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The Paris Agreement's aspirational 1.5 degree temperature target has given further impetus to efforts to imagine (and seek to govern) transformative and uncertain climate futures. This brings to the fore multiple challenges in the search for anticipatory governance and the role herein for climate foresight. Foresight entails processes to envision challenging futures and question limiting assumptions about what futures are possible, but these processes also impact upon present-day politics. While foresight-related activities are proliferating in sustainability research and planning, critical social science scrutiny of such processes remains minimal. Two key gaps in understanding are: (a) the link between foresight, planning and policy change; and (b) the very prospects of relying on foresight in the present to steer largely unknowable futures. In addressing these gaps, we review the field of climate foresight research here, situating it within a broader interdisciplinary body of literature relating to anticipation and anticipatory governance. In doing so, we identify a conceptual lens through which to analyze the political implications of foresight processes, and apply it to the case of two ongoing foresight initiatives. We conclude with noting the urgent need for further research on the role of foresight within anticipatory climate governance in a post-Paris era.

In recent decades, foresight has been connected to various disciplines that engage with complex societal problems, leading to specific interpretations of foresight. We offer an interdisciplinary perspective on foresight's increasing use for governance of social-ecological systems (SES). We seek to strengthen the use of foresight in this domain by bridging to insights from other disciplines that can help overcome its limitations. Participatory foresight for SES governance offers potential to elicit thinking about uncertainty and complexity, facilitate dialogue between stakeholders, and improve inclusiveness of governance processes, but often fails to be sufficiently reflexive and politically aware to be truly impactful and inclusive. It can be strengthened, we argue, by a more thorough integration with adjacent research fields: critical futures studies, critical systems theory and environmental governance. We distill key insights from these fields, including the importance of being politically reflexive about whose perspectives are considered, whom foresight processes should benefit, and the importance of co-producing methodology and outcomes. We encourage scholars and practitioners to further explore integration with these fields, highlighting the importance of inter- and transdisciplinary teams. Finally, we offer an example for how limitations of foresight as used in a particular field can be overcome through interdisciplinary integration.

Governance of social-ecological systems (SES) involves multiple stakeholders with different perspectives on the system and associated problems, and different ways to value and use the system. This has implications for decision making because this diversity of interests and framings may cause conflicts between stakeholders and/or marginalization of certain groups. In general, the literature agrees that strategically considered stakeholder participation is key to well-informed and legitimate SES governance and to alleviate differences and conflicts between stakeholders. Because SES represent uncertain, complex governance contexts, methodologies that address complexity and future uncertainty are needed. In this regard, participatory scenario planning is widely regarded as a useful tool. However, little explicit analysis exists about its role in framing. We therefore analyzed two scenario-guided policy formulation cases to assess how and to what extent it contributes to system and problem framing. We developed an analytical framework building on critical systems and resilience scholarship: the questions of "resilience of what, to what, for whom and over what timeframe?" are important framing dimensions. As such, we used them as the basis for our framework. We analyzed two scenario-guided policy formulation processes in East Africa, facilitated by the CGIAR's Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security. We found that participatory scenario planning significantly contributes to system and problem framing and can add to efficacy, legitimacy, and analytical rigor of planning processes through involving a diverse range of stakeholders in strategic dialogues about futures. Our results also highlight its potential to make the political dimension of policy and broader SES governance processes more explicitly visible by addressing the "for whom?" dimension. We recommend designing novel participatory scenario approaches that explicitly use insights from critical system theory, incorporating questions of ...

Games have become established tools within participatory urban planning practice that provide safe spaces for collective actions such as deliberation, negotiation of conflicting agendas, scenario testing, and collaborative worldbuilding. While a body of literature on the effectiveness of games to address complex urban planning issues is emerging, significantly less literature addresses the design and development process of serious games with a possible space in its own right within urban planning practice. Our study investigates long term iterative processes of designing a game for visioning urban futures, specifically, how design iterations connect to the application of games in practice by accommodating or responding to emerging needs, goals, and relationships. We approach this topic through the case study of the Sustainability Futures Game, a game designed by the Helsinki-based creative agency Hellon to support business leaders, sustainability specialists, and city officials to imagine desirable alternative urban futures. Through storytelling and collective worldbuilding, players first imagine what sustainable urban living means for a specific city, frame their vision using the UN's sustainable development goals, and finally create concrete pathways towards reaching these goals. This article uses a genealogical approach to systematically analyse the five design iterations of the Sustainability Futures Game. It aims to elucidate the contextual and relational influences on the application of serious games in urban planning practice to understand how these influences might encourage or inhibit their potential to foster transformation towards sustainable futures.

