The current project, Infectious Diseases: preparing for the future, looks ahead10–25 years. Its aim has been to assess the future threat of diseases in plants, animals and humans, and to develop a vision of how those challenges could be managed through new systems for disease detection, identification and monitoring (DIM).
Africa has been a key consideration, in line with the priorities of the UK presidencies of the G8 and EU in 2005. This report brings together all of the African strands of the project.
In 2008 the Water Research Commission initiated a project to develop ‘Water Sector Institutional Landscape in 2025 Scenarios’. The aim was to build knowledge about key drivers and uncertainties related to the future of the South African water sector. A diverse group of stakeholders contributed to the development of the drivers, which translated into different scenarios and associated stories that have potential implications for social and economic development, as well as for the management of water resources and water services. The four scenarios were derived from a matrix with two axes that represent the ability of the decision-making paradigm of water institutions to deal with complexity, and the reconciliation of environmental, social and economic demands of present and future generations (sustainability).
The Wise Tortoise scenario describes a sector which deals with complexity and is sensitive to sustainability issues, whereas the Ignorant Ostrich scenario describes the opposite conditions.