This week on the Futurists Donna du Pont. I don't predict the future. What we do is
in this space is we understand uncertainty and change, and we work with it in a very focused
and intentional way to advance dialog. Hey there. Welcome back to The Futurist. I'm Rob
Chozick. And this week I'm flying solo because Brett King is out there barnstorming around the
world, as he always is, bringing the vision and ideas of the future to audiences around the
world. That's kind of our mission here. We want to help more people think about the future, and
Brett is tireless in his efforts to do so this week. I've been thinking all about emergencies. I've
been thinking about some of the strange possibilities that may lie in the future. It's no
coincidence. It's not a happy accident that I'm thinking about that we have had a week of
strange announcements from the incoming administration in the United States. The new
president is starting to appoint his cabinet, and in almost every case, the people he's
appointing are people who stand for and vigorously oppose the policies and the organizations
that they're going to be leading. So he's actually putting together not a cabinet, not a team of
rivals, as we've heard in the past about other presidents. But it's a team of loyalists who
collectively are going to be a kind of wrecking ball. And that brought to mind some of the past,
some of the moments from the past. For me, I've been thinking about how ill prepared
President Trump was the last time he was in office and how that led to catastrophes in the
United States and elsewhere in the world. So planning matters, foresight matters. And it makes
it makes a very important difference who you select to do the planning and forecasting. And I
thought in the context of that, it would be helpful for our audience to hear from someone who
has a deep expertize in the subject of foresight and planning and strategy. Our guest today is
Donna DuPont. She's the founder and chief strategist of Foresight and Design at Purple
Compass, which is an advisory based in Canada. And she's also a principal at the School of
International Futures. And Donna focuses on public safety and emergency preparedness and
emergency response. And so I guess I can do no better service to our listeners than to find
someone who's an expert in these subjects, because I think we're all going to need to develop
some expertize in emergency management in just a couple of months when this clown car of
cabinet starts to take office. Well, welcome to the Future is Donna. It's a great pleasure to have
you here. Thank you for joining our show. Thank you for the invitation, Rob. So I thought what
we might do to begin with is learn a little bit more about you. So you work at purple campus.
You actually started Purple Campus. Tell me about the mission of that organization. You know,
some good questions. So I started Purple Campus six years ago, actually seven now just
turned seven. And originally the mission was to support those that were working in public or
private sector who wanted to build futures thinking within their organization. And and so that's
where it started. And then in the last seven years, I've had an opportunity to work on projects
all over the world, supporting organizations and collaborating with a lot of different agencies,
you know, supporting, you know, a lot of work in mostly defense and security. But that's been
broadening out in terms of security, in health security and different climate security, emergency
management and even international development. So all of these agencies are really trying to
cultivate this futures mindset. And so I've been working on a lot of projects around the world to
help them build that internal capacity and capability. And you've done that for provincial
governments in Canada and the national government in Canada, but you've also worked with, I

know, for instance, European agencies as well. Is that right? I have, yes, I have. So I definitely
have partnered with the School of International Futures. It was more being part of their network
where I acted as a principal on a variety of projects for them to help bring in the force. But
because of my background in security, it allowed me to explore those really complex topics
within those projects. And some of the things you've talked about, you've you've got expertize
in public health. I would imagine that extends to pandemics and infectious disease because
that's a big focus for public health. But you've also worked with in the UK, you've worked on
the future of policing and you've also done work with mines like mining. Is that right? Yes. Yes,
there's a lot there. So definitely I have a background in provincial government. I used to work
the public servant. And so, yes, I have a very strong health background, both clinically in the
field and then in government and in public health, specifically in emergency management,
responding to a variety of emergencies like wildfires floods, but also health related
emergencies like infectious disease outbreaks and pandemics. That's been a previous career.
But yes, now within the foresight and design and the work I've been doing the last seven years,
it's been much more broader in terms of working with organizations at the national and
international level and really helping with some of these big challenges, complex global
challenges for organizations. And so it's a very different perspective and seeing what's
happening at that level. And the international level. You're talking about moving really big
machinery. These are big organizations and they represent huge populations. How difficult is it
to get consensus? Is that a big part of your job? To build consensus on what to do? So it's a
process. It's so when you are working with organizations that want to explore futures or use
futures in their, you know, the work that they do, it's a process of understanding the landscape.
