Strategic Foresight Group visited Stockholm during World Water Week in August 2018.

On the occasion of the visit, consultations were held with Mr Yves Leterme, former Prime Minister of Belgium and currently Secretary General of International IDEA on the progress of democracy. Mr Leterme briefed SFG on the strides that democracy has made in the last few years compared to the situation of a few decades ago. He said that there are setbacks in the recent past due to the growth of nationalism. However, in the longer run democracy has proved to be resilient. 

Author Julie Lindahl was more sceptical about the risk to democracy due to the rise of right wing extremist forces in Sweden and other parts of the world. 

Besides the discussions on democracy, SFG also attended various meetings under the auspices of the World Water Week.

SFG, along with Swiss and Swedish governments and the Global Water Partnership, hosted a workshop to transfer the management of Blue Peace Middle East initiative to the stakeholders in the region, with participation from around 25 experts and media persons from Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. This was the third in a series of meetings convened with a view to take final decisions on the transfer of management. At the meeting, it was decided that management of the initiative would be transferred from January 2019 to a specially created regional network, with a representative Managing Committee and Coordination Office provided by the Turkish Water Institute (SUEN) in Istanbul. A major outcome of the workshop was that for the first time, a regional mechanism is being established for collaborative management of water resources in the Middle East.

Photos from the visit can be found here:SFG in Stockholm

Conference Report can be found here: An Unprecedented Opportunity; Blue Peace in the Middle East