Living scenarios for Australia in 2050: negotiating the future (original) (raw)

Negotiating our future: living scenarios for Australia to 2050, vol 1

The Australian Academy of Science project on Australia 2050 included an extended workshop and collaborative research. This volume addresses the challenges of negotiating the future in two senses: steering a path through uncertainties and obstacles, and also discussing a shared course in the face of differences in values and perceptions. The concept of ‘living scenarios’ refers to shared, ongoing explorations of how the future might unfold, leading to evolving visions for the future that are simultaneously plausible (consistent with natural laws), acceptable (consistent with aspirations for human well-being) and workable (agreed to the extent necessary for action).

Towards scenarios for a sustainable and equitable future for Australia

2012

A scenario is an internally consistent narrative about the future, developed using a structured approach with clear and consistent logic to consider systematically how uncertainties and surprises in the future might lead to alternative plausible outcomes. Scenarios can share meaning at deeper levels than logic-based communication through their basis in narrative. Scenario development draws on a range of information, quantitative modelling, expert judgement and creative thinking. These ingredients are combined using procedures that ensure that three key requirements are satisfied: legitimacy (that the information base is reliable and the models used are sound), saliency (that the questions or future uncertainties probed by the scenarios are pertinent) and credibility within specified boundaries (that the scenario is considered plausible by participants in the scenario-building process and by observers). A crucial starting point in scenario development is the specification of a focal question. To exemplify these concepts, we consider scenarios arising from three different focal questions, respectively concerning approaches to climate change, governance and complexification. Finally, we consider processes that could potentially engage Australian society in using scenarios to navigate the future, thereby aiding a national strategic conversation about the issues driving change in Australia over the next 40 years and their relevance for human wellbeing.

Possible and Preferable scenarios of a sustainable future – Towards 2030 and Beyond

Possible and Preferable scenarios of a sustainable future – Towards 2030 and Beyond, 2021

Investigating the Future is an established practice for the academy and the world of crafts and industry. From the Chicago Columbian Exhibition of 1893 to the two Worlds Fairs of New York City (1939 and 1965) and so on, the future has been foreseen as filled with technology and amazing architecture but not every vision of the future has described promising scenarios. The four visions of the future proposed by Norman Henchey (1978) conceptualized in classes – ‘possible’ (any future), ‘plausible’ (future that makes sense), ‘probable’ (highly likely to happen), ‘preferable’ (the best that could happen) – have been brilliantly described in the ‘Futures Cone’ reinterpreted by Joseph Voros (2003). As we move away from the present, the ‘possible’ tends to ‘preferable’ due to the lack of elements and data on which to base the programming and the planning: in fact, the certainty on the type of technologies and production methods that will be available, on the social structure and user uses, and so on decreases. By 2030, the world will already be different: Thomas L. Friedman (2016) highlights that the three main forces of our Planet – Moore’s Law (technology), the Market (globalization) and Mother Nature (climate change and biodiversity loss) – are all pressing at the same time, with inevitable consequences for the territory, cities, architecture, products and services that will be designed, developed and used in the future. The 17 2030 Sustainable Development Goals presented by the United Nations provide an answer for this time horizon, tracing the path towards a model to achieve a better and more sustainable future for everyone. But will these Goals be able to accelerate sustainable innovation? Paraphrasing Luciano Floridi, philosopher of Information and Technology at the University of Oxford, we ask ourselves if ‘green’ (of natural and artificial environments) and ‘blue’ (of science, technology and therefore the digital world) will succeed to guide a vision of the future capable of replacing ‘things’ (objects) with ‘relationships’, ‘individual planning’ with ‘common planning’, the ‘experience economy’ (and not consumption) with a ‘policy of care and relationships’ (and not production). A vision of the sustainable future of living, by looking at the two time horizons of 2030 and 2050, will be played on an increasingly synergistic work aimed at providing answers to many questions.

Applying scenarios to complex issues: Australia 2050

2012

The scoping question for Australia 2050-What is our realistic vision for an ecologically, economically and socially sustainable Australia in 2050 and beyond?sets out a complex objective. This chapter identifies three types of scenario suitable for managing complex risks: exploratory or problem-based, normative or actorbased, and reflexive scenarios that combine various scenario types and are updated through action-based research. Generic risk assessment is defined as the effect of uncertainty on objectives where risks are events that have positive or negative outcomes. Complex risks are distinguished from tame risks: the former are 'wicked' problems that manifest complex system behaviour whereas the latter are linear, bounded problems. Three phases within the process of assessing complex risks are identified: the scoping, analytic and management phases. Three epistemically defined types of risk apply to these phases: idealised, calculated and perceived risk. Each phase within the assessment process requires a different application of scenarios. Risk scoping explores the problem and decision space, defining idealised risks and deciding on scenario types to be applied. The analytic stage uses deductive and inductive methods to calculate risks, applying mainly exploratory scenarios. In the management phase both calculated and perceived risks need to be managed, largely through normative scenarios. Reflexive scenarios use information from short-term actions to inform long-term strategy, applying learning by doing to inform complex objectives and pathways to those objectives. Hosted within an institution, regularly updated with new knowledge and used by a wide range of decision-makers, these could be termed living scenarios.

The Politics of Making and Unmaking (Sustainable) Futures - Introduction to the Special Feature

2019

From the onset of what we now call sustainability politics, "the future" has been an important frame of reference for political intent and action, as well as for (re)aligning one's moral compass.The idea of sustainable development clearly emerged from the recognition that the planet's resources and capacities are limited. The paradigm of development has had to be rethought in a more future-sensitive, future-oriented way, taking into account inter alia our perceived moral obligation toward future generations. In 1987, Our Common Future, also known as "The Brundtland Report", famously expressed this new outlook thus: "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (WCED 1987: 37). Since that time, the politics and policies of development and progress embedded in environmental concerns and limits to growth are torn between the future-making practices of enabling and transforming, on the one hand, and those of preservation and conservation on the other. Future-making practices are social and political endeavours that implicitly or explicitly establish relationships or refer to future situations. This broad definition takes into account practices as diverse as policy planning, scientific anticipation, biographical choices or the behaviour of different social groups. Examples of future-making practices that enable and transform can be found in cities' or civil society groups' sustainability initiatives such as the transition towns or urban gardening projects, as well as in geoengineering practices and technological innovation in general. Examples of future-making practices that preserve and sustain can be found in nature conservation politics and movements, risk politics, as well as in areas of legal regulation-consider, for instance, the precautionary principle or the debate over human rights for future generations. Both modes of future making (transformative and preservative) are legitimated through different sustainable future narratives. They are not "naturally occurring", a priori or "given" by some external, higher authority; rather they emerge from different social and political contexts and underlying socio-political norms and goals. These modes of future making arise, change or shift with our concrete endeavours to deal