Category: News

November 2023 saw the official launch of the EU-funded project Eye of Europe – The research and innovation foresight community. For the next three years, this project will nurture the European R&I foresight community, bringing together practitioners, experts, policymakers and foresight enthusiasts alike.

Leveraging the experience of 18 partners across Europe coming from all walks of foresight expertise and practice, the project will integrate mutual learning and sharing of practices among foresight practitioners and R&I policy-makers, mobilise diverse stakeholders in joint pilot activities, and engage an active, broad audience in deliberating and shaping future imaginaries.

Eye of Europe will continue the work undertaken by its predecessor, ‘FOD European R&I Foresight and public engagement for Horizon Europe’. More specifically, the online platform futures4europe launched in early 2023 will carry on its function as the heart of the foresight community, undergoing further upgrades towards mapping organisations and experts and sharing foresight results and capabilities, as well as an amplifier for current foresight activities and events.

Read more about the project.

This report presents the results of a study on S&T&I for 2050: science, technology and innovation for ecosystem performance – accelerating sustainability transitions. The aim was to identify, map and assess future scientific and technological developments that can radically improve or threaten ecosystem performance.

Based on literature review, the project team developed three perspectives on future relations between humans and nature and humans’ role in the flourishing of planetary ecosystems. Drawing in addition on a two-round Dynamic Argumentative Delphi survey on the most dynamic scientific and technological developments, six cased studies on core sustainability issues explored the three perspectives. Reflections on implications for R&I policies in the context of the European Green Deal conclude each case study.

The report can be downloaded in our Resources section.

The project team was composed by: 

• Austrian Institute of Technology (lead) 
• Insight Foresight Institute (IFI)
• Institutul de Prospectiva 
• Fraunhofer ISI 
• ISINNOVA 
• Visionary Analytics 

The project “S&T&I FOR 2050. Science, Technology and Innovation for Ecosystem Performance – Accelerating Sustainability Transitions” was conducted on behalf of the European Commission. 

Mass media from around the world is constantly heralding new scientific and technological breakthroughs that bring upon the promise of healthier, longer, more fulfilling lives: partially restoring the sight of blind people with the aid of artificial retinas, restoring partial movement of previously non-responsive limbs by linking a paralyzed person’s brain to a computer chip, artificial bones, skin, blood, along with more controversial endeavors: editing the human genome through gene-splitting techniques, stem cells primed to promote regeneration, cryogenics and many, many others. The transhumanist movement regards breakthroughs like these as springboards not only to healing people, but to changing and improving humanity. Thanks to scientific developments in converging technologies such as biotechnology, neurotechnology, information technology and nanotechnology, humanity may be on the cusp of an enhancement revolution. 

Our new paper proposes 12 scenarios informed by transhumanism, portraying futures in which the human condition – our bodies, functions, and lives – and the features of societies are fundamentally transformed by technology. We propose these narratives as exploratory scenarios, describing futures where both positive and negative consequences are palpable. They are not normative, outlining a vision of the future deemed desirable. We invite readers to regard them as devices for imagining the future and debating the future. 

You can read more on the context and download the full paper here. 

What is data? How is data relevant for human and natural ecosystems? The answers depend on the perspective – in a recent paper we propose three scenarios, going from techno-optimism, to equal species recognition, to the philosophy of biocentrism.

In brief, the scenarios are:

• To the maxx – in which the technological trends of the early 2020s (pattern recognition through AI, greener and FAIR data, digital twins etc.) have reached maximal expansion. In this scenario, science supplies data and algorithms for decision-making, but scientific techno-optimism is confronted with the challenge of understanding and of justifying decisions.
• Radical responsibility – in which a social technology (equal recognition through a system of rights) is extended to virtually all beings, human and nonhuman. Here, science is enlisted in support of bringing in the perspectives of different species but is confronted with the challenge of integrating these perspectives into broad models accepted by all.
• We, the life – in which the driving force is a new level of consciousness gained by a growing number of biocentric scientists. Humanity relies on them to inspire ethically grounded worldviews, influencing the design of socio-techno-environmental systems.

Access the full paper here.

Institutul de Prospectiva is supporting the Ministry of Agriculture in Romania in its current efforts to build its sectoral strategy for fishing and aquaculture for the period 2023-2030. The activity is part of an effort involving the World Bank and its partners in supporting the strategic capacity of different ministries in Romania.

The project relies on a foresight methodology that involves a number of co-creation workshops with stakeholders in the sector. The first two workshops in a series of four were organized in April 2022 and were aimed at co-creating a vision for fishing and aquaculture in 2035.

The workshop engaged participants in a seven steps process, as follows:

• Building a common understanding of the current societal/consumer behaviors and attitudes (level of fish and seafood consumption, types of products consumed, preference for local products, expectations regarding traceability, environmental concerns etc.);
• Assessing the evolution of societal/consumer expectations by 2035 (on the same parameters as above);
• Mapping the current fishing and aquaculture system, in terms if strengths and weaknesses;
• Sketching the inertial future scenario of the fishing and aquaculture sector in Romania, meaning the likely scenario for 2035 in the absence of corrective policy interventions;
• Identifying future opportunities that would allow the system to progress towards more desirable scenarios than the inertial scenario;
• Collaboratively developing normative scenarios, capitalizing on selected opportunities;
• Based on the normative scenarios, extracting the main components of a future vision for 2035, together with the most important areas of transformation leading to such vision.

The results of this co-creation workshops are presented in this report:

Based on these outcomes, stakeholders will be further engaged in two road-mapping workshops to be held in May 2022.

Setting directions for research and innovation is usually not a job of citizens. But the CIMULACT project has paved the way for involving citizens in the actual formulation of research and innovation agendas.

Regional growth in the European Union hinges to a large extent on smart specialization, a new and exciting theme in economic innovation studies. Advances in the Theory and Practice of Smart Specialization illuminates problems that have stifled the implementation of smart specialization policies, such as unique regional constraints and the inter-dependent demands of economic growth and commercial development. Forward-looking and pragmatic, it provides guidance for developing smart specialization strategies both to those involved in European affairs and others grappling with regional innovation and economic development worldwide.

• Emphasizes specific contexts for smart specialization, its international approach and institutional preconditions
• Examines comparable initiatives worldwide
• Explains how to implement smart specialization policies given different development levels of regions and countries

Editors: Slavo Radosevic, Adrian Curaj, Radu Gheorghiu, Liviu Andreescu, Imogen Wade