Right. And it's a process of engaging different people. So it's. So understanding the landscape
means, you know, taking a look at some of the information you have, what do we know in
terms of the evidence in the system and working with experts say, okay, what's changing in the
system and then starting to then build some sort of have sense making around what's
happening in the system and then engaging other people broadly in terms of having strategic
conversations around specific points in the system where you there's a potential for things to
escalate, where we're seeing a lot of challenges, where there's pressures for the organization,
those are opportunities to go much deeper. And it's a little bit about that. So so one of the
things you're trying to do and what I'm hearing you say is you're trying to solicit opinions and
perspectives from many different, let's say, stakeholders, people who have an opinion. And
yet, I would imagine in a big, complex organization, there are differing opinions, sometimes
probably clashing opinions about what to do or what the nature of the problem is, is how do
you avoid an opinion or how do you avoid a situation where you have two people who are of
equal authority or equal expertize who fundamentally disagree about what the issue is or what
the problem they're facing might be or what the solution might be. How do you manage that as
an outside facilitator? Yeah, that's a really good question. It's it's typically in the setup of
whatever type of workshop that we are engaging in, and it's about setting some ground rules
around how we communicate in that particular workshop, because you will have people with
different perspectives and very strong perspectives, but you want to create a safe, a
psychologically safe space to have these conversations and to really look at the tension points
around that and have dialog about, okay, if it's it's not so much what's, you know, which one is
right But sometimes you have to transport a lot of these contradictions or different opinions.

And so it's creating a safe space for that type of dialog to have those kind of conversations and
to see what new insights you can generate around what it means for the future. And that's part
of the work. It's it's not predicting the future. I, as a person who works in the professional
foresight and future space, I don't predict the future. What we do is in this space is we
understand uncertainty and change, and we work with it in a very focused and intentional way
to advance dialog. Right. And then from that dialog we have new insights and it's mining those
new insights that can shape all kinds of new decisions for the future. Sure, I get that. And that's
of course, that's the goal is to get to the insights. But we live in a world where the leaders of
organizations are often people who are rewarded in their career and get career advancement
by being very decisive, about by by making decisions, even when they don't have the 100% of
the information. And that type of personality is often impatient with too much process and often
feels like it can lead to the solution. I can skip over the problem definition phase because they
already know what to do and what I've found in my own work when I do workshops like this
with organizations, whether they're public sector or private sector is that it's often the leaders
who create the unproductive dynamics in a workshop setting or in a in a, in person setting.
Because, first of all, because of the hierarchy, they speak with greater authority than others in
the room. But then secondly, because of what I just described, they have a kind of a history, a
track record of being rewarded for being very decisive very quickly. But in the process you're
talking about, it's kind of delicate right in the beginning. You want to solicit a lot of different
opinions. You want to get hear from everybody in the organization, top or bottom side, out in
the periphery and so forth, because you might find new information there. And sometimes
those executive leaders are impatient with that process. So tell me a little bit about that. If
you've had an experience like that, how have you managed through that? That's a really great
question because you are right that sometimes leaders need to make decisions, you know,
immediately in the short term with very little information. And that's true. And but foresight is
not. Foresight is a longer, longer process. And so usually when an organization wants to
engage in this type of thinking, the leadership is supporting more of a longer term process. So
they understand agreement up front with them. Yes, it's going to work. And here's what you got
to do and you got to restrain the impulse and let the other people talk. Yeah, well, they
understand that this is going to be probably at minimum, a six month type of engagement
process. Right. And and you'll have different types of activities that gradually build on each
other to advance insights for action. So you're right. So and you want to set the tone right from
the beginning. So I work with my clients and I help them build the internal, you know,
capabilities to kind of manage those dynamics, you know, within the organization. So it's
setting the foundations of this is what this workshop is, is about the expectations. This is how
we have to flatten the power structures. So we want to hear from everyone. We want to
engage external, maybe external accused or external stakeholders and get their perspective
and input. So you're setting the foundation upfront. And if you are having challenges with that,
it does compromise the ability to do good foresight work. Yeah, for sure. No, I get that. I get
that. Basically, they're not going to get what they paid for if they interrupt and dominate the
session and people don't feel safe to express right if they disagree for fear of being judged or a
fear that it might impact their their their job. Now, they're probably people who are not in the
room. When you're doing that kind of work, how do you solicit their input? How do you make
sure that the views of the people out in the field or in the periphery, how do they get their views

represented in the session? Yes, good question. So typically, before you get into a strategic
conversation series where you're doing all kinds of activities, including scenarios, you're there's
an upfront piece, as I mentioned, around understand the landscape. And sometimes as part of
that, it's not just scanning for information and looking at trends and emerging issues, but you're
also interviewing experts. And so you probably want to be very clear about who the experts
are, that you really want some deeper knowledge and perspective and insights. And it's not
just experts that can tell you the trends you want, experts that are in that system, that know
that world really well, and they can tell you what's changing. What are things that are
emerging? What are some of those weak signals of change that we can see that are
happening? We don't know how they're going to evolve, but we know it's a shift. What are
those emerging issues? Can things potentially escalate? So you really want to get at those
experts and you want to know, get different perspectives. So you can do that through
interviews and then bring those insights into a strategic conversation series and have a variety
of different stakeholders work with that knowledge. Now, here in the United States and actually
around the world, this is the year of elections, right? So half the population of the planet voted
in a national election. This year, we've seen a wave of resistance against, you know, I guess,
opposition to the ruling party. Whatever party was in power in almost every country in the world
has either lost share of voters or they've actually been turned out of office. So it's not just a
phenomenon that happened in the U.S. recently, but it's actually happened around the world
this year. So there's a sort of rising tide of people are pushing back. Some of that's economic.
