strengthening strategic predictive capabilities for policy makers, particularly in developing countries.

The report, Strategic foresight for the post-2015 development agenda, delineates the priorities of the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development.

The summary accompanies a presentation by Dialogue senior fellow Sergio Bitar to the commission in May 2015 in Geneva, designed to complement the main ideas and proposals in their report. We are also pleased to include an essay by Amy Zalman, CEO and president of the World Future Society, on governance as it relates to anticipating global trends.

Public policy in Latin America suffers from a lack of long term perspective. This inevitably limits the ability to seize opportunities or contain risks that present themselves. This publication analyses six major global tendencies that have been identified by leading prospective institutions. Various scenarios are used to explore the potential effect of these tendencies on five goals previously identified by governments, political and social leaders, and experts on Latin America. Particular attention is paid to the themes of governance, inequality, productivity, integration and international alliances, sustainable development and climate change. Subsequently, areas that require a more continuous monitoring are identified with reference to existing methodologies in other countries.

This publication is the second in a series dedicated to raising awareness of global trends analysis and how future scenarios will affect Latin America. In the Question and Answer section, experts from throughout the region examine the most important global trends for Latin America and how policymakers should address them. In the second section, Program Director Sergio Bitar discusses the need for a stronger relationship between global trends analysis and education policy. The final section offers a summary of Bitar’s recently published book, Why and How Latin America Should Think about the Future.

This publication is the first in a series dedicated to raising awareness of global trends analysis and how future scenarios may affect Latin America. It introduces the topic by summarizing the most comprehensive report on key global trends in 2012, the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends 2030, and it reviews three other prominent studies. The concluding summary assessment of global developments that are particularly relevant for Latin America could well help the region to identify major challenges in the future.

Latin America must strengthen its ability to plan forward and deepen its strategic reflection if it is to govern better and improve the design of public policies.
Achieving this may require countries in the region to familiarize themselves with global scenarios and to explore the types and scale of challenges that they might confront. A national perspective is not sufficient, a global vision is essential. Globalization creates a stream of effects that cannot be controlled by individual countries. With an outlook that takes into consideration the rest of the world, Latin American governments could improve their capacity to anticipate events and, when those events occur, to effectively respond to uncertainty and rapid change. Through strategic planning that envisions a myriad of diverse situations, countries of the region may be able to skirt damage or even identify advantageous responses. In effect, human action might alter trajectories in ways that could bring the region closer to desirable outcomes. In this study, Sergio Bitar sets out to explore the nature and potential impact of trends and scenarios that could emerge and he makes recommendations for building anticipatory capacity. The first part of this report summarizes the global trends and scenarios [...] the scenarios are based on reports from leading research centers in developed countries. In the second part, he identifies
where Latin America—both individual countries and the region as a whole—should focus. He then underscores the fields in which countries of the region should strengthen their capacity for foresight study.