Frederick S. Pardee Institute for International Futures. (2026). A Model for Sustainable Development: the UN & IFs. University of Denver.

In an era defined by intersecting crises—where climate volatility, geopolitical turmoil, and authoritarian backsliding trends intersect—the need for rigorous, long-term analysis has never been more acute. The Frederick S. Pardee Institute for International Futures, at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs, serves this role in partnership with the United Nations system in pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By providing forecasting infrastructure we enable policymakers around the world to understand development trade-offs and set long term sustainable development strategies.

The Institute’s collaboration with the UN is both deep and broad, bringing academic methods to global governance decision-making and advocacy. The reports appended below highlight work for the UN Secretary General, various UNDP offices, UNICEF, UNEP, and more, including 10 substantive UN reports that demonstrate a constellation of impact on global thinking and action in pursuit of sustainable development.

By providing computational tools that multilateral organizations often lack internally, the Pardee Institute helps expand access to large open-source quantitative modeling tools. This partnership is exemplified by the integration of Pardee’s data into the UNDP Data Futures Platform, where our long-term projections are publicly accessible and interactive for researchers worldwide. Through this and other initiatives, the Institute’s International Futures (IFs) platform has become a foundational tool for strategic planning, helping the world’s largest development agencies analyze post-pandemic recovery, the climate-poverty nexus, and the invisible economy of unpaid care.

Collin Meisel. (2026, June 11). What America's demographic future means for Africa and Europe. Megatrends Afrika Spotlight No. 71. https://www.megatrends-afrika.de/en/publication/mta-spotlight-71-us-demographic-decline-could-reshape-the-global-balance-of-power

Demographic shifts in the United States could reshape its relationships with Africa and Europe over the coming decades. Using the International Futures (IFs) model developed by the Frederick S. Pardee Institute for International Futures, the piece explores how lower immigration could slow U.S. population growth, weaken the labor force, and reduce long-term economic and geopolitical influence. It also considers how these demographic changes could affect the balance of global power and opportunities for cooperation between regions. By modeling alternative long-term scenarios rather than making fixed predictions, IFs help policymakers better understand the trade-offs and potential consequences of today's policy decisions.

Hughes, B. B. (2026). International Futures: Exploring and Shaping. London Academic Press, An Imprint Of Elsevier.

eBook ISBN: 978-3-032-22084-4

ISBN: 978-3-032-22083-7

Pardee Institute founding Director, Barry Hughes, has published the fifth edition of Exploring and Shaping International Futures, an open-access book that makes the foundations of International Futures available as a practical guide for learning, teaching, scenario analysis, and long-term policy thinking.

The book updates earlier editions for the eighth generation of IFs and is organized around three questions: What future would we like? Where do current trends appear to be taking us? And what leverage do people and institutions have to shape what comes next? Across chapters on population, economics, human well-being, food and agriculture, energy, the environment, and domestic and global sociopolitical systems, Hughes connects forecasts, model insights, and points of intervention to help readers examine uncertainty, choices, and possible futures.

Bennett, N., Bloom, D., de la Vega, R., Hanna, T., Lavopa, A., & Prettner, K. (2026, March 23). The future of jobs in an era of demographic and technological transformation. United Nations Industrial Development Organization. 

United Nations Industrial Development Organization has released a new policy brief, The Future of Jobs in an Era of Demographic and Technological Transformation, co-authored by Pardee’s Taylor Hanna. The brief serves as a follow-up to UNIDO’s latest Industrial Development Report, which was supported by Hanna and Pardee Research Associate Bido Ibrahim. Drawing on projections from the International Futures model, the analysis explores how demographic change and automation will reshape global employment by 2050. It highlights stark regional differences, with developing economies facing growing job creation pressures and advanced economies confronting higher risks of automation-driven displacement. Under a moderate automation scenario, global demand for new jobs could grow to one billion—underscoring the need for forward-looking, context-specific policy responses.

Moyer, Jonathan D., & Meisel, Collin J. (2026, March 16). “Climate change modelling and international relations: in pursuit of an integrated, long-term research agenda” in Handbook on the Geopolitics of Sustainability. (pgs. 368-378). Edward Elgar Publishing.

In this book chapter, Pardee Institute Director Jonathan Moyer and Director of Analysis Collin Meisel, identify a crucial disciplinary gap between international relations theory and climate change modelling. To help bridge this divide, Moyer and Meisel call for an integrated research agenda that aligns international relations with the long-term, large-scale quantitative forecasting models utilized by climate researchers. By incorporating a “systems map” approach, researchers can establish a baseline forecast of the international system to test the complex, interacting geopolitical impacts of direct climate effects, mitigation, and adaptation.

Explore the full chapter here.

United Nations Industrial Development Organization. (2026). Industrial Development Report 2026: The future of industrialization: Building future-ready industries for sustainable development. UNIDO. https://www.unido.org/publications/industrial-development-report-series

On November 26, 2025, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) launched its Industrial Development Report (IDR), "Industrial Development Report 2026: The future of industrialization: Building future-ready industries for sustainable development," at the Global Industry Summit in Riyadh. The Pardee Institute supported IDR 2026 by providing forecasts and scenario analysis to explore industrial development scenarios out to 2050 and assess how developing countries could leverage an Industrial Push to advance economic and human development. The following Pardee Institute experts supported the production of this edition of the report: Taylor Hanna, Abdelrahman Ibrahim, Collin J. Meisel, José Solórzano, Yutang Xiong, Solikha Makhmatova and Victoria Pepera.

Hughes, B. B., Solórzano, J., & Rothman, D. S., Irfan, R. I., Sahadevan, D. (2025, November 11). IFs energy model documentation. Pardee Center for International Futures, Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs, University of Denver. https://pardeewiki.du.edu/index.php?title=Energy

What is our purpose? Who do we serve? How do we know we are making an impact?

These questions guided the Pardee Institute's 2025 strategic planning cycle, enabling us to strengthen our value system and establish a framework for fulfilling our mission and achieving our vision during uncertain times.

Building on the foundation of its predecessor 2020 five-year plan, this plan honors the continuing core identity of the Institute, staying rooted in what makes our work distinctive and useful, and distilled for practicality and purpose.

The Pardee Institute 2025 Strategic Plan, launched in the Fall of 2025, details our primary motivations and our approach to strategic planning. It connects our institutional history to our vision for its future, explains the intention behind our mission, vision, values, and high-level strategic goals for this cycle, and reflects on our current position relative to these goals, as well as possible pathways to realize them.

Here, we are pleased to share our strategic plan, which serves as our statement of purpose and decision-making framework through 2030.

United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, & United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2025). Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2025. UN Women. https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/gender-snapshot/2025/

The Pardee Institute used its International Futures (IFs) to develop and analyze future scenarios related to gender equality and women's empowerment. The analysis examined several of the six action areas outlined in UN Women's Beijing+30 Action Agenda and informed contributions to UN Women's Progress on the Sustainable Development Goals: The Gender Snapshot 2025 report, providing data-driven insights into pathways for advancing gender equality worldwide.