People are pushing back against inflation and prices and they're just punishing whichever party
is in office. But there's a second trend and I think it's relevant to what you just said. The second
trend is that there's also a rising tide of resistance to top down hierarchy and so-called experts.
The idea that, you know, we're going to let the experts make the decision or make the
recommendation and the bureaucracy is going to defer to outside experts. What we'll start to
see is these populist movements, and they're all over the world. Populist movements reject
that expert idea. Now, that's not always great, because sometimes those populist movements
unleash anarchy. You know, they don't know. And and people rebelled against it. What I'm
thinking about right now, as I say that as an example for our listeners, is during the pandemic
around the world, we saw resistance to wearing a mask. A mask was a simple precaution. The
main benefit of the mask was that you didn't sneeze on somebody else or cough on somebody
else. So it minimized the amount of, you know, spreading of the disease that way. It would not
save you, of course, from getting an infection. That's true. But around the world, we saw
people resist that, even though experts around the world like, look, this is a simple precaution
that everyone can take in. If we all do it, it'll help a little bit. People resisted it. They also
resisted taking the vaccine. And there were all sorts of crazy conspiracy theories about
vaccines, people who had absolutely no idea what they're talking about. People had no
understanding of infectious disease and no understanding of vaccines. We're making wild
claims like the vaccine contains a microchip that's going to somehow track you or something.
These are people who don't understand radio technology. They don't understand what
microchips are or how you do a power supply for electronics. They were literally just spouting
nonsense. But these ideas gained a great deal of traction. And I think that's one of the
problems that we have today in media. The democratization of media tools has made it
possible for people with crackpot ideas to spread those ideas around the world very quickly.

And now the crazy people can find each other. All the crazy people who believe that stuff can
find each other and connect. And so you start to see that that emerges as a voice, that
emerges as a point of view. Right. And our tendency, people like you and me, our tendency is
to try to gather all views. Right? We want to make sure everybody's represented because we
think it's important to include all the perspectives. That's how you get by and that's how you
build consensus. But when you invite the views of crackpot populists who have no fundamental
understanding of the dynamics at work here, no history, no expertize, you're actually inviting
chaos into the room because you have a group of people that aren't going to respect the
knowledge or wisdom of the many years of expertize that are represented in the room. How do
you handle that phenomenon, by the way? This is something I struggle with in my own work.
This is a constant challenge wherever I work in the world. So go ahead. Talk about that one. I
know I'm throwing new curveballs here today, but it's kind of a fun conversation for me. That is
a wild curveball, but it's a really important question because you're right. When you're right,
you can't ignore this when you're doing foresight work. Because a lot of times when we're
looking at scanning, we're not just looking at like the geopolitics or the emergencies or the
economics or the tech, because a lot of times people focus on technology and all of that, and
that's important. But you have to look at the social dimensions of what's happening in the
culture and and how they're responding to the shifts happening geopolitically or economically
and the rate of change that's happening and the pressure it's putting on people. And so how
we look at it within a foresight project is that we look at what's happening from a social
dynamic perspective. Where are things escalating, where are their potential for conflicts or
where are the things happening and trying to understand that pattern within the system?
