The Asia-Pacific region is fast growing and fast adapting. The nexus of geopolitical, economic, natural, and biological risks has heightened uncertainty across the region. Their intersection with ongoing global volatility, a looming recession and the impacts of climate change continues to intensify these interconnected challenges. New modes of long-term and cross-disciplinary thinking are required to inform adaptive and anticipatory approaches to policy, programming, and governance. 

Through the RBAP Regional Horizon Scanning Initiative, the UNDP RBAP Strategic Foresight Network strives to introduce insights from foresight – rooted in collective intelligence and made relevant through extensive sensemaking – to embed more anticipation into existing decision-making processes. 

This bi-annual exercise seeks to continually monitor and analyse development trends, risks, and uncertainties within the Asia-Pacific region to produce insights for UNDP Country Offices to consider when designing future-fit policy and programming. 

The UNDP Regional Horizon Scanning Initiative 2.0 (HS 2.0) builds from the inaugural edition of the RBAP Regional Horizon Scanning Initiative (September-December 2021) by further exploring identified signals and risks, while building on methodological best practices and lessons learned. This includes work to understand the implications of the signals for policy and programming, as well as to strategically analyse weak signals and emerging trends relevant to the region. 

This year, to advance ongoing engagement with findings, as well as facilitate ongoing monitoring and integrated sensemaking of challenges and opportunities raised through both Horizon Scanning exercises, their findings and insights are presented in a hybrid, phased and dynamic manner. Please find the online signals noted in this report on UNDP’s Data Futures platform here: data.undp.org/rbaphorizonscanning/