**6. Conclusions**

Foresight has been serving the policymaking process by engaging experts and di fferent stakeholders to put expert knowledge into action. However, foresight has clear, untapped potential to empower the general public to become involved. Positioning foresight to address lifestyles opens up discussions that could be relevant to the general public, thereby influencing policymaking in tangible ways. To date, government, the private sector, and research communities have been involved in the discourse on foresight. Now, it is time for more actors at the grassroots level—such as civil society, local communities, and households and individuals—to be considered in the process. In particular when sustainable lifestyles become the focus of the foresight exercise, civil society could be the actor to gain power in society to counter the underlying assumptions that it is governmen<sup>t</sup> and industry which take the lead in conventional foresight. Local communities have the potential to mobilise collective actions to assert their local needs in providing enabling conditions for sustainable lifestyles. Lastly, households and individuals should pursue their own desirable future lifestyles by engaging in the formation of future policy decisions as part of the democratic participation process.

Foresight and participatory policymaking processes are especially important in areas such as food, social connections, and relationships, which are less driven by expert knowledge and more a ffected by perceptions and societal norms. Policy on the future of food consumption (and thus, production) is not just an issue of the technical production and distribution of food; it is also about food cultures and traditional practices, which determine food patterns. When communities are allowed to engage in the deliberative process, they gain a better understanding about the links between food choices and diets, health, and environmental factors such as biodiversity e ffects and food security. Such an understanding means that people are more willing to accept the need for alternatives, as well as to providing informed consent for a more sustainable future direction.

Finally, governmen<sup>t</sup> and governance require greater foresight for their development. The results of the survey point to national governmen<sup>t</sup> as the only stakeholder perceived to have a weaker role by 2050. Since perception can easily become reality in democratic governance, this calls for changes to more traditional approaches, and thus, for governmen<sup>t</sup> to begin embodying the types of sustainable changes envisaged for the future. Such changes involve greater transparency in governance, added clarity on the di fferent roles that stakeholders have and how they participate, as well as a critical distinction between public mandates and private decision-making. A foresighted and orderly approach to governance would include a deliberative process for the evolution of public governance, as well as the design of new institutions that recognise an evolving society and stronger sustainability governance.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, C.M.; data curation, C.M. and R.K.; formal analysis, C.M. and R.K.; funding acquisition, L.A.; investigation, C.M. and R.K.; methodology, C.M. and R.K.; project administration, L.A.; supervision, L.A.; visualization, R.K.; writing—original draft, C.M.; writing—review and editing, R.K. and L.A. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This study was funded by the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (S-16-3) of the Environment Restoration and Conservation Agency, Japan and the 10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production (10YFP).

**Acknowledgments:** The authors are grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.
