F.P. Report
ISLAMABAD: AGAHI, Pakistan Node of The Millennium Project, a global futures participatory think tank has been focusing on enhancing futures thinking in the country.
The Pakistan Node, chaired by Puruesh Chaudhary Founder and President of AGAHI founded the Node in 2014 amongst 72 other global Nodes, that constitutes of institutions and individuals that connect local and global perspectives, contributing towards The Millennium Project studies along with developing national research projects.
Chaudhary’s recent research work published by the Journal of Futures Studies that illustrates the incredible futures-oriented awakening in Pakistan acclaimed praise from the Global Futures Community. With the knowledge support from The Millennium Project, AGAHI established the Foresight Lab, a platform that engages the local academia, think tanks and other professionals in developing futures-oriented research with the aim of encouraging a discourse that allows for open, systematic and a participatory process that develops a deeper contextual understanding of the opportunities and risks to the country’s future.
In the research published by the Journal of Futures Studies, Puruesh Chaudhary explains how she and her team put together the first edition of Pakistan State of Future Index in 2017, followed by an updated version issued in 2019. The Pakistan State of Future Index is a 10-year future index composed of more than 30 variables that indicate if the future is getting better of worse. The third edition of the Report on the Pakistan State of Future Index will be published next year in 2023.
“On the United Nations International Day of Democracy, the decisionmakers in the country must take a stock of the foresight capabilities that is required at a time when 33 million Pakistanis are affected by the heavy monsoon rains that have triggered floods and landslides, a scenario as devasting as the one the country finds itself in, it is critical to enhance the capacity of understanding future shocks”, said Puruesh Chaudhary Founder and President AGAHI and Foresight Lab. “In one of the latest reports issued by The Millennium Project explains the degree of criticality of the five UN foresight elements is central to enhancing local capabilities”, Chaudhary further added.
The international foresight community endorses and supports the five foresight elements of ‘Our Common Agenda’ as an integrated system according to a Realtime Delphi study conducted in May- June of this year. These five UN foresight elements include UN Futures Lab, UN Summit on the Future, UN Envoy for Future Generations, Periodic UN Strategic Foresight and Global Threats reports and Re-purposed UN Trusteeship Council as Multi-Stakeholder Foresight Body. “If the five foresight elements in the ‘Our Common Agenda’ are implemented along the lines of our study, it could be the greatest advance for futures research and foresight in history”, said Jerome Clayton Glenn, CEO of The Millennium Project.
AGAHI’s work has been appreciated by The Journal of Futures Studies, which is a globally oriented, trans-disciplinary refereed journal. Its mission is to develop high-quality, futures-oriented research and thinking, based on the evolving knowledge base of Futures Studies/Foresight.
AGAHI is an award-winning organization as a leading innovator of information and knowledge sharing platforms and for its communication strategies. A not-for-profit organization established in 2011 under the Society Registration Act 1860. Its primary function is to create non-paid communication strategies, content intelligence structures, development collaterals, researchoriented tech tools, and training programmes for diverse sectors and organizations.
AGAHI encourages and advises individuals and institutions in pursuing and supporting initiatives to improve the state of development in Pakistan. It works on developmental frameworks facilitating information and knowledge sharing platforms on understanding challenges in global perspective.
