Dot org

Alex Johnson, September 5th, General

We're building our portfolio of international work, with recent projects in India, China, and Kenya, and plans for work in many other places.  To reflect this, we've simplified our web address to www.forumforthefuture.org

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Tourism 2023 Update

Stephanie Draper, September 2nd, Travel and tourism

This summer is certainly seeing interesting changes to holiday habits. With high oil prices and the credit crunch at the top of the agenda this summer, the holiday industry is going through a challenging period.  Whilst many consumers are choosing to spend money more locally, others have elected to stay put for their vacations. Meanwhile, airlines’ profits have shrunk and some have even gone out of business.

But while the downturn is affecting holidays in the short term, the fundamentals of travel are also being challenged.

Over the next few decades the world’s new middle classes will increasingly travel internationally. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, tourist visits are going to double from 800 million now to 1.6 billion by 2020.

This staggering level of growth exposes the tourism industry to a classic sustainable development challenge - increased demands on a limited resource, in this case holiday experiences, be they exhilarating activities or the destinations themselves. The Harvard Business Review translates this into a ‘scarcity of place’.

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment tells us that many of the natural resources on which tourism relies are being depleted. And if you also factor in climate change, CO2 emissions and related water scarcity then you have a tourism time bomb.

Given these factors, our latest tourism project, Tourism 2023 could not be more timely. The project aims to help the UK outbound industry and some of its key destinations understand more about their future and be able to plan for it.

Here’s a bit more information on why we, and others, think this project is so important and has such potential to create change. Addressing key challenges and creating a more sustainable tourism industry is an exciting prospect - our first workshop was so popular we had to move it to a bigger location! 

Why futures thinking is important

We can’t predict the future. The amount of changes that have taken place even over the last few years, let alone the last 15, show us that it would be foolish to even try.  But that does not mean we cannot and should not think about how to prepare for and shape our future. Rather that just reacting to events as they occur, the most successful organisations and industries think in advance what they might be, and how they might respond. Tourism 2023 will explore a range of possible future scenarios for the UK outbound tourism industry.  This will help the industry to develop business strategies that can be robust in any future.
 
Using scenarios for futures thinking was a technique developed during the 1980s by Shell. Crucially, one of the scenarios anticipated the Soviet Union collapsing and the end of the Cold War. This thinking enabled the company to rapidly capitalise on new opportunities during the dramatic events of 1989.

Scenario planning is now used by a large number of governments, businesses and organisations around the world. If you haven’t seen them already, you may be interested in some of the work we did last year with Tesco and Unilever: Retail Futures

The language of sustainable development where assets are protected and enriched for ‘future generations’ – is highly relevant to an industry whose resources are so under threat. Futures thinking is integral to this approach as decisions made on the basis of short-term thinking only, often produce unsustainable results. By asking challenging questions about the long-term, we are forced to consider many of the environmental and social issues which will have dramatic impacts in time to come. 

Engaging the industry and creating change

Instead of just responding to trends that threaten our future, we can shape them ourselves and create the change we all want to see. That’s why the Tourism 2023 project includes not only scenarios and an inspiring vision, but also a carefully developed strategy detailing how to get there.

During the project, we will document the wide variety of sustainability initiatives already happening in the industry and highlight the gaps where more needs to be done.  Hopefully we’ll achieve consensus and clarity on where the industry wants to be in 15 years time and establish what sustainable tourism looks, sounds and feels like. We can then use this understanding to collectively engage and influence government.

No element of this project should distract from the important decisions needed here and now, but they should help make those decisions more considered and effective in the long-term.
 
Tourism 2023 is supported by a number of key players – TUI Travel, Thomas Cook, ABTA, The Travel Foundation, Carnival UK, The Co-operative Travel and British Airways. Our other collaborators include tour operators, transport providers, government, destinations, academia, technical specialists, travel media and innovators.

A senior level project Advisory Board is driving the project and taking forward recommendations.  Ultimately, the proof will be in results – the project’s ability to inspire and then deliver change in the industry and a more sustainable future. 

For more information on Tourism 2023 click here or email Vicky Murray.

 

 

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RSA Competition 2008/09 - Designing for a sustainable future

Fiona Bennie, August 29th, General

We’re delighted to have submitted a brief for the RSA Design Directions 2008/09 – “…an awards scheme that frames a series of design briefs within a social context in order to explore the role design can play in response to key challenges in contemporary life.”

