Anticipation in the Multilateral System
The notion that we are “now navigating uncharted waters” for development policy and planning is true for every era. However, it has increasingly extreme ramifications for governance and policymaking in this age of the Anthropocene, where the potential costs of ineffective decisions and investments is existential in scale. Humanity not only faces a plethora of global crises but also the convergence of multiple existential crises. The threat of a global polycrisis on the one hand directs more of our attention to the long-term future. It equally reflects the need to deepen understanding of the inequities of the past, and the dynamics of governance systems in the present that perpetuate unsustainable development outcomes for people and the planet.
Within this changing context, most multilateral institutions are grappling with the notion that current development models might no longer be adequate for these complex uncertain futures. They do not reflect the emergence of large-scale dynamic risks that are inherently already cutting across all dimensions of sustainable development, and the conditions in which these changes are occurring. The very nature and scale of change and risk has changed so considerably that it surpasses our ability and our approaches to date to understand and manage it.
