Futures最新文献

This article proposes a transitional energy justice framework to analyse a "green" transition and offers recommendations to transform the realities of the lives of Indigenous Peoples in Latin America. We share our perspectives as mestiza, Wapichan and Kichwa women through narratives. In the discussion, we compare previous research on environmental and energy justice to identify the ways in which global energy governance can implement fairer and more equitable projects in the future, such as respect for land tenure and more-than-human beings. Additionally, temporality and relationality act as tools for global energy governance institutions. Temporality in transitional energy justice has to do with healing historical violence across generations, whereas relationality means building respectful relationships with each involved Indigenous community. The article concludes by providing policy recommendations that emphasise strengthening local governance – deep engagement of state and non-state actors with each community – along with international policy-making to prevent energy-related negative externalities and legislation to facilitate Indigenous self-determination to build their futures.

Since the Rio Convention in 1992, there has been a strong political and ethical imperative to link biodiversity conservation and equity and to promote gender-sensitive policies. However, there has also been a huge gap between these global injunctions and local actions. Mangrove conservation policy is a good illustration of "nature grabbing," which leads to environmental violence. This paper explores the perspectives of the fisherwomen who inhabit the mangroves. It analyzes their struggle to maintain control over mangrove resources and spaces in the face of private or public forces seeking to commodify them in the name of conservation. Based on a corpus of ethnographic data collected over more than 40 years, the paper focuses on the narratives of the oyster fisherwomen in Basse-Casamance, Senegal. It highlights their individual, family, and collective strategies in three time periods: the 1980s, the 2000s and the 020s, demonstrating their resistance over time, defensively or offensively, to the consequences of globalization. The paper shows the ability of the women to preserve their heritage and empower themselves, notably thanks to their self-organization and mutual support. The paper concludes with the scientific uncertainties regarding mangrove dynamics and the conflictual visions on the future of the mangrove socio-ecosystem at diverse scales.

The status of climate change as a global catastrophic risk is a significant point of contention. Some research characterizes climate change as a grave threat to human civilization; other research characterizes it as having relatively mild severity. This article provides a perspective on how to evaluate the considerable uncertainty about the potential for climate change to cause global catastrophe. The article shows that some prior literature has understated the basis for regarding climate change as a global catastrophic risk. In particular, the high uncertainty about climate change makes it more likely to be a global catastrophic risk and more likely to be a large global catastrophic risk. Additionally, a comparison to nuclear winter shows that much of the uncertainty about climate change as a global catastrophic risk comes from complex systems interaction in more moderate climate change scenarios. The article finds that, based on the body of evidence currently available, climate change should indeed be considered to be a global catastrophic risk. Implications for the general study of global catastrophic risk are also presented.

Developing ‘Climate Adaptation Imaginaries’, this paper explores visions of futures in relation to climate change and adaptation in the Swedish Arctic, a region where climatic changes are rapid and pronounced. The analysis draws on interviews with civil servants working with adaptation, fieldwork in the region of Norrbotten in Sweden, and relevant documents. The analysis focuses on future visions and whether, and how, they incorporate adaptation to the climate crisis as a strategy to achieve the vision. Particular focus is given to how adaptation is understood in terms of approach (reactive vs. proactive), aim (incremental vs. transformational) and focus (direct effects, or whether transboundary effects are included). Four different kinds of visions emerge in the material: economic growth coupled with a reactive approach; ‘green’ economic growth with proactive and incremental adaptation; a transformed locally anchored and regenerative society; and finally, a range of dystopia(s). It is only the two visions based on economic growth that are collectively held, materially embedded and hold political influence in the region. A variety of dystopias emerge as the main alternative presented by civil servants. This leaves adaptation guided by at best proactive, incremental and short-term focused strategies, and at worst driven by disparate dystopic visions.

Against the backdrop of technological acceleration during the Covid-19 pandemic, this paper addresses how educational practitioners’ hopes articulate a critique of the present and simultaneously give voice to (im)possible futures. Drawing on Bloch's "principle of hope" (1995), Appadurai's "traces of future" (2021) and Levitas’ "utopia as method" (2013), we utilize a critical utopian approach inspired by Muñoz (2009). We interviewed educational practitioners who worked with young people during the pandemic, and identify three themes articulating our interviewees’ hopes for technologically decelerated futures: 1) young people’s participation in decision-making, which is linked to the wish for more visibility for young people in the future; 2) mutual care, which is interwoven with the wish for support in young people’s lives to be more reliable; 3) appreciation for other groups, opinions and ways of life, which is linked to the wish for more future interpersonal understanding. These three themes point to an overarching desire for solidarity in community which needs time, occasions, role models and spaces of encounter. We discuss the priority of technologically decelerated hopes and conclude with implications for future research that brings together imaginations of futures, observations of practical action and designs for future artefacts.