What's driving that? Because that's also very much deeply in systems thinking. So I do a lot of
combination of systems analysis with anticipatory thinking and futures. So when I look at that
kind of social dynamic, it's important to see what is that that loop, that vicious feedback loop
that's happening there, what's driving it, you know, and is there something that we can do to
slow down the speed of growth, or can we do something to balance it out? So it actually by
understanding and going deeper into that dynamic, you can start ask very interesting questions
about the system and which way it's going, how to balance it. And if it were to really be
disruptive, what does that mean for the organization system? What are those cascading
consequences? It seems to me that that's a necessary step just for acceptance alone. You
know, in other words, you might develop a great strategy. You might develop a series of tactics
that will get you to achieve that strategy, that'll get you to the right place. But all that strategy
and tactics is meaningless if you can't get the population to go along with you. And I think this
is one of the places where our bureaucrats tend to fail. They're a little tone deaf when it comes
to talking to people. And of course, politicians are not tone deaf. They understand that. And if
the populace is, you know, resistant to it, they're going to adopt that very quickly. And then that
puts great pressure on the bureaucrats. And I see that at least in this country, I see that quite
frequently where you've got a disconnect between what we call inside the Beltway, you know,
the people that run the national government, that staff the national government and then the
politicians who represent all the all the folks in the rest of the country. Sometimes those
politicians are echoing the populist perspectives. And I think it's very difficult, very bitter, very,
very difficult for a bureaucrat who's used to being listened to by virtue of the fact that they've
done the job for a long time. They know the subject matter and they have some degree of

expertize, but they may lack the charisma to communicate that message in a way that it will be
accepted by a large number of people. So it's a failure of leadership. And so in some respects,
I think what you're working on and the kind of work you do is it's not just about helping develop
the muscle of foresight and planning and strategic thinking. There's another set of muscles
you're developing which are communication tools and leadership ability. How does strategy
and planning dovetail with leadership? How how should our leaders approach the subject of
strategy? It's a good question. So thanks. When you're looking at dresses, that's what we do
on the show is asking, do I have to think about this one? But but you have to think about the
environment we're in right now. We're in a very, you know, volatile type of environment. There's
a lot of changes happening everywhere. It's very complex. There's a lot of uncertainty. And it's
creating a lot of discomfort for people, a lot of anxiety and fear. So leaders need to understand
this and they need to when they're putting together their strategies, first of all, they need to to
understand and to reflect on whether their strategies are a reflected. Are they reflective of the
needs of those that they're serving? For example, there's an empathy element to this in terms
of understanding the needs of different people, perspectives, maybe populations and and what
they fundamentally need. So seeing it through there, you know, as best as you can sense of
seeing it through them, their lens, how they might see things, perceive things, what they need
to feel secure, to feel like there's a future, to feel hope. You know, you need to kind of look at it
from their perspective, especially when you're cultivating and you're designing whatever
strategy, but also in the communication of it. How are you connecting with people? How are
you resonating with things that matter to them? This is very important, right? You're absolutely
right. During the pandemic, I dealt with a group here in California, local business leaders, and
we had a complete shutdown of business. And it was it was killing small businesses. They
couldn't afford to keep paying their rent and so on. And I talked to Kathleen Ferrara, who is the
head epidemiologist for the county of Los Angeles, which represents millions of people, the
very big area here in California. And I said, look, you know, what the business leaders want to
know is what what measures can we take to stay open? What can we do to keep our doors
open? Can you give some guidance on that? It can't just be a blanket like closed closed a
store because the economy is going to collapse if you continue doing that. And she said it's not
my responsibility to tell them what to do to manage the business. I'm not responsible for the
economic well-being. I'm responsible for the public health. And I'm telling you right now, we're
going to keep the place closed. I was really stunned at the complete lack of empathy and
complete lack of understanding and the unwillingness to even contemplate those perspectives
from the people who pay their salary. I was really stunned by that. And of course, it gave me
great insight into the massive level of resentment towards the state government here, you
know, where I'm a huge believer in public safety and of course I comply with all those
recommendations because I don't want to get sick. To me, it makes perfect sense to do those
things. But I understood suddenly I was like, Oh, wow, this is a government that has a
disconnect with the population, the regular citizens. Here they are. They have a need. It's not
being heard. They're being told to do something that, you know, inherently doesn't make
sense. It doesn't feel right to them. And no one's making a good explanation. No one's
attempting to explain why that's going to serve them better or how they're going to come up
with a better outcome Okay, listen, it's time for me to leave, okay? I just go ahead. Now, if
that's important, I want to hear all about it. Go. Oh, it's so important. Because what you're

saying here is that that kind of behavior of not actually thinking from the perspective of, you
know, those that are being impacted by our policies or, you know, that are or strategies that are
being implemented. What's happening is people are having a distrust in the system, you know,
and and so they don't feel confident, they don't feel heard, they don't feel valued. And they're
disconnecting and they just don't listen, I think. And so this is the reason for this this global
phenomenon. Popular people are like, I don't trust the government. I trust the experts. It's not
okay. Let me do this before we go to a break. What we'll have to do is get to know our guests a
little bit more. And so we ask a series of short questions. So these are can be like a1a1 word
answer or a very short answer, one sentence answer. I'm going to ask you a few questions
about how you came to think about the future. And so this is the lightning round. Here we go.
The first question in the lightning round for Donna du Pont. Tell me about a futurist who has
impressed you or shaped your perspective about the future. Someone who's inspired you.
