Thanks, Wilbert. I appreciate the distinction you make between the absence of foresight and the underuse of foresight with sufficient timing, depth, and intent. That feels right, as many evaluations already contain fragments of future thinking, but they are often introduced too late or held too lightly to reshape the evaluative frame itself.
Your adaptation example is powerful because climate and nature-based systems expose the limits of backward-looking judgement. In those contexts, the question is not only whether an intervention delivered results, but whether it strengthened the capacity of communities and ecosystems to navigate futures that are unstable, uneven, and politically contested.
I also like your image of evaluation as both compass and horizon scanner. It raises an important challenge for us as evaluators...are we simply documenting adaptation after the fact, or are we helping communities, implementers, and decision-makers recognise which pathways remain viable as risks cascade? For me, that is where future-informed evaluation becomes not just methodological, but ethical. It asks evaluation to serve resilience, justice, and agency in the face of futures that are already arriving.
RE: From Hindsight to Foresight: How Evaluation Can Become Future-Informed
Kenya
Steven Lynn Lichty
Managing Partner
REAL Consulting Group
Posté le 29/04/2026
Thanks, Wilbert. I appreciate the distinction you make between the absence of foresight and the underuse of foresight with sufficient timing, depth, and intent. That feels right, as many evaluations already contain fragments of future thinking, but they are often introduced too late or held too lightly to reshape the evaluative frame itself.
Your adaptation example is powerful because climate and nature-based systems expose the limits of backward-looking judgement. In those contexts, the question is not only whether an intervention delivered results, but whether it strengthened the capacity of communities and ecosystems to navigate futures that are unstable, uneven, and politically contested.
I also like your image of evaluation as both compass and horizon scanner. It raises an important challenge for us as evaluators...are we simply documenting adaptation after the fact, or are we helping communities, implementers, and decision-makers recognise which pathways remain viable as risks cascade? For me, that is where future-informed evaluation becomes not just methodological, but ethical. It asks evaluation to serve resilience, justice, and agency in the face of futures that are already arriving.