Intelligence for Collective Well-Being, with a Latin American Twist

In these urgent times of polycrises, 2024 Fellows Catalina Dib and Mercedes Barrera (Chile) set out to create a tool that provides strategic knowledge to advance collective well-being – one that is proposed and led from a Latin American perspective. 

Their platform Katari Andes is designed to help leaders and changemakers navigate today’s complexity and rapid change, enabling more informed, just, and future-oriented strategic decisions. 

“We want to provide the foresight community with a robust knowledge and analysis base to support scenario building and more speculative explorations.”

A core component of Katari Andes is the continuous monitoring of signals of change across sectors and disciplines, including emerging technologies, innovative policies, grassroots movements. Pattern recognition and sensemaking are then applied to cluster these signals into ‘solutions’, i.e. emerging patterns that point to reveal real, actionable solutions to global challenges that are already reshaping our world. Each solution is categorized by impact profiles, global threats, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

“We’ve also developed our own framework of global macro threats, rooted in a Latin American perspective. All of this is done in close collaboration with AI tools.” 

As NGFP Fellows, Catalina and Mercedes said they’ve gained greater awareness of the futures field, and a better understanding of what tool could truly make an impact and stand out from what already exists. 

“Some of the insights shared by our mentor Aarathi [Krishnan] were especially valuable in shaping and guiding the direction of the platform.”

They’re currently collaborating with Asociación Latina de Futuros (ALAF), and are seeking more research partnerships with organizations and individuals who share their commitment to collective well-being, futures thinking, and innovation from the Global South. 

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