Wow. This is going to be hard because I studied futurist thinking and I've studied a lot of
different methodologies. So someone who has shaped my perspective of the future, I would
have to say that. It would be Alvin Toffler, not author of Future Shock. Yeah, great. Still relevant
today. So relevant. I actually read I was rereading that book a couple years ago and I was like,
yes, yes, yes. This is this is actually what's happening today, the accelerations and the, you
know, questioning whether people can adapt to the change and what happens. We have to
adapt too quickly. What does that do to a society? You know, it's really relevant if people are
irrelevant. I haven't heard. Have a listen to Future Shock. How to read Future Shock. The
book's 50 years old, but it's such a worthwhile read. He was on that. He he saw the long term
trends. Okay, next question. What was your first experience or exposure to science fiction?
What's the first science fiction show or book or story that you read? Yeah. I would say the first
book, science fiction books that really resonated with me where I really felt something as the
the canticle for Liebowitz. Oh, great. It's a really old book. But I remember reading it when I
was like 12, and I remember just, like, just being so, you know, I was just so immersed in the
story of, you know, it was very dystopian, very dark. But there was this, you know, beam of
light towards the future and hope and trying to navigate, you know, for some meaning and truth
in the world. And and I think that just really inspired me. Yeah, the grocery the grocery of from
the past that created a kind of like, you know, belief system and as people are trying to rebuild
the future. Well, great fun. Okay. Folks are listening to Donna DuPont. She's an expert in
foresight and strategic thinking. And we're going to come back in a moment after this break to
talk about some of the implications of some of the decisions are being made right now for the
future. You're listening to The Futurist and Rob Chestek. We'll be back in just a minute.
Provoke media is proud to sponsor, produce and support. The Futurist Podcast Provocative
Film is a global podcast network and content creation company with the world's leading fintech
podcast and radio show Breaking Banks and of course, its spin off podcast. Breaking Banks,
Europe. Breaking Banks, Asia Pacific. But we also produced the Official Innovate Podcast
Tech on Rig and Image Everywhere, the podcast of the Financial Health Network. For
information about all our podcasts, got a provoked FM. Well, check out Breaking Banks, the
world's number one FinTech podcast and radio show. Okay. Welcome back to the futurist of
Rob Touristic this week. I'm flying solo without Brett King because he's over in the Middle East
again, barnstorming around the world, teaching people about the future. My guest is Donna du
Pont, and Donna is an expert in helping organizations develop and cultivate a better

understanding in the future. And since that's what we like to do on this show, she's the perfect
guest for the show. And Donna, as we were talking about your broad expertize in the public
sector, in the military, in defense, crime fighting, even in mining and other complex operations.
What was on my mind the whole time is this one question I want to hit you with now, which is
this? What should we be worried about? What are the impending crises of the future that we
should all be concerned about? So these days where a lot of my attention is focused is on
climate security, climate change and security, because it has such it really applies to everyone.
We're all living, you know, in this environment. And there's a lot of changes happening in the
environment. And a lot of times we're not necessarily paying attention because sometimes that
information is so scientific. It's hard to apply in terms of what it means to my day to day life. But
we are seeing a lot of changes happening at the global level and it's being manifested as
emergencies or disasters. Right. And so we're seeing an increase of that around the world.
