Vision and scenario building for 2035 – Fishing and aquaculture in Romania

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.

Press release: New directions for involving citizens in research and innovations agendas

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.

Continue reading “Press release: New directions for involving citizens in research and innovations agendas”

Published book: Advances in the Theory and Practice of Smart Specialization

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 RadosevicAdrian CurajRadu GheorghiuLiviu Andreescu, Imogen Wade

CIMULACT: Highlights & full report from the Online Consultation

The online consultation Research for Society engaged citizens from 30 countries, together with researchers, stakeholders and policy makers in redefining the European Research and lnnovation agenda to make it more accountable. 3,458 respondents evaluated and enriched, according to their interests and expertise, 48 proposed research programmes

Prospectiva designed and implemented the online consultation platform, with interfaces in 30 languages. The consultation approach is based on the Dynamic Argumentative Delphi (DAD), which Prospectiva has tested in two large-scale foresight exercises.

In light of the online consultation, the top 5 proposed research programmes by average importance, assigned by Europeans in 30 countries are:

  1. Top trending: at one with nature
    Develop approaches for promoting “green” living to encourage more people to adopt ecological life-styles.
  2. Ecological future education
    Develop training programmes and education on ecology and future-thinking for citizens, policy makers and civil cervants to ensure a healthy planet for future generations.
  3. Good food research
    Intensify food inovation and research and increase public knowledge on sustainability, health and nutrition to affect food behaviours in a positive way.
  4. Beyond energy efficiency: reduce consumption through structural design and behaviour
    Explore ways to bring about behaviour change and exploit technological innovation and integrated planning to increase energy sufficiency.
  5. Quantitative person-centred health
    Explore conditions for innovative, personalised and human-centric services for health promotion, prevention, treatment and rehabilitation.

ForWiki web 2.0 Foresight comunity platform

The Foresight Wiki is a web-based, collaborative platform supported by the Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding from Romania, and developed during the project Quality and Leadership for Romanian Higher Education. The name indicates that the wiki technology for developing collaborative websites is being used. This allows members of the Future Studies & Foresight community of practice to write articles that any other member can edit.

The Foresight Wiki was officially launched on April 15th 2010, during the workshop Jointly Shaping and Launching the Foresight Wiki, coordinated by Dr. Philine Warnke.