Every year on December 2nd UNESCO declares World Futures Day, a day to put the future on the agenda.
The urgent & complex challenges we face as a global population require collaboration, courage but above all a long-term vision and strategy. On Worlds Futures Day, countries from around the world gather in Paris to align policies, launch collaborations and work on a collective vision to make a better future. This year’s focus is on 3 important topics: an inclusive world, future generations and more resilience.
We absolutely can make a difference but that requires boldness, solidarity, agility and smart thinking in order to prepare for the challenges and needs of the future through education, research, science, technology, innovation, and culture.
World Futures Day highlights the universality of human anticipatory activities, nurtures collective intelligence processes, promotes and increases the research of futures thinking and its application in different contexts.
UNESCO encourages the dissemination of futures literacy as a capability-based approach to development – a skill accessible to each and every individual. Finding and implementing more sustainable and participatory approaches to development in this decade will be key to ensure effective and inclusive decision-making worldwide.
What is Futures Literacy (FL)?
FL is a capability. It is the skill that allows people to better understand the role that the future plays in what they see and do. People can become more skilled at ‘using-the-future’, more ‘futures literate’, because of two facts. One is that the future does not yet exist, it can only be imagined. Two is that humans have the ability to imagine. As a result, humans are able to learn to imagine the future for different reasons and in different ways. Thereby becoming more ‘futures literate’.