And and that's that's very concerning because that will create a lot of. Additional vulnerability
within the system. If people are not able to to cope with these types of response to
emergencies or recover. A good example of that right now in the U.S., we have the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, which is depleted its budget for responding to climate
emergencies, particularly the extreme weather emergencies. We just saw that happen with the
series of huge hurricanes that hit the southeast, you know, unprecedented levels of damage. I
think Brett quoted a figure of $130 billion of damage that's been incurred. So that's completely
overwhelming for that agency. And I guess the point there is simple. If if we continue to heat up
the climate and continue to pump out carbon into the atmosphere, we're going to get more of
that extreme weather, not less. So we seem to be doing exactly the wrong behavior. If we want
to mitigate that crisis, what should we be doing? So well. First of all, I think that it's really
important to have a lot more awareness of what's happening within the environment. So and
that means for people to at the local level, because, as you said, the environment is changing
and and the likelihood of a lot more extreme weather events is pretty plausible, right? That
we're going to see that it's going to look different in different parts of the world depending on
where you live. If you're near a coastline, you know, or if you're, you know, in another part of
the country or another part of the world. So it really depends on but I think what we need to be
doing as citizens, you know, is looking at what this means in terms of where I live. So how do I
protect my home at a personal level? How do I stay safe in my community and thinking about
building internal resilience at the personal community? And then in your organizational level,
too, because organizations need to think about how is this changing climate affecting, you
know, my day to day business, right? Sure, sure. Hang on. Let me understand help me
understand something. I'm sorry. So I'm sorry to question. But when you say that I'm thinking
of our audience right now, there's somebody who's listening, who's thinking, well, what can I do
to stop climate change? What can I do? You know, perhaps they're listening in their car as they
drive to work. Right. So, you know, they can pack an emergency kit, I suppose, in case there's
an earthquake or a gigantic storm. Right. So you can you can take that precaution, you know,
make sure you have provisions to protect your family and feed your family at your home. But
what can an individual do to prevent a wildfire or to prevent a flood? Is there anything they can
realistically do? I think if there's a sense of helplessness that right, we're told to be prepared,
we're told to be resilient. But what is the actual thing that we can do? Well, when you talk about
prevention of an actual wildfire or prevention of a flood, I think for the individual, that's usually

not their role, is to prevent the actual hazard. And sometimes we don't we can't prevent the
hazard. It's the conditions within the environment, especially with wildfires. Like it's it has a lot
to do with, you know, temperature, heat, you know. Dryness in wind conditions. There's a lot of
factors. In fact, they have fire behaviorists that try to understand the environment and predict
what will happen. But I think as individual citizens, it's really important that we plug in to our
local emergency management communities at the local level to understand what we can do or
what are the risks to the community and how we can make sure we're safe. And we as a group
you mean we as a community? As a community. So individuals and communities feel safe.
And also one thing that might translate to is cooperating with local authorities when they give
you instructions on how to respond instead of being defiant. That's right. All right. I mean, I get
that one things so connecting in and really making sure that you're getting information from a
credible source because. What we've noticed with emergencies. Now, there's a lot of myths
and disinformation flooding that will just take off. Right. And because it's the nature and the
nature, sometimes how it's framed can be really enticing for for it to spiral, you know, across
the web. So so it's so they're the advice is they may think twice before you click on that link
and think twice before you share that wild rumor to your friends. Absolutely. That's a very good
point to think twice. Where is that information coming from? You don't want to spread
misinformation. So think twice. Make sure you're getting good information from a credible
source and and, you know, being able to take proactive action. Because, as you were saying
before, you know, with some of the examples that we're seeing with a lot of emergency service
services, a lot of times when there is an emergency, their resources become maxed out very
quickly and they're having to ask for support from military operations and other different
services so that that pattern probably won't change In fact, it might even create more strain on
emergency services, which means that as individuals and as citizens and society, we need to
think of our own safety a little bit and the safety of those around us. I hear you saying that,
although what's crossed my mind as I'm listening to you, though, is I put myself in the shoes of
the person at home who may live in a fire zone or flood zone. Right. Many of us do. They can't
move to another house. That's not a practical suggestion. They're there where they are.
They're not going to move. So they have to kind of deal with what they've got. And the advice
is, you know, be prepared for an emergency. Right. And I think you're right. It's it's it's not a
good habit of mine to expect someone to rescue you, because when there's an emergency,
you're probably going to be on your own for at least a few days. And it does make sense to
have a certain amount of cash and fresh water and some food supplies, you know, and
probably an emergency blanket or something. I think everybody probably should, if they live in
one of those regions, whether it's via earthquake, flood, tornado, you name it, be prepared. But
then again, what we tend to see is the first thing that goes is your house, right? When there's
one of these big emergencies, whether it's, you know, the hundreds of houses that just burned
down in in Ventura County, in California, or the houses that were washed away in the floods in
in North Carolina recently, you know in that tragic situation. Okay, I did the thing I supposed to
do, I had my emergency prepared kit. I had some cash available and a sturdy pair of boots,
and they were all there ready with my go bag. And then my house burned down or my house
got washed away in a flood. Now what? Now. Well, you're going to be evacuating, right? So
this is where you want to really make sure that you have have a plan in place about if you were
asked to evacuate, do you have a place to go? Where would you go? How would you get

there? Do you have a car to drive there? Do you have gas in your car to get you there? You
know, when when should you leave so that you don't get stuck in traffic? These are all like
logistical pieces, but these are important to think about, like a place to go. And if you don't, you
know, a lot of or a lot of states, provinces, a lot of times when there is an emergency, you're
going to have some sort of reception centers or evacuation centers open for those that may
not have anywhere to go. But you want to ideally set something up if you can. Not everyone is
has that ability. I think that's really good advice. You know, one thing we can be sure of is a an
emergency of some sort is going to occur in your lifetime. And that's not the moment when you
want to try to figure out where the nearest hospital or police station is. You probably want to be
familiar with those things in advance. And so here, everybody listening can take a little bit of
advice from Donna, where she's focused on helping organizations, big national organizations,
prepare for emergencies. There is some advice you can take from her, which is to do that
same kind of scenario planning in your own household. What is the worst case scenario? What
should we be prepared for? Do we live in a zone where fire is more likely to happen, or a
tornado or a hurricane or some other kind of disaster And what steps should we take in that
situation? And what if we are turned out of our house? What should we do then? You know,
where would I go in that situation? Who would I contacted? Do I have their number handy? I
know this sounds a little dire, but we keep getting the same lesson again and again and again.
