PARIS, 7 March 2008 Original: English REPORT BY THE DIRECTOR-GENERAL ON THE UPDATING OF THE EVALUATION OF THE ANTICIPATION AND FORESIGHT PROGRAMME

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1 Executive Board Hundred and seventy-ninth session 179 EX/40 PARIS, 7 March 2008 Original: English Item 40 of the provisional agenda REPORT BY THE DIRECTOR-GENERAL ON THE UPDATING OF THE EVALUATION OF THE ANTICIPATION AND FORESIGHT PROGRAMME SUMMARY In accordance with 34 C/Resolution 54(VI), the Director-General presents an update of the evaluation of the anticipation and foresight programme.

2 179 EX/40 Introduction C/Resolution 54(VI), adopted by the General Conference at its 34th session, requested the Director-General to present an update of the evaluation of the anticipation and foresight programme to the Executive Board at its 179th session. This paper sets out the actions taken and actions planned by the Secretariat, in particular the Office of Foresight (FOR), for each of the recommendations contained in the July 2006 evaluation of the UNESCO Anticipation and Foresight Programme. For ease of reference, the information is presented in tabular form. 2. The evaluation of the UNESCO Anticipation and Foresight Programme was presented to the Executive Board at its 175th session (175 EX/23). Aiming to assess the results and impact of UNESCO s activities in the field of anticipation and foresight, the evaluation identified the following key achievements: Over the period , the Programme had organized 27 Twenty-first Century Talks and Dialogues. These had comprised 118 different presentations by 95 different speakers. Talks had been organized at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, the XIVth International Conference on AIDS in Barcelona, World Expo 2000 in Hanover, and the United Nations international conference on racism and discrimination in Durban and in Seoul. Three titles, in 21 language versions, had been published. FOR had actively contributed to 28 radio and television broadcasts or programmes with many more ad hoc contributions at conferences, etc. Attendees at the 21st Century Talks and Dialogues had numbered into the hundreds for each event. The readers of the books had numbered from thousands to tens of thousands per language, if not hundreds of thousands. Articles about anticipation and foresight had appeared in many high-quality journals around the world, with a combined readership of many millions. General Conference and Executive Board documents had consistently shown that the activities of the programme had strong support from Member States and that the talks and dialogues had been viewed as dealing with crucial issues for the future and had been debated by a highly competent and diverse set of specialists. 3. In addition to these achievements, the evaluation found the following challenges: Too few events had been organized outside Headquarters. Organizing more events away from Headquarters could allow for a more diversified involvement of speakers and participants as well as target audiences. The Programme needed a more systematic and explicit reflection on the needs of each target group. This could be analysed through an intervention logic. The location of FOR within a programme sector (SHS) may have weakened the strategic influence of the Programme within UNESCO. No explicit relationship existed between foresight activities, strategy formulation and policy design. 4. In response to these achievements and challenges, the evaluators made a number of recommendations. Each is listed in the following table, along with the actions taken and further actions planned in response.

3 1. Establish a more explicit reflection on target groups, their needs and the way in which these needs are to be addressed, for instance through an intervention logic exercise. This should pay explicit attention to the needs of UNESCO Member States. Document 33 C/5 does not precisely define the target groups for the Anticipation and Foresight Programme, unlike the previous C/5 document which stated the target groups as decision-makers, intellectual and scientific communities, teachers and students, civil society and, in general, the public at large and also the media. Because the target groups are very broad, it is necessary to focus on common needs and adequate modalities to reach the target groups. Consequently, FOR emphasizes awareness-raising for all target groups through disseminating the key messages of the foresight programme through leading media in the different regions of the world. During the biennium, FOR organized eight sessions of 21st Century Talks and one session of 21st Century Dialogues at which 17 leading figures gathered, with 1,200 in attendance. Each theme was either proposed by the Director-General or identified by FOR, but systematically validated by the Director-General. This procedure ensures that the interests of Member States and the Secretariat are well targeted and reflect relevant UNESCO programme priorities. Each conference was designed with a view to raising the awareness of scientific and intellectual communities, the media, decisionmakers, civil society and the public at large concerning UNESCO s capacity to respond to current challenges and emerging trends affecting its fields of competence. The events were either intersectoral and interdisciplinary or involving primarily one programme sector. In 2006, the Director-General established a performance indicator for FOR of the number of publications concerning foresight activities in leading newspapers. A benchmark of 50 was set. The 21st Century Dialogue, a special one-day conference entitled What future for the human species? What prospects for the planet? received coverage in more than 50 leading newspapers and media agencies around the world. In , the list of media covering foresight activities included The Voice of America, Le Monde, Le Figaro, A Fohla de São Paulo, El País, La Vanguardia, South China Morning Post, Mainichi Shimbun, Ha aretz, Le Temps, An Nahar, El Watan, Clarin, The Guardian (Nigeria), Le Soleil, El Universal, Excelsior and Al Ahram Weekly. Action in this area will further be focused and sharpened as a result of the recommendations of the Intersectoral Working Group set up by the Director-General at the end of 2007, pursuant to Recommendation 5 (see below). These recommendations now form the framework for the intersectoral platform to be launched (see 179 EX/16 for details on intersectoral platforms). 179 EX/40 page 2

