Mapping the Philippines’ Future: Bridging Local Realities and a National Vision

Facilitated by the UP National College of Public Administration and Governance – Governance Futures Lab (GFL), the workshop gathered provincial and regional officers from Zamboanga Peninsula, Northern Mindanao, Davao Region, SOCCSKSARGEN & BARMM, and CARAGA. Their mission was clear and critical: to translate the broad strokes of the national PAGTANAW 2050 framework into granular, actionable, and region-specific indicators using strategic foresight tools such as Scanning, the Futures Triangle, and Backcasting. Through this process, the workshop sought to transform how local governance approaches the future by moving beyond traditional planning approaches that often react to the “pushes of the present,” such as disasters, resource constraints, and political turnover. Instead, participants were guided to identify the “pulls of the future,” defined as their preferred development scenarios, and to backcast the concrete milestones necessary to achieve them.

SANDIWA underscored that a “one-size-fits-all” approach to national development is insufficient for an archipelago defined by diverse geographic and socio-economic realities. Standardized national indicators, while useful for macro-level benchmarking, often fail to capture the nuanced path dependencies and specific industrial structures of local economies. A national metric on food security may track total rice production, yet it misses the specific bottlenecks identified by SOCCSKSARGEN & BARMM, where the challenge lies not in production but in the logistical paradox of regional surplus amid national scarcity. Similarly, a national water security index might measure potable water access, but fail to anticipate localized threats such as mining runoff and saltwater intrusion in CARAGA, or the rapid urbanization pressures confronting Northern Mindanao.