Every every year. This decade has been hotter than the previous year. Every year the wildfires
come back every year. The hurricane season, they say it's a record hurricane season. So I
guess Mother Nature is going to keep giving us this lesson until we learn how to prepare for it.
So, folks, you can do some emergency planning on your own. You can do scenario planning in
your own house, in your own household, or with your own family. Is there any other advice you
would give or should we maybe shift gears to talk a little bit more broadly about what what
you're seeing organizations do at the national level to mitigate these risks. So not just about
responding to the emergency, but more about proactive planning to be prepared for them or
even minimize the chance of an emergency. What are you what positive things are you seeing
national agencies do? So when we shift gears toward from like more individual right which I
loved your idea around scenarios and really thinking about some even doesn't have to be you
know worst case it can be even what's plausible what do you see changing your environment?
What's plausible? That it's realistic that you might have to actually evacuate because there
could be a flood, you know, and so so don't always think worst case, but what what's
happening around your community, what's happening in surrounding surrounding areas? And
and how should you be taking proactive action to protect yourself and your family and your
community at a at a national level? It's my work has been around more risk threats and
security and and looking at it in a much more broader context. So not necessarily specifically
emergency hazards, although climate change. Right. And a lot of the environmental patterns
affect every organization. So a lot of what I'm seeing is this interest in understanding what that
looks like and how it's going to impact the organization. So one example would be. When you
have a lot of. Trying to think of actually a very specific example to help, because sometimes
the more specific ones from the private sector help a little bit more because they have concrete
outputs, right. So for example, specific to climate change, a lot of organizations, especially
private sector, have been very interested in doing risk assessments to understand the climate
impact to their operations. So their critical infrastructure, how this can affect the operations,

their staff, supply chains. So they're looking at it from that lens of what do we know from the
past? What's changing? What do we learned in terms of vulnerabilities in the system and what
can we do proactively to address those vulnerabilities moving into the future? And so that's the
type of work that that we've been being asked to do a lot of from our climate models. Give us
some give us a for instance, can you get a little more specific? Because the generalities I get
those, but I think people listening would be like, okay, so tell me about one organization and
what were the specific recommendations? Specific recommendations. Yeah, that's that's a
tricky one because. From a climate perspective, there are so many different moving parts. So
a lot of the climate security work that I've been doing to date has been around understanding
the landscape and how to bring people together around collaboration. Because what's
happening right now before we can get into decisions and in next steps, this system is very
siloed. Right. So you have a lot of different stakeholders working in different different levels of
the system that are not coordinated or collaborating on this front together. So what we need is
a lot more collaboration and coordination around, you know, climate change and security. And
there's a lot of consequences around what does it look like for displacement. So that inter then
impacts not just governments, right, in terms of displacement of people, but also agencies that
work in humanitarian sector, international development. They're actively involved in
understanding displacement and what that means in terms of how they support people. Right.
To keep them safe, keep them housed. So those are really big pieces. And then there are
others that are working in the climate space. Look at food security and how is climate
impacting our food systems. Right. And our ability to grow food and and to have what we need.
Right. And how do we build a more resilient agricultural system? There's also those that are
working with water and the water cycle and to understand what water, you know, impacts of
water at regarding which impacts agriculture. So is conditions of drought, conditions of
flooding. How do we how do we understand the water cycle? Then there's energy, right? So
there's so many different pieces to this. So right now, from a climate security perspective.
