Foresight in Action: The IAEA Safeguards Symposium

In early 2022, our colleagues at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reached out to N Square to design a futures engagement for their 2022 Symposium on International Safeguards: Reflecting on the Past and Anticipating the Future. The IAEA is integral to nuclear safety and security, charged with carrying out programs to maximize the contribution of nuclear technology to society while verifying its peaceful use through safeguards, as stipulated in the Treaty on the NonProliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

The request from the symposium organizing team was to lead a scenario effort focused on the IAEA operating environment in the year 2057 (their 100th anniversary) with a group of stakeholders from the international safeguards community. Every four years the Safeguards Symposium serves as an important milestone where nuclear experts and stakeholders from around the world gather to discuss the current state of safeguards. For this reason, it was important that this work pushed the community to explore the impacts and implications of key drivers and trends not just of today, but 30 years into the future. Given N Square’s focus on foresight and design we were perfectly positioned to support this work.

We brought in our core foresight partner, the School of International Futures (SOIF), to lead the multistakeholder scenarios effort; we also brought in long-time design partners at Altimeter Design Group for the immersive design elements. Recruiting and managing crosssector partners to advance work in the nuclear field is what we do best at N Square and this collaboration was no different.

The “Beyond Human” card from the Drivers 2057 deck. Designed by Altimeter, the deck is an invaluable tool for exploring the key contextual forces that are shaping the future operating environment for international safeguards in the run-up to the year 2057. The deck invites users to generate mini-scenarios to surface assumptions, identify opportunities, and expose blindspots. Using the deck, the safeguards community can rehearse different versions of the future and design more adaptive strategies for dealing with the rapidly changing context in which it operates.

In the months leading up to the symposium, our team of collaborators convened 35 participants from 17 organizations, comprising nuclear experts, scientists, researchers, and next-generation foresight practitioners from around the world. We led the group in a horizon scanning effort looking for relevant signals of change across sectors, then the process of identifying drivers and trends that could impact the world of 2057, and finally the creation of creative scenario narratives designed to push the thinking of the safeguards community. This work culminated in a takeaway set of “driver cards” specific to safeguards, the construction of three experiential “futures rooms,” and presentations about the work and process from the main stage each day at the symposium.

In a final plenary live poll, roughly 80 percent of symposium participants said that they find foresight work valuable and feel that more is needed. Indeed, the outputs of this particular work are already informing various efforts and being carried forward by others in the safeguards community. We are grateful to the IAEA Safeguards Symposium organizing team for inviting N Square to support a project that helps embed futures thinking tools, methods, and approaches in the everyday work streams of nuclear professionals.