IGF 2025 Open Forum #78 Shaping the Future with Multistakeholder Foresight

Speakers: 

• Anriette Esterhuysen (on-site), Senior Advisor, Association for Progressive Communications (APC), South Africa, African Group
• 'Gbenga Sesan (on-site), Executive Director, Paradigm Initiative, Nigeria, African Group
• Julia Pohle (online), Research Group Co-Lead, Berlin Social Science Center, Germany, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)

Moderators:

• On-site: Philipp Schulte, Senior Policy Officer, Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation (BMDS), Germany, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
• Online: Lars Radscheidt, Policy Advisor, Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)

After the moderator, Mr Schulte, welcomed the guests and delivered the introductory remarks, Julia Pohle presented Strategic Foresight as a method to assist policymaking. Through foresight, future scenarios are developed. These scenarios do not have to be realistic, but they must be plausible. Commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation (BMDS), a task forces with 15 experts developed scenarios on the future of Internet governance in 2040. The task force reflected the various communities of the multi-stakeholder approach in Internet governance, thus enabling a variety of discussions and robust outputs. To mitigate Eurocentric biases, Ms Pohle conducted interviews with specialists from various world regions, including Anriette Esterhuysen and ‘Gbenga Sesan. Based on Jim Dator’s methodology, the overarching themes of the scenarios were Growth, Collapse, Discipline, and Transformation. Each theme provided an initial set of contextual assumptions to guide the development of the scenarios. The resulting scenarios facilitate discussion of what is and isn't desirable. They also shed light on the risks and opportunities ahead.

Following her personal experiences, Anriette Esterhuysen reflected on the methodology. When she first encountered the method in South Africa in the late 1990s, she found the process “immensely frustrating”, partly due to the necessary level of abstraction. Today, Ms Esterhuysen called for more critical thinking, suggesting that the concept of multi-stakeholderism and how it has evolved should be analysed in depth. She also emphasised that focus group discussions are key to successful foresight. Ultimately, she concluded that strategic foresight is highly valuable for anyone involved in negotiations, whether geopolitical or multi-stakeholder.

In terms of methodology, Gbenga Sesan emphasised how scenarios developed using strategic foresight can serve as a guiding tool. Scenarios can be used as a guide for how to react to the events outlined in them. Regarding the report resulting from the BMDS's foresight activity, Mr Sesan recommended updating the scenarios further to incorporate the most recent political developments, many of which are significant. Lastly, he emphasised a key benefit of foresight: it enables policy makers and stakeholders to be optimistic and consider positive futures rather than being confined to short-term actions.

A key finding of the foresight exercise was that states play a dominant role in almost all scenarios. Julia Pohle flagged that geopolitics and geoeconomics are key factors in the future development of Internet governance. Anriette Esterhuysen argued that this is not a new development. 'States have always had a profound impact on governance inclusivity and should not be seen as undermining multistakeholder ideals.' However, what may be a new development is the diminishing space for meaningful multi-stakeholder participation in policy formats. Ms Pohle added, 'In all these scenarios, we ended up writing possible futures where multi-stakeholder processes are either being hollowed out or completely undermined by corporate and state actors. So, in all these scenarios, multi-stakeholder governance has somehow outlived its promises.'

In order to future-proof the multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance, it must become more engaging. This includes meaningful and forthright policy discussions, which, as Ms Esterhuysen put it, 'may spur controversial debates, but make the governance model more concrete and courageous'. She stated that 'the IGF needs renewal and redesign to tackle difficult questions without seeking consensus on everything'. She proposed 'more participative methodologies, including scenario games, rather than traditional panel formats'.

Philipp Schulte said that the role of the state is not to exclude other stakeholders from governance mechanisms. Instead, he said, 'the state should act as a gardener, ensuring that all stakeholder groups can perform their roles effectively.'

To conclude the Open Forum, Mr Schulte asked each panellist to suggest an action that the German government should implement. Ms Pohle suggested a foresight exercise on the fragmentation of the global, open Internet, as she has observed the practices of major technology companies in creating digital barriers and closed ecosystems. She also called for government representatives to be involved in the next stakeholder process from an earlier stage, so that the scenario developers could understand how their contributions might be received and turned into action, and so that the government could better understand the origins of the scenarios. Ms Esterhuysen proposed that the government play a more active albeit enabling role in multi-stakeholder governance. Mr Sesan reiterated that envisioning a positive future must go hand in hand with actionable items that lay out a clear path from where you are to where you want to be.

A full session transcript can be found here: Open Forum #78 Shaping the Future with Multistakeholder Foresight | Digital Watch Observatory