In this paper, we argue that a key component of futures literacy is reflexivity regarding different attitudes toward the future. Various intellectual traditions and futures practices make epistemologically distinct claims about the future and its manifestations in the present. Through their different outlooks on analyzing, understanding, and influencing the future, these diverse approaches represent fundamentally different attitudes to what it means to meaningfully engage with the future. Because of this diversity of attitudes toward the future, and the different possible modes of engagement with the future, futures literacy is more complex than it appears at first glance. Looking at recent developments in futures literature, we build on four epistemologically and ontologically distinct approaches to the problem of the future. We argue that being futures literate depends on reflexivity about these different engagements with the future, and what these different approaches can offer future-oriented action respectively. Such reflexivity entails being reflexive about how different approaches to the problem of the future arise, as well as about the underlying power structures. We also investigate possibilities to cultivate this futures reflexivity and conclude with a set of questions to guide future research in deepening reflexivity as a key element of futures literacy.

Questo articolo segue ad altri contributi precedentemente apparsi su questa rivista incentrati sul tema della sicurezza alimentare e nutrizionale ed il ruolo giocato dalle diverse forme di contrasto alla povertà alimentare. Arcuri e colleghi (2015) avevano analizzato i punti critici nell'implementazione del principio del diritto al cibo nelle politiche alimentari, secondo un approccio sistemico. Successivamente, gli stessi autori (Arcuri et al., 2016a) si sono soffermati sulle opportunità e i possibili conflitti che possono sorgere nel perseguire obiettivi di riduzione degli sprechi e, al contempo, di contrasto alla povertà. Il presente contributo si concentra sul ruolo delle organizzazioni che forniscono assistenza alimentare, le quali si trovano a fronteggiare le "tensioni" tra aiuto caritativo, efficienza della filiera e diritti umani. In una fase preliminare, abbiamo svolto un'indagine (con un focus sulla Toscana2) finalizzata a caratterizzare il sistema di assistenza, i principali attori, le competenze, le risorse impiegate e le forme di aiuto sviluppate. Oltre all'analisi della letteratura accademica e "grigia" disponibili, sono state svolte venti interviste in profondità, visite in loco e partecipazione diretta ad eventi (Arcuri et al. 2016b). L'indagine preliminare ha messo in luce alcune vulnerabilità del sistema di assistenza alimentare: il delicato equilibrio tra attori, risorse e responsabilità rende il sistema esposto alla domanda crescente e sempre più diversificata, in un contesto di carenza ma soprattutto di instabilità di risorse. Inoltre è emerso che gli operatori stanno riconsiderando il proprio ruolo per rispondere alle necessità dei gruppi più vulnerabili della popolazione, a partire dalla consapevolezza che l'assistenza alimentare rappresenta un primo passo verso l'inclusione sociale (www.eurofoodbank.eu). Al fine di comprendere le sfide attuali e le possibili direzioni per la mitigazione della povertà alimentare è stata riconosciuta l'importanza, in primis dagli attori protagonisti del sistema, di adottare un'ottica di medio-lungo termine. Avendo come principale interlocutore Caritas, abbiamo coinvolto i principali attori in Toscana, come il Banco Alimentare, la Regione, la Grande Distribuzione Organizzata (Gdo) e alcuni esperti in materia. Con essi abbiamo facilitato una riflessione partecipata durante due workshop, adottando la metodologia dell'elaborazione di scenari e percorsi di transizione, spesso utilizzati, sia dal pubblico che dal privato, per testare la fattibilità di una politica o di un progetto per il futuro. L'obiettivo principale è stato quello di discutere e articolare in concreto un'"Alleanza per il Cibo", quale "visione" desiderata (suggerita durante le interviste dagli stessi attori del sistema di assistenza) ma ancora astratta. In maniera collettiva, sono state affrontate le modalità e gli strumenti di collaborazione per adeguare le pratiche dell'assistenza alimentare alle necessità emergenti.