I527-290 ESRIF Final Report (WEB).indd - European Commission

5.4.3 Identifi cation and prioritisation of key trends (or alternatively: key external variables):
This was done by ESRIF Integration Team members via an e-mail questionnaire and at a WG5 workshop. Subsequently the
results were checked against the state-of-the-art scan; as can be seen from Table 1 we identifi ed 25 key trends in recent
relevant foresight work. The result of the comparison is that, with some reservation for Demography where only certain aspects
of migration and diseases featured 7 , the ESRIF foresight work was well in line with the state-of-the-art.
Had the state-of-the-art material been available earlier it could have been of great help in identifi cation of trends. As for
prioritisation, however, it is key for the ESRIF relevance of the ensuing sets of scenarios (or however one chooses to make use
of identifi ed key trends) that this is fi rmly ESRIF based.
The trends thus identifi ed as most important by ESRIF WG5 were the following:
Global economy
- Technological developments
- Complexity & interdependency
- Cyber space life styles
- Energy scarcity
EU’s wider neighbourhood
- Climate change leading to environmental degradation
- Social dysfunction in EU’s wider neighbourhood
Social cohesion in EU
- Exclusion & radicalisation – ‘indigenous’ population
- Ibid – ‘immigrant’ population
Global politics
- Multi-polar world
- Post-Westphalian era
Drafting of context scenarios
It is possible to base foresight work on identifi ed and prioritised trends – perhaps labelled as in the standard business strategy
exercise, opportunities and threats. Developing context scenarios based on key trends does, however, have many advantages.
Thus scenarios developed as logically compelling narratives can help in understanding how trends may interact to cancel out,
modify, or amplify one another. They may also help in identifying how possibly emerging novel trends or singular events (like
a major terrorist attack) may alter henceforth prevailing understandings of the relationships between key trends.
In developing the ESRIF context scenarios the following criteria were applied:
Relevance – the work should inform the specifi c context it is commissioned for. Therefore it should start with the most
salient contextual factors (key trends) determining the scope for European security research priority setting. In principle the
list above was used, albeit not slavishly.
Plausibility – the scenarios should be reconcilable with processes of change starting from today’s situation and developing
in internally consistent ways.
Challenge – the scenarios should be able to produce a new and original perspective on the issues under consideration8 .
Representativity (spanning) – the scenarios should be challenging also as a set in the sense of being as diff erent as possible
(subject to the above criteria) from one another9 .
7 The most well-known demographic trend, ageing population, can also be said to be a well-understood certainty that
should be included in all scenarios. At least one other WG has brought the shrinking work-force up as a challenge.
8 The concept “challenge’ here applies to both risks and challenges as these concepts are used in ESRIF.
9 This builds on criteria from Eriksson and Weber (2008), p. 475.
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