As the second part of the annual International Security Forum Bonn (ISFB) of CASSIS, the Bonn Future Lab was developed as a transfer format between science, practice and the public. Together with our partners, we pay more attention to global megatrends in addition to those topics that particularly determine the transatlantic agenda and are therefore part of the preceding Main Day of the ISFB, which is traditionally organized by the Henry Kissinger Professorship. In 2023, the ISFB could once again be held under the patronage of Minister President Hendrik Wüst as the largest security policy event in North Rhine-Westphalia and all neighboring federal states.
At BFL, we combine Bonn's academic strengths in security, strategy, development and sustainability research with the important insights that we can gain through the use of strategic foresight methods. To this end, the BFL combines an international, transdisciplinary conference on strategic sustainability topics with a two-day strategic foresight workshop. In this workshop, 30 to 40 young experts are introduced to techniques and methods of strategic foresight as "leaders of the day after tomorrow", which in turn are applied to the topic of the BFL conference day in order to enable the consideration of different futures. In total, we were able to bring together over 100 participants from all continents in 2023.
Last year's BFL focused on the topic of "Global Energy Transitions". It is clear that the strategic challenges, risks and opportunities that are already arising from the changing energy landscape make the study of global energy transitions (sic) an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary topic. In addition to an overview of the various focal points of discussion at our conference day, the BFL report also contains reflections from various participants on this important strategic sustainability topic as well as a detailed presentation of the analyses of possible futures developed in the workshop. The two high-level BFL keynotes by Prof. Dr. Detlef Stolten (Forschungszentrum Jülich) and Dr. Dawud Ansari (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik) for the International Days of the University of Bonn. Video recordings of both lectures are also available on the YouTube channel and on the CASSIS website.
We are very pleased that the list of BFL partners is growing and that we have been able to shape the format in 2023 in close cooperation with two renowned organizations: the German Institute for Economic Research (IW) and the Institute of Energy Economics at the University of Cologne (EWI). We are also very grateful for the great support we have received from both long-standing and new partners for the realization of the BFL 2023: the International Dialogue Foundation of Sparkasse Bonn, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, the Hanns Seidel Foundation, the Society for Security Policy, the Institut francais Germany, the German Council on Foreign Relations and the Peter Klöckner Foundation have made the realization of this complex international format at the University of Excellence Bonn possible with their individual sponsorships. We would like to sincerely thank all our cooperation partners and the people involved in BFL 2023!
