Using futures methods to create transformative spaces: visions of a good Anthropocene in southern Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT. The unique challenges posed by the Anthropocene require creative ways of engaging with the future and bringing about transformative change. Envisioning positive futures is a first step in creating a shared understanding and commitment that enables radical transformations toward sustainability in a world defined by complexity, diversity, and uncertainty. However, to create a transformative space in which truly unknowable futures can be explored, new experimental approaches are needed that go beyond merely extrapolating from the present into archetypal scenarios of the future. Here, we present a process of creative visioning where participatory methods and tools from the field of futures studies were combined in a novel way to create and facilitate a transformative space, with the aim of generating positive narrative visions for southern Africa. We convened a diverse group of participants in a workshop designed to develop radically different scenarios of good Anthropocenes, based on existing "seeds" of the future in the present. These seeds are innovative initiatives, practices, and ideas that are present in the world today, but are not currently widespread or dominant. As a result of a carefully facilitated process that encouraged a multiplicity of perspectives, creative immersion, and grappling with deeply held assumptions, four radical visions for southern Africa were produced. Although these futures are highly innovative and exploratory, they still link back to current real-world initiatives and contexts. The key learning that arose from this experience was the importance of the imagination for transformative thinking, the need to capitalize on diversity to push boundaries, and finally, the importance of creating a space that enables participants to engage with emotions, beliefs, and complexity. This method of engagement with the future has the potential to create transformative spaces that inspire and empower people to act toward positive Anthropocene visions despite the complexity of the sustainability challenge.

Seeds of good anthropocenes: developing sustainability scenarios for Northern Europe

“…Thus, the Northern European scenarios featured prominent and important changes in social organization, gender relations, capitalism and the future of the economy, and both governments and governance. This ability of the seeds methods to stimulate consideration of social change was also seen in scenario exercises in the Arctic (Falardeau et al 2018) and Southern Africa (Pereira et al 2018a).…”

“…Our scenario approach purposefully focuses on positive futures because inspirational visions can be key components of transformations to sustainability (Wiek and Iwaniec 2014), and can articulate, coordinate, and encourage actions that help build desirable futures (Hebinck et al 2018;McPhearson et al 2017). The most unique aspect of the approach is that it builds scenarios from 'seeds' of positive futures, i.e., real-world agents of current social-ecological transformation that are currently marginal, but have the potential to grow in impact (Bennett et al 2016;Pereira et al 2018a). These 'seeds' are taken from the 'seeds of good anthropocenes' database (https ://gooda nthro pocen es.net/).…”

“…The seed scenario workshop 'Envisioning and Creating a Good Anthropocene in Northern Europe' took place from June 6-9, 2017 outside of Stockholm, Sweden. This workshop further developed an approach to scenario development that was first implemented in southern Africa and is described in detail in Pereira et al (2018a). The Stockholm workshop team included two scientists from the southern African team and used the same facilitator for the workshop.…”

“…The Stockholm workshop team included two scientists from the southern African team and used the same facilitator for the workshop. In this process, we added a step to the scenario process that analyzed and compared the scenarios, to the method described in Pereira et al (2018a).…”

“…The seeds were selected for relevance to Northern Europe and diversity in the types of challenges they address. The Seeds approach to scenarios is based on an emerging understanding of how change occurs in complex adaptive social-ecological systems, or SES (Pereira et al 2018a) that integrates two key existing frameworks: the sociotechnical transitions framework, and the stages of social-ecological transformations (Moore et al 2014). Macroscale change in SES comprises three interconnected phases: preparation, navigating the transition, and consolidation.…”