More about our work in other sectors

Forum for the Future continues to work in many sectors, building on the experience we have built up working with business and central and local government over 15 years. This experience complements our current areas of focus: food, energy and finance.

Information and Communications Technology

ICT is a critical enabler of system change and presents huge opportunities for new sustainable business models, products and collaborations. Forum for the Future has been leading thought and practice in this area since 2000 and the publication of our influential book Digital Futures. Find out more about our work on ICT.

Sustainable Shipping Initiative

Our Sustainable Shipping Initiative brings together some of the biggest names in the maritime sector to plan how it can contribute to – and thrive in – a sustainable future. Its members are based in four continents and include ship owners and charterers, shipbuilders, engineers and service providers, banks, insurers and a classification society. supported by 15 partners from nine countries on four continents.

Cities – Sustainable Bristol

The battle for sustainability will be won or lost in our cities. By 2050 they will be home to seven in ten people, worldwide. But city-regions are complex systems, and serving their food, power, transport and other needs more sustainably will take a range of interventions. Forum has been developing practical experience of this in its Sustainable Bristol Programme. We are working closely with the four local authorities in the West of England to pilot a range of projects with the aim of making it the most sustainable city-region in the UK. Find out more about Forum’s work in Bristol on our website.

The Built Environment

We have a long history promoting sustainable development in the built environment and continue to work with built environment partners to transform the food, finance and energy systems. Our long-running Engineers for the 21st century programme brings together promising engineers from our partner organisations to work on projects which create significant improvements in the sustainability of products, processes and engineering practice. Find out more about our work with the Built Environment sector.

Health

We worked with the UK National Health Service on Fit for the Future, a project which made recommendations on the future of healthcare, and we helped with its 2050 Routemap. We also developed a vision for sustainable healthcare in 2025. Find out more about our work in the Health sector.

Fashion

Our Fashioning Sustainability report sets out the sustainability issues in the clothing supply chain, and Fashion Futures looked ahead to 2025, scoping the future risks and opportunities for the industry. Click here to read more and download the Fashion Futures films and workshop toolkit.

Transport

Our work in the transport sector has included projects with FirstGroup and the Rail Safety and Standards Board on reducing the environmental impact of bus and rail operations, and with Shell on smarter approaches to driving. Most recently our Megacities on the Move project explored the future of sustainable urban mobility, looking at how billions of city-dwellers can access what they need without putting intolerable strains on the planet. Click here to read more, view the Megacities animations and download the toolkit. Read more about our work on transport.

Tourism

We have a large body of work that focuses on sustainable tourism. In Tourism 2023 we helped leading travel companies to explore the future of the UK outbound tourism industry, to create a vision for a sustainable industry which benefits communities in tourism destinations and protects the environment, and to draw up a strategy to achieve it. British Airways, TUI Travel and Thomas Cook are among nine organisations that have pledged to make to this vision a reality. Our Overland Heaven project explored how to encourage low-carbon travel by making it easier to get to Europe by road, rail and ship. Paradise Found is a short but comprehensive report that identified the key elements of a sustainable tourism development, highlighting good practice and showing how they can be both sustainable and profitable. Find out more about our work in Tourism here.

Procurement

Our work on supply chains and procurement aims to deliver sustainability through better buying decisions and collaborative innovation. We have created toolkits that help buyers to make robust product, service and supplier choices: Our Buying a Better World toolkit on sustainable procurement is used by the United Nations and several global corporations, and is recommended by the UK’s Audit Commission and the UK National Health Service. We use visions of the future to inspire ambition and new ways of meeting the customers’ needs, for example in Fashion Futures. We used an innovation to help organisations buy more sustainable food in Best Food Forward. Find out more about our work on Procurement.