4 2. Organize more events away from Headquarters so as to diversify UNESCO s anticipation and foresight activities in terms of speakers, location and dissemination. FOR has continued to diversify its outreach away from Headquarters. In particular, it has reinforced cooperation with other partners to organize sessions of the 21st Century Talks and Dialogues away from Headquarters. In June 2006 and June 2007, FOR partnered with the International Economic Forum of the Americas/Conference of Montreal to hold one session of the 21st Century Talks (Towards knowledge societies: redefine the link between innovation and development (June 2007) and Governance and development: the challenges of multiculturalism (June 2006)). Both conferences were entirely financed by the organizers of the Conference. FOR has placed renewed emphasis on the dissemination of the Office s results through publishing the anthologies of the 21st Century Talks and Dialogues in additional language versions. For example, the second anthology of the 21st Century Talks, The Future of Values, which was initially published in English and French, was also published in Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese and German and the third anthology, Making Peace with the Earth, was published in French, English, Spanish and Catalan. Closer attention has been paid to geographic origin and gender of speakers. The 13 speakers for the three 21st Century Talks organized in 2007 originated from Europe, North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Arab States. Three of the thirteen were female. The 21st Century Dialogue of 25 November 2006 included speakers from Asia and the Pacific and all other regions of the world. The organizer of the Montreal Conference was so satisfied with the outcomes of the June 2006 event that he decided to organize one session of the 21st Century Talks with UNESCO at each annual session of the International Economic Forum of the Americas. As of June 2007, the International Economic Forum of the Americas is an official UNESCO partner maintaining operational relations. Further diversification will be considered by the intersectoral platform. Several other language versions (Chinese, Arabic, Russian and Portuguese) of the third anthology of the 21st Century Talks are also in preparation. 3. Improve monitoring of the beneficiaries of the Programme. For events organized by the Office, this can be done through keeping lists of attendees and organizing simple satisfaction surveys. A list of attendees at the conferences has been created and is updated after each session. Data were collected upon registration for or during the conferences and processed afterwards. The foresight database now contains more than 5,000 names. FOR will continue this action. 179 EX/40 page 3

5 4. More use should be made of alternative communication channels in order to increase the impact of the Programme. In particular, the opportunities provided by the Internet can be better exploited. 5. It is important that the rationale for anticipation and foresight be more interconnected with the rest of the Organization. UNESCO needs to reflect on the role that a foresight function should have within the Organization: (i) in relation to UNESCO s strategy formulation and policy design; and (ii) in relation to the needs of the sectors in the area of anticipation and foresight. The aim should be to put in place a mechanism which would allow UNESCO s strategic planning to be better informed by the results of foresight activities and also allow UNESCO s foresight to be better tailored to the practical needs of Member States. To do this, it is recommended that a working group to redesign the foresight function for UNESCO be established. In collaboration with BPI, FOR has begun to broadcast its events live in English, French and Spanish through UNESCO s website. These broadcasts were later made available on the website as downloadable webcasts. To strengthen UNESCO s function as a laboratory of ideas, as well as its intersectorality and interdisciplinarity, the Office endeavoured to organize more events in collaboration with programme sectors, such as the 21st Century Talks sessions on The Future of the Planet in November 2006 and The Future of Education in September In order to increase collaboration between FOR and the programme sectors, changes were introduced in the format of the 21st Century Talks to make room for discussants representing, inter alia, the sectors. This new format was applied at the September 21st Century Talk on Education: one of the discussants was the then newly appointed ADG of the Education Sector. In the November 2007 focus on environmental issues, one of the discussants was the ADG/IOC. The Director-General decided to place FOR under the authority of ADG/BSP, so as to ensure a clearer linkage with BSP and all programme sectors. This new management framework is intended to create a stronger interaction between foresight and BSP s strategy formulation. The arrangement will allow the Organization to look at foresight activities in a more global and holistic manner, and to reinforce their interaction with, and contribution to, the work of the FOR is working closely with BPI to develop a new website that will present the foresight activities of UNESCO, a number of videos and summaries of the 21st Century Talks and Dialogues and the articles of the Director-General. It will also offer bulletin board services for foresightrelevant activities by sectors and sharing of documents and best practices, especially by governments and other institutions. The communication tool will also allow FOR to better use the Internet and information and communication technologies to systematically disseminate the conclusions and results of its activities and broaden outreach. The new website is expected to be launched before mid The intersectoral working group addressed these issues and developed a comprehensive set of recommendations that will be the starting point for the intersectoral platform. 179 EX/40 page 4

6 five Major Programme sectors. In this context, FOR places its activities at the service of all of the Organization s domains of competence to better respond to emerging global challenges and changes. Preparing for the new arrangements to be created during the biennium, FOR has been actively involved with the intersectoral working group that advises the Director-General on the future role that a foresight function should have within UNESCO (pursuant to Recommendation 5). The working group has completed its work and has made a number of recommendations relating to programmatic orientations and modalities. These will be taken up and operationally developed by the intersectoral platform, scheduled to begin in early March Printed on recycled paper 179 EX/40 page 5

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