In this interview, we hear from Dr Ricardo Borges de Castro, former Adviser on Strategic Foresight, European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC), European Commission and GCSP Associate Fellow. He discusses his path to foresight, futures and COVID-19, and the megatrends and weak signal he sees today.

The past: What brought you to your focus on futures?

It was a very practical reason. I was put in charge of a foresight project – the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS) – in the European Commission’s in-house think tank, and we soon realised that my colleagues and I needed to engage in futures work. We needed to understand better what it was and how to do it. In a sense, it was ‘futures’ that came to me.

The present: How is strategic foresight changing due to COVID-19?

I don’t know if it is strategic foresight that is changing or policy- and decision-maker’s attitudes towards it. With COVID-19 as well as the many crisis that preceded it, almost everyone in the public (and private) sector now understands that we need to be better prepared to anticipate and face future challenges and opportunities. For that, we need strategic foresight. But perhaps the pandemic reminds us that foresight needs to be more agile, flexible, and inclusive.

The future: Could you please highlight one megatrend or weak signal that we should be paying more attention to?

I think we should not pay attention to a single megatrend in isolation (or weak signal), but rather to the interaction and interlinkage between trends. It is in this intersection of trends where change can happen. To give a recent example, the 2015 migration/refugee crisis resulted from a confluence of different trends: climate change, conflict, state fragility or bad governance, and digitalisation. We know what the existing key trends are, but we need to look at them as a whole, also understanding which shifts or impact COVID-19 means for them.

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Ricardo Borges de Castro served as Adviser on Strategic Foresight to the European Political Strategy Centre, the European Commission’s in-house think tank, reporting directly to President Jean-Claude Juncker. Read his full biography