There's a lot of conversation happening about how to bring different parts of the system
together and stakeholders to collaborate. It's unprecedented how the level of collaboration we
need around this, but we're also need to collaborate in an environment where there's a lot of
competition happening and geopolitical shifts happening. And so now we're having this
tension. And so so this is where we're at. Right. And I was very lucky to attend the Montreal
Climate Security Summit just a couple weeks ago, where it really brought in people from all
around the world to talk about, you know, over the course of a few days, to talk about all of
these different dimensions of climate security and each one of them having significant
implications for civilians and, you know, just human security overall and how we can work
together, you know, to understand and to really address this type of threat. Wow. The that
sounds like great progress to me, because what you're describing isn't just government to
government communication, but agency to agency and then across agencies. I can imagine
that's quite a lot to coordinate. And I can also imagine that takes a lot of time and effort to get
that coordination to occur. It takes a lot of time. And so it's not something that I'm coordinating
on my own, not part of a network. And we're very fortunate in Canada. We have the the newly
launched Natal Climate Change and Security Center of Excellence, and that's their role at a
global scale to this is the North American Treaty Organization has no organization. So that's
right. That's a national defense organization. And they're focused on climate. They are climate

change and security. They do have a security lens to it, but they also recognize that there are
so many stakeholders in this particular space and that they need to collaborate with those that
are in international development and science and to be able to, you know, because it's a
continuum, it really is like, you know, you know, things we look at crisis in emergencies. But if
we don't address them, they escalate into conflict, which escalates into other forms of extreme
conflict, which is war fighting. And then the other side of it is, is really international
development and really looking at the vulnerabilities in the system and trying to build more safe
communities. Right. And to to really address the needs at a fundamental level. So so it's a
continuum. And so the whole system needs to coordinate. It's not an easy task at all, but it's
such an important piece because there's a lot of work being done in silos right now. Donna, to
close the show, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you think the future holds. Give me
a forecast for 5 to 10 years from now. What do you think the major challenges are going to be
that the society faces? The world faces? And what do you think we'll do to mitigate those
risks? So. In futures, we don't tend to forecast. So I'm going to give you some insights in terms
of system changes that I think are really important to understand and and the evolution of
those changes. So the first would be we just talked about climate. So obviously understanding
the environment and what are some of those changes that are happening currently in the
environment and how are those evolving right in terms of potential for consequences like, you
know, extreme weather events, food security, water, energy, things like that? So that's that's
one dimension. The other piece that's really important is to pay attention to the geopolitics and
what's happening, right? So so understanding what's happening right now, obviously, we have,
you know, in in America, we have Trump, you know, coming in new presidency. There's going
to be a lot of changes happening in terms of, you know, forwarding and putting it mildly, even
internally to the U.S. in terms of, you know, just the government structures is going to be a lot
of changes. And so it's really paying attention. What are those changes? That are happening in
the system. So it's really a big systems lens of understanding the system, what's changing,
what's emerging and how can things escalate, right? So and the other piece is the the social
dimension, which I think is very important people. So understanding what's happening now in
response to those other two changes. So now you're bringing in three dimensions of change,
right? Because that's what we do in futures is we don't look at it in isolation. We look at it as a
complex system. How are they interacting with each other and what is happening in response
to some of these geopolitical shifts, climate shifts, what's happening to people? How are
people and populations responding to this? And so if you start to pay attention to these
patterns, then you can start to anticipate what could plausibly happen in the next 5 to 10 years.
And it's hard to do in terms of we don't do project like I don't do predictions because the
system is so complicated. Right. And a lot of times what the future isn't necessarily
predetermined. It's based on the decisions we make today. So this is why understanding and
paying attention to the changes that are happening today and what that means, ask yourself,
what does that mean for the future? For for me, for my community, for my organization, for my
country? You got to ask those questions. You got to pay attention. A lot of us are not paying
attention to those changes until it becomes a really big issue. And then all of a sudden we're
paying attention. So you need to look at the subtle shifts. That's what it does. Thank you for
that. Donna du Pont, thanks for being a guest on the future. Tell me, how can people find out
more about your work? Where can they find you on the web? So you can go to my website,

Purple Compass dot K and I am in 2025. I'm launching a whole bunch of new initiatives that
are free for those that want to build futures literacy, futures intelligence. And really, it's about it's
a community of just building the knowledge so that people can use that in their their work. Let
us know when you launch that, because we'll definitely talk about it here. Well, that's our
mission. We want more people to think about the future and we want to help them learn how to
do them well. Thank you very much for joining us on The Futurists. And thanks again to the
folks at Provoke Media who make the show possible. And thank you to our engineer, Kevin
Hirschhorn, who's always making a sound great. I know there were a couple of audio glitches
on this one. Unfortunately, sometimes we're dependent on the quality of the Internet
connection. But thanks for listening through that. Thank you to to our listeners for your
comments, suggestions, feedback and advice. We welcome that very much. Next week, Brett
and I will be back with another person who is thinking about and shaping the future. And until
then, we will see you in the future. Well, that's it for the Futurists this week. If you like the show,
we sure hope you did. Please subscribe and share it with the people in your community. And
don't forget to leave us a five star review that really helps other people find the show. And you
can ping us any time on Instagram and Twitter at at Futurist podcast for the folks that you'd like
to see on the show or the questions that you'd like us to ask. Thanks for joining and as always,
we'll see you in the future.