With products and services being known to play a positive role far beyond their own direct influence, designing for an uncertain future has never felt more important. As part of an ongoing project with Dulux and Unilever, Forum’s Innovation, Futures and Communications teams have got together to draw up a futures-based brief which asks young designers to create products and services for a plausible 2025.

Called A Changing World - products and services for a sustainable future, we've provided entrants with inspiring scenarios for 2025. The aim is to stretch entrants' thinking and give them the space and opportunity to create bold, innovative product and service systems.

The students will be working on the brief during their autumn term and will be submitting entries towards the end of November 2008. The results are hotly anticipated. Watch this space.

 

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i-team making tracks

Fiona Bennie, August 26th, General, Projects

The i-team project is now well under way and it’s been a rollercoaster of a summer. So far we have run a two-day Inspiration workshop at IDEO's London studios in June, where we introduced the local authorities to the innovation process and looked at how it can be used to tackle an issue like climate change at a local level. Each local authority identified a climate innovation challenge to work on and embarked on a journey through the design process in order to find innovative solutions to its challenge.

Having defined their challenges the local authorities then got stuck into some empathic research during the Insight phase. During this phase of the project the i-team spent three days with each local authority -- travelling up to St Helens, Ipswich and Huddersfield where we interviewed, observed and engaged with a whole array of interesting folk…

Up in St Helens, where they are working on how to engage and enable young people to live more sustainably whilst influencing others to do the same, we spent time with local children of all ages and those who work with them. We wanted to find out what engages youngsters, what activities and clubs they love and how might climate change be an issue they can be passionate about? We found that eight year olds know very well how to define Fairtrade and that five year olds clearly distinguish a wind turbine (a 'windy thing') from a coal-fired power station, describing one as 'good' and the other as 'bad'. It was encouraging stuff, and it was also evident that the majority of youngsters are motivated by and interested in learning-by-doing, preferably outdoors. Anything focusing on climate change had better be along similar lines…

We then set off to Suffolk to look at business mileage in their Adult and Community Service sector (mostly Social Services). We hung out with a selection of analogous service providers, from Age Concern to the central Fire Control Unit, to learn from the way that they organise their time and resources to ensure efficiency at all levels, including mileage. We also spent time with Senior Managers, Senior Practitioners, Social Workers and Customer Services Advisors to really get to grips with what their Monday to Friday life is like. It is essential any solution we design will not only integrate effortlessly into their routines, but also enhance their quality of working life.

Next, we were in Huddersfield with Kirklees Council. Together, we’re exploring how community centres can reduce their energy usage as well as influencing their customers to do the same at home. We had a fantastic three days spending time with people from all walks of life, including a young mother and her toddler, an elderly lady and a hockey player asking about the groups and centres they attend and working out how they use energy in their home. We also visited a great community centre and met the ambitious manager who gave us the low-down on what running a centre is like and how he thinks a centre could influence it’s users. Further research focused on what people perceive as being community spirit and how and why they engage in community activities. It was captivating stuff.

So all three local authorities are now moving out of the research phase and into the creative solutions-finding phase. We'll be bringing the i-team and each of the local authorities together for the Ideation workshop aimed at finding some brilliant, innovative solutions to their climate innovation challenge, based on all the fascinating learning from the Insight research phase.

Fiona Bennie is a Senior Sustainability Advisor - Innovation Projects, Business Programme

 

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When will we get serious on energy efficiency?

Peter Madden, August 15th, Forum founders

The Spanish Government recently announced an ambitious energy efficiency package to cut reliance on fossil fuels. Measures included cutting the speed limit on roads, regulating temperatures for air conditioning, running more Metro services and handing out 49 million free energy-saving light bulbs.
Here in the UK, we pay constant lip-service to energy efficiency, but consistenly fail to raise our ambition. The recent energy White Paper, like its predecessors, stated that: “The starting point for our energy policy is to save energy. It is often the cheapest way of reducing carbon emissions, certainly in the short-term.”
We now have a visionary and challenging renewables strategy in the UK, which will see a tenfold increase in renewable energy, and draw in funding of £100 million. Yet energy efficiency still seems to be buried in the bowels of Defra. There is no serious plan and no serious money.
What is the problem? I know that energy efficiency, and the multiple small steps it requires, it is not as exciting as the shiny new renewables technolgies. But it is a better investment. It delivers cheaper carbon savings. And it can be socially progressive. Surely it is time for a serious policy?

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