Locations
Pasifika Futures
Navigating Development with Regional Wisdom
The Pasifika Futures Report will begin to build new ways of exploring possible futures for Pacific Island nations and their people.
We find ourselves in an era in which turbulence and change are unfolding globally across many scales and levels: socially, geopolitically, technologically, and climate-wise.
In a world in which flux is a primary feature, many tools, approaches, and processes no longer work like they once did, as will be detailed in these pages. While we are used to journeying with maps, trails, roads, and landmarks, today's challenges demand that we think beyond these terrestrial guideposts. Just as the Pacific's ancient and modern seafarers learned to navigate our Blue Pacific by reading the stars, currents, and winds, we too must embrace navigation in all its forms - finding our way through uncertainty by reading the signs, understanding patterns, and charting courses through territory that is continuously reinventing itself.
What we offer here is a combination of the familiar and the new, in the hope that new perspectives may lead to new ways of navigation. What is ‘new’ and what is ‘familiar’ will depend on who you, the reader, are.
The report presents 10 broad themes likely to impact the future of the Pacific Islands as a region, as well as the diverse nations and cultures within. Each theme examines signals of change that together comprise key trends shaping the region's future. Each theme also contains wayfinders inspired by the Pacific’s history of navigation. These offer an Indigenous perspective through which existing contexts and challenges may present themselves differently.
You can read the report in full here.
Pasifika Futures Forum
The Pacific Futures Forum will be a flagship event held from 9-14 May 2025. This gathering will convene policymakers, innovators, academia, technical experts, and regional stakeholders to:
- Address pressing and emerging challenges facing the Pacific, including climate resilience, economic diversification, and technological advancement.
- Share insights on future scenarios and strategic pathways for sustainable development.
- Facilitate peer-learning and exchange of best practices in public sector innovation.
- Foster collaboration between governments, NGOs, the private sector, and international partners to co-create actionable solutions.
Pasifika Futures Forum Registration
The Forum is open to the public, and we invite anyone in Suva who may be interested in attending any, or all, of the following sessions to register their interest via the associated links below.
Full Forum information available here.
Youth Workshop - How to be a Pasifika Futurist
This session will serve as both an introduction to futures and foresight and an interactive workshop. Participants will be guided through a foresight process tailored to our region, culminating in the creation of artifacts. These artifacts will be showcased throughout the forum, allowing other participants to engage with and reflect on the insights generated.
9 May 2025
10:00 - 15:00
Pacific Islands Forum
Pasifika Futures - Honouring Girmit Day
As we mark Girmit Day in 2025, we honour the past while envisioning a brighter future. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) will host a special event that engages participants in co-creating future policies and systems, fosters truth, reconciliation, and social cohesion in Fiji, unites the diverse cultures of Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia, and aligns with Fiji's and the Pacific's vision for the future, linked to the UN's Pact for the Future.
12 May 2025
5pm onwards
Fiji Museum
Pasifika Futures Forum
13-14 May
09:00 - 17:00 each day
Strategies for Wayfinding in Time
Panel on understanding Pacific concepts of time as cornerstone to navigating the unfolding future.
13 May 2025
09:50 - 11:00
Pacific Islands Forum
Stewarding for Tomorrow: Transforming Governance
Panel on embedding long-termism in governance not just as a technical fix, but as a deep cultural and institutional shift. From reimagining institutions and accountability mechanisms to drawing on Indigenous wisdom and futures thinking, we will examine what it takes to build governance systems that serve generations to come.
13 May 2025
11:30 - 13:00 (followed by lunch)
Pacific Islands Forum
Imagination as Data for Policymaking
Fireside chat exploring how imagination can be as a vital input—alongside evidence and analysis—and expand what’s possible in policy, helping us design for futures that don’t yet exist. With Dr. Gina Cole, Writer and Manaini Rokovunisei, Policy Advisor, Pacific Island Forum Secretariat.
13 May 2025
14:30 - 15:00
Embedding Foresight in Government Institutions
13 May 2025
15:00 - 16:30
Pacific Islands Forum
This workshop will explore how foresight practices can be integrated into government institutions to improve strategic decision-making and long-term planning. Through practical examples, participants will learn how foresight tools can help governments align their actions with long-term goals, fostering resilience and sustainability for the future.
Igniting Public Imagination for Civic Engagement
13 May 2025
15:00 - 16:30
Pacific Islands Forum
Foresight Case Studies from Around the World
14 May 2025
09:15 - 10:30
Grand Pacific Hotel
This panel will showcase inspiring examples of how institutions globally have leveraged foresight at local, national, and regional levels. Through diverse case studies, it will spark new ideas on applying futures thinking to address complex challenges and shape more resilient, forward-looking systems.
Talanoa: Bridging Generations, Shaping Futures
14 May 2025
11:00 - 12:30
Grand Pacific Hotel
Set around a kava circle in 2050, this interactive dialogue between youth and elders explores intergenerational wisdom and imagination. Together, we will map new pathways for future resilience grounded in shared stories, values, and visions.
Mō Kā Uri: A Māori Approach to Community-Led Future-Making
14 May 2025
13:30 - 15:00
Grand Pacific Hotel
Join us to explore "Mō Kā Uri" (For Our Descendants), an indigenous approach to future-making developed by the Māori tribe Ngāi Tahu. This workshop reveals how one simple yet profound question—"What is the world you want to leave behind for your mokopuna (descendants)?"—became the foundation for building a collective tribal vision for 2050. Participants will discover practical processes, tools, and methodologies that enabled broad community engagement across age groups.
Future of Civil Service
14 May 2025
13:30 - 15:00
Grand Pacific Hotel
This policy roundtable explores how the role, structure, and culture of the civil service must evolve to meet the challenges of the 21st century and be grounded in the real impact and aspirations for each society and economy. Participants will contribute to co-designing what a good experience of common life events could look like for their citizens, followed by the characteristics and capabilities required in public institutions to meet those needs, now and into the future.
Futures of Pacific Identities and Stories
14 May 2025
15:15 - 16:45
Grand Pacific Hotel
This dialogue explores the evolving futures of Pacific identities through the lens of culture, storytelling, and intergenerational voice. Centering Pan-Pacific perspectives, the session brings together diverse speakers to reflect on how heritage, lived experience, and imagination can shape more inclusive, connected futures for the region.
Futures Forum - Event Closing
Join us to round out a fruitful three days of talanoa and camaraderie.
Things of the Future
Before something is made, it must be imagined.
Things of the Future is a call for makers and thinkers who want to lend their voice and vision to the creation of the future of Pacific Oceania. There is so much unsettling change in this region, our home, caused by forces beyond our control. But there are also seeds of a future we have not yet created, as well - new ideas that can stretch what is possible, as well as an understanding that traditional and indigenous ways of knowing can be a path into a future that is better for all.
The challenge served as an invitation to engage with these strands, to weave them into possible future worlds, and then to make that world real, by creating a single artefact that might exist in these promising, frightening, imaginative, unbelievable, grieving, wild, beautiful, and/or hopeful possible future realities.
Things of the Future help shake loose and release the old futures many of us feel trapped in, and to illuminate the many possibilities that have not yet been born. Some things will be featured in the UNDP Pasifika Futures Report, which will be circulated globally.
Selected art pieces will be commissioned for inclusion in the Pacific Futures Report and featured in a digital exhibition.
Some selected pieces below.
