Serdar, thank you for your contribution. The examples you have drawn from WFP, GEF, CGIAR, and FAO's own foresight work are directly relevant to the discussion. It is encouraging to see these referenced alongside each other, since it reinforces that momentum for integrating foresight and evaluation is genuine, even if practical guidance remains thin. Your three-part framework (capacity building, practical frameworks, and institutional change) reflects a sequence that I think is right. Technical tools alone will not shift practice if the institutional incentives continue to reward retrospective accountability above all else. Evaluation mandates, commissioning processes, and the expectations set by donors are all part of the system that needs to shift. That is why I included the question about what institutional changes would be needed, for it seems to me that this is where the real bottleneck sits, not in the availability of foresight methods per se.
The FAO futures of food and agriculture scenarios report you reference is a valuable resource, and it would be interesting to hear from colleagues whether and how evaluators have drawn on those scenarios in their own work, either for framing evaluations or for contextualising findings. Looking forward to continued exchange.
RE: From Hindsight to Foresight: How Evaluation Can Become Future-Informed
Kenya
Steven Lynn Lichty
Managing Partner
REAL Consulting Group
Posted on 27/03/2026
Serdar, thank you for your contribution. The examples you have drawn from WFP, GEF, CGIAR, and FAO's own foresight work are directly relevant to the discussion. It is encouraging to see these referenced alongside each other, since it reinforces that momentum for integrating foresight and evaluation is genuine, even if practical guidance remains thin. Your three-part framework (capacity building, practical frameworks, and institutional change) reflects a sequence that I think is right. Technical tools alone will not shift practice if the institutional incentives continue to reward retrospective accountability above all else. Evaluation mandates, commissioning processes, and the expectations set by donors are all part of the system that needs to shift. That is why I included the question about what institutional changes would be needed, for it seems to me that this is where the real bottleneck sits, not in the availability of foresight methods per se.
The FAO futures of food and agriculture scenarios report you reference is a valuable resource, and it would be interesting to hear from colleagues whether and how evaluators have drawn on those scenarios in their own work, either for framing evaluations or for contextualising findings. Looking forward to continued exchange.