Future scenarios for food, land, and water: Envisioning the next 15 years of digital change

This brief summarizes the outcomes of the CGIAR Future Scenarios Workshop on Digital Futures, held in September 2025, which explored how emerging digital technologies could shape food, land, and water systems in the Global South over the next 15 years. Convened by the CGIAR Digital Transformation Accelerator (DTA), the workshop brought together experts from CGIAR centers and partner organizations to examine key drivers of change and their potential socioeconomic and environmental implications. Using a human-centered foresight approach, participants identified critical uncertainties and developed three contrasting future scenarios that illustrate plausible pathways for digital transformation and their impacts on farmers, communities, policymakers, and researchers. The brief presents the workshop methodology, highlights the three scenarios, and distills cross-cutting insights and recommendations to support strategic planning, inclusive innovation, and investment decision-making under uncertainty within CGIAR and its partner ecosystem.