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In this article, we describe an innovative foresight approach, which we used to examine the interactions among three themes that are likely to be significant for international development policy and strategy in the coming decades. We adapted existing foresight scenario methods (drivers of change analysis, scenarios, wind-tunnelling) to investigate possible trade-offs, tensions and synergies that may exist among competing international development goals of reducing inequalities, accelerating sustainability and building more inclusive and secure societies. Our method combined foresight methods with programme theory analysis, an approach commonly used in impact evaluation. We describe our approach in detail and discuss its strengths and weaknesses.