About the Project
Thailand has significant assets to become an innovation-based economy. Particularly, it has adopted the Bio-Circular-Green Economic Model (BCG) as a new development model for sustainable growth and inclusiveness, capitalising on the country’s strengths in biodiversity and cultural richness. Such sustainable growth requires a good understanding of new technological developments, the systemic nature of innovation, and the impact of policy implementation. Used by the UK Government, Foresight skills and roadmapping are closely tied to priority-settings and policy developments.
The British Council, Food Innopolis, National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), and Cranfield University, UK, previously worked on the Foresight for Food Project, which is later developed to this Foresight into BCG Economy Project where the focus is expanded to the 4 BCG sectors namely 1) Food and Agriculture, 2) Health and Wellbeing, 3) Environment, and 4) Tourism, with a consideration for circular economy.
Objectives
- to build capacity on foresight skills and develop a framework and strategic roadmap for Thai policymakers, universities, and research institutions in creating a better-informed education, research and innovation policy and improve the implementation of innovation plans
- to share framework and tools with partners in ASEAN to work together on the strategic roadmap for the region and identify areas of commonality as well as intersectionality
Project activity
First in-person workshop to develop Roadmap under Foresight into the BCG Economy Project
The British Council Thailand and Food Innopolis, NSTDA brought together 50 stakeholders from the food and agriculture sector, from academics, entrepreneurs to policy makers to learn Foresight techniques from UK experts. The participants worked together for three intensive days sharing their expertise and insight to develop a long term vision and define key actions required for this very important sector of Thailand to remain competitive and sustainable over a 20+ year future horizon.
We found that climate change and health consciousness came out among the top key drivers.
Ultimately, this information will be used to develop national roadmaps which will be driven forward by policymakers. This was the first in-person training in over 2 years with Cranfield University flying in from the UK. The project team took over 8 months for preparation with countless backup plans amidst changes in Covid-19 and travel restrictions. The in-person element was needed in this kind of workshop because it allows for deeper discussions and debate and engagement from the entire workshop participants as well as networking opportunities which can lead to further and more meaningful collaborations.
Foresight into the BCG Economy: Food & Agriculture Series - Dissemination of Project Result and Policy Discussion
Engage with key policymakers and the UK Foresight experts on how they have applied the Foresight methodology to support the development of vision and roadmap which sets out a pathway for the transition to a BCG economy in the food and agriculture sector in Thailand and the country’s ambition of transforming to a value-based and innovation-driven economy and how the result of the foresight workshop will feed into the policy.
Watch the Facebook live record here