Scenario planning can be a useful tool for solving urban mobility challenges in cities while achieving sustainability goals. Scenario planning is particularly pertinent for policymakers as it can stimulate debates on different possible futures. The concept of sustainable urban mobility planning, promoted by the European Commission, is based on the principle of involving the public in the transport planning process. Including various stakeholders, all individuals, groups or organisations affected by a plan or project in the urban mobility system, such as the citizen, in the planning process can improve results and contribute to an overall understanding of the system and the views of other stakeholders. It is essential for stakeholders to interact with and participate in the creation of these scenarios. This article presents a method for formalising and evaluating prospective urban mobility scenarios. Our approach combines the strengths of both qualitative (narrative) and quantitative (indicators-based) methods. The result is a method that translates textual narratives created by stakeholders into indicators that can be easily understood. The method was applied to scenarios that were created through interviews and participatory workshops in the cities of Strasbourg and Aix-Marseille.

Systems Thinking theorist J. P. Monat has hypothesized that human-level organismal self-awareness will emerge spontaneously in a well-connected neural network as the number of interconnected nodes exceeds ∼70 billion; he speculates that computer networks may achieve self-awareness as the number of nodes approaches this figure. Forests have historically not been perceived as interconnected networks of trees; recently however, researchers have described the “wood-wide web” in which underground fungi interconnect large numbers of trees and plants via chemical and electrical signals. Some of earth’s forests number many billions of trees, and some of the world’s prairies and seagrass meadows also contain billions of individual plants. These plant ecosystems may thus be self-aware, and in fact there may be a multitude of self-aware plant-based ecosystems on earth already. The speed of signal transmission via fungi within each ecosystem is much slower than that in humans, and therefore their organismal self-awareness may be of a different nature than the self-awareness that we associate with humans and upper primates. However, the possibility that our plant systems may be aware of the environmental insults that are being wrought upon them should make us reconsider our anthropocentric activities, as well as the possibility that humanity may need to collaborate with other intelligent non-human earth-based life forms to ensure mutual survival.

The ‘just transition’ concept has gained popularity in recent years and is being widely applied as a guiding concept within policy frameworks promoting low carbon transitions. Justice is at the heart of much of the policy rhetoric surrounding these transitions, favoured for the emphasis it places on fairness, equity and inclusivity. The use of justice as the guiding virtue for the transition has remained largely unquestioned. This paper examines the concept of just transition and experiments with positioning generosity as a guiding principle. It is argued that this may enable a more transformative, inclusive zero carbon future that prioritises wellbeing over mere survival. This does not seek to position a just transition and a generous transition in direct opposition to one another, instead intending to highlight how the concept of generosity might act as a catalyst for or complement to justice.

How should we envision the future of environmental justice in a context where the imbalances between part of humanity and other living beings seem irreversible and could compromise the survival of the majority? The scientific world and activist movements, both in the West and among indigenous peoples, are making their voices heard to denounce an industrial, productivist and extractivisit lifestyle that is predatory and incompatible with ensuring the well-being and intentionalities of all living beings. The ontological framework of the Anthropocene era seems to support this type of social relationship of domination. Indeed, naturalism puts humans as distinct from the rest of the animal kingdom and as having the right to use the different components of the environment as material resources. Due to the succession of environmental and social crises, whether worldwide or local, these power relationships need to be re-examined. The study of scientific results and observations from the last forty years, listening to people’s accounts of their attachments to their living environment, and the observation of new social and environmental movements all point to the emergence of hybrid ontologies that question naturalism, opening the door to the possibility of multi-species justice as an alternative to inequality.

This text discusses today’s digital transformation through the lens of Horkheimer and Adornos’ study of the enlightenment. Policy and public discourse around digitalisation embrace and adhere to the narrow tenets enlightenment thinking; the idea that rationality, individual freedom, and a society free from superstition are necessary and attainable goals. The costs of what has come to be called ‘Modernity’ are many. Through the application of rationality to all spheres of life, married with disruptive technological advancement, humanity has diminished its’ imagination – its ability to seek new directions. To paraphrase Horkheimer and Adorno, Modernism fights against nature, of which we are a part, and thus, paradoxically, sets us in a fight against ourselves. Environmental degradation, the price of progress, being just one example of this – deadening work, consumerism and severed social connections being amongst others. In this framing, digitalisation itself comes to be understood itself as akin to a force of nature – one that we can do little about, other than adjust and adapt or be swept away. But this by no means a foregone conclusion, there is light at the end of the optical fibre. Albeit that recent technical developments around artificial intelligence appears to be pushing policy makers into hasty decisions, the pace of the technical development is not as fast as we believe, and in comparison with the Reformation – we have time. If we can restrain ourselves from the resist, adapt or die responses promoted in popular discourse in face of the shock of large language models and rising threat of automation, then we create room to consider economic, social, and ecological alignment and accord, in the decision making and design of future interactive artefacts and digital services. The article argues that through postdigital aesthetics, technology makers can embrace materiality and the inherent qualities of digital technology to formulate a critique of existing trajectories in digital transformation, with consequences for a more sustainable future.