Politically Reflexive Foresight: Emancipating foresight for governance of social-ecological systems

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the application of foresight—methods for anticipating uncertain futures—in governance of social-ecological systems (SES). SES are complex adaptive systems characterized by uncertainty and unpredictability, and to govern them effectively, future uncertainty has to be taken into account. Governing SES is inherently political, as different stakeholder groups perceive SES differently, and their stakes may differ and even conflict with each other. However, strikingly, the majority of SES scholarship—as well as foresight for SES governance—tends to pay little attention to the social and normative dimensions of SES, or to the role of power dynamics. As a consequence, there is the risk of reproducing existing—often unsustainable—power dynamics, which may reduce the space for imagining radically different, transformative futures as alternatives to explorations of futures that are still very much rooted in present-day business-as-usual thinking. All in all, one could say that the practice of foresight for SES governance does not sufficiently take into account the politics at play. I therefore argue that there is a need for more political reflexivity within foresight for SES governance. This dissertation investigates a number of avenues for improving the political reflexivity of foresight for SES governance. It explores how adjacent critical fields of scholarship can contribute to improving foresight for SES governance and subsequently zooms in on a number of specific, promising contributions: how insights from critical systems theory can enhance participatory system and problem framing; how being reflexive towards the way in which societal imaginaries are expressed in the futures imagined in foresight processes can increase the inclusiveness and potentially inform more ambitious and transformative policies; and how bottom-up niche initiatives—disruptive seeds—that challenge the current unsustainable status quo can improve the transformative potential of foresight for SES governance. This dissertation concludes that a politically reflexive mode of foresight can help to address a specifically problematic aspect of current environmental research agendas: they are dominated by the natural sciences and tend to focus on changes in the Earth’s biogeochemical characteristics and processes, which often has little use for informing policy action, and—worse—might even serve vested interests. It could be argued that we need to profoundly transform environmental research and to shift our attention to approaches rooted in the social sciences and humanities and to participatory research, in which politically reflexive foresight can play a crucial role. In addition, this dissertation concludes that academia in general should become more future-oriented. There is still much to gain, both in research and higher education. It is crucial to confront and address the structural and institutional challenges in terms of funding for futures research, especially in the realms of the social sciences and humanities, capacities, and training.