The Critical Futures Program (CFP) will examine urgent issues facing the nation in a technologically-driven but environmentally challenged world.
It will seek to enhance the competence of Filipinos, as individual and collective actors, to use digital technology to achieve inclusive and sustainable development.
The CFP will undertake research on vital national and global concerns; foster dialogue among stakeholders; develop policy recommendations and project designs.; build capacities that will hasten the pace of inclusive and sustainable national development.
Initially, CFP will focus on three key areas:
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- Strategic Foresight for the Development and Governance – To use participatory scenario building, causal layered analysis, backcasting and other strategic foresight tools and techniques in desiging and delivering development projects and public policies.
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- Digital Horizons – To consider digital futures for the country and recommend strategies, policies, stardards and frameworks to achieve the preferred digital futures.
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- Future Leaders – To develop the next generation of leaders who are competent in strategic foresight and skillful and innovative in the use of digital technologies to achieve social-political-economic change.
CFP activities within these areas will fall into three clusters:
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- Research;
- Seminars, Workshops, Colloqia and,
- Capacity building.
Researchers, experts and students from various UP units will be tapped to participate in all UP CFP undertakings. Colloquia and Capacity Building activities will be held in multiple Constituent Universities. (CUs)
The CFP is committed to the notion of a ‘futural public sphere’ – in which there is the widest possible public engagement with the widest possible repertoire of imagined futures.
Aside from expanding scholarly knowledge, a critical futures program will also help end the politics of despair that has gripped Philippine politics. Many opine that Filipinos’ exasperation over government shortcomings ) have led them to favor strongman rule over democracy. Prof Em Randy David believes that an antidote to “charismatic leaders who can mesmerize crowds with visions and actions” is the “re-enchantment of political life,” reminding citizens of their power to create their preferred future
