Dealing with pandemics is always an enormous challenge. We have seen far too many failures and far too few successes. Coping with “uncertainties” requires an ability to imagine the “unknown”. This in turn helps us prepare for what is to come. Scenario building is an exercise to this end.
Many organisations use “Scenario planning” to address different kinds of concerns in the face of an uncertain future. ASEF-ASAP (Accurate Scenarios, Active Prepardeness) is one of a kind. To diversify its perspective, ASEF brings together people from numerous walks of life from across Asia and Europe.
Every scenario tells a story in future about what MAY happen and not what WILL happen. Each story starts with a premise and develops a specific context for future. These scenarios do NOT foretell the future. How the future plays out will be different from what we imagined in a specific scenario. But when we take all three scenarios together, they cover the range of the possible.
The ASEF scenario-building process
All three scenarios are developed through a participatory process involving a range of participants from health and non-health sectors, with a singular purpose - to develop strategies for pandemic preparedness.
Time horizons, driving forces and uncertainties form a logic that becomes the basis of each scenario. The purpose of each scenario is not to foretell the future - but to prepare us to deal with the pandemics of the future.
The scenarios in a nutshell
Grey Paradise
In Grey Paradise, the development agenda in Asia and Europe is dominated by global political structures, redistributed resources and economic control by authorities. Step by step, continuing crises lead governments to increasingly put their faith in international regimes. This technocratic answer to financial, ecological and security challenges enables significant progress. Asian countries, fuelled by continued economic expansion, gain more power and increasingly dominate the international scene. Authoritarian governance becomes the global role model. Such global governance enables much progress in many areas but also evokes increasing dissatisfaction among large sectors of the population, leading to protests, apathy and new forms of disease.
MosaInc.
In MosaInc., developments in Asia and Europe are characterised by weak political structures, resources that are used as commodities and economic self-interest. In a series of economic, natural and human disasters and crises, political structures fail to provide an effective response. Budgetary room for manoeuvre gradually shrinks. People turn to self-organisation and civil society organisations and businesses take over services that are no longer provided by public institutions. The dispersion of power leads to a mosaic of actors and structures, in which firms and corporations are the strongest players. Open and globalised markets and societal segregation are features of this innovation-rich future, challenged by many inequalities and security problems.
GloCal Blocs
In GloCal Blocs, Asia and Europe are ruled by smaller regional or national political structures that use resources for their own development and to promote regional economic interests. The global drive for development leads to stiff competition for scarce (natural) resources between groups of states – the GloCal Blocs. Food becomes a new central element in this power struggle. Despite some collaboration between different blocs, conflict rises and erupts.