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Foresight: visualising the future
In its capacity as a mission-oriented research institute, INRA must explore its areas of research and define its research priorities. This requires a projection of about ten years into the future. However, it is impossible to foresee the progress that will be made by science or the evolution of the institutional and social framework so far down the line. On the basis of the most objective representation possible of a situation (from the viewpoint of the area of activity, as well as territorial, economic and social considerations), foresight allows us to analyse possible futures by defining what they will look like, potential challenges and the conditions leading up to them. The process begins with the systematic assessment of evolution hypotheses, based on available scientific knowledge and an explicit methodology. The results – scenarios – must be internally coherent. Foresight takes on its true meaning when a debate is launched on the evaluation of future components and on the projected scenarios.
Providing support for the institute's positioning and priorities through partnerships
Foresight has been used by INRA since 1993, to evaluate the institute's positioning and to open up new areas of research (extending agriculture and food to environmental issues) and, at the beginning of the new millennium, to develop the INRA 2020 document.
In order to prepare its research priorities for 2006-2009, INRA began drawing up foresight reports in autumn 2004, on about ten different subjects linked to its missions and its institutional positioning:
- non-food applications for agricultural and forest products;
- plant and animal health, emerging diseases;
- functionality of food products and food;
- water, agriculture and environments;
- comparative biology;
- etc.
Foresight makes it possible to initiate debates concerning major socio-economic issues, and helps to implement research policies as well as training, recruitment and investment policies. A foresight forum organised on 14 June 2005 with INRA's partners greatly enhanced the scope of these debates.
Foresight reports and the exchanges that took place on 14 June made it possible to identify the topics of prospective studies to be pursued over the next two years:
- the future of rural areas in France and in Europe;
- world agriculture and food in 2035;
- agriculture after 2013.
Foresight also lays the groundwork for creating research partnerships. It makes it possible to bring together institutional, scientific, corporate and civil partners for the construction of INRA research programmes. An experiment along these lines will be initiated in 2006 through a project that will involve partners in the reflection phase, upstream of environmentally-oriented research programmes and strategies.
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