Low carbon futures (Qatar)

Qatar may be at a crossroads in environmental history. With the world’s third-largest natural gas reserves its wealth is huge, but vulnerable to international climate policy or market effects. And for the renewable transition, there is a clear advantage for the first mover. All this points to a Foresight-III approach to collaborative learning, thinking, creating and doing.

In this full two-day workshop 58 delegates were taken on a journey to create a vision of a low carbon future in Qatar, identify challenges and barriers, and develop pathways towards a low carbon transformation. All delegates were thought-leaders in their own field, such as energy industries, carbon management, policymaking, infrastructure design and delivery.  The workshop challenged current views and called for a system-wide approach to understanding the underlying challenges, barriers and opportunities. The program was sponsored by the Josoor Institute on behalf of the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy. More information –

• Towards a Low Carbon Future in Qatar Summary Report 2018

• Mohammed S, Cheryl Desha, Ashantha Goonetilleke, Joe Ravetz (2022). Narrative futures of a low carbon transition for hydrocarbon rentier states: Case of Qatar. Futures. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2022.103021

What is the synergistic contribution?

We have a problem…. energy climate issues are complex and inter-connected – but policy and markets are generally simple and short-sighted. There are many actors involved, business, finance, government, designers, science, innovation, infrastructure: and many factors, such as supply chains, markets, finance, regulations, skills. All these interact in different ways – social, technical, economic, ecological, political, cultural and so on. How to put it all together?

This calls for new ways of collaborative learning, thinking, creating and working – a ‘collective climate intelligence’ or ‘deeper environmental mind’. Such intelligence can work in different layers or ‘modes’:

• ‘Mode-I’ ‘clever’ energy systems: functional / techno-economic systems of energy supply & demand
• ‘Mode-II’ ‘smart’ energy systems: evolutionary / adaptive energy / climate markets, competition, innovation – along with exploitation, myopic displacement, market fixing & weaponization of energy systems
• ‘Mode-III’ ‘wise’ energy systems: these work on the principles of collective energy intelligence, with integrated socio-technical systems which can learn, think, create and collaborate.

Here we use the synergistic approach and Pathways Toolkit for mapping each of these modes, and designing future pathways to address the energy / climate challenge, from local to global.