Foresight for food systems helps provide a long-range perspective on the main drivers, trends and uncertainties in the local and regional food systems and their implications for the people and the environment. Bringing key stakeholders together to explore alternative scenarios and transformation pathways is an important aspect of the foresight process.

This project seeks to use foresight activities in Nepal to inform and improve the future of food systems at a time when a new governance structure is taking shape in the country. It builds upon an earlier project that mapped the food systems in Nepal and explored the major drivers, trends, and uncertainties in the system. The food system mapping exercise showed that the recent creation of a federal system in Nepal with three levels of governance—central, provincial and municipal—offers both opportunities and challenges for the future of the food system in the country.

Objectives
The contractor will carry out a series of stakeholder dialogues and participatory foresight and scenario building exercises with local community and the federal, provincial and local level officials, and other key different actors in food systems of province 2 in Nepal to find answers to the two questions:

a. How to foster greater synergies between federal, provincial and local governments to build a more resilient food system?
b. How to make the government more responsive to the current and future needs of the local community, especially, the women and the smallholder farmers?
The project will focus on Province 2 of Nepal because of greater interest in foresight exercises shown by both the municipal and the provincial level policy-makers in this province and its importance to Nepal’s food security. Province 2 has traditionally been the bread-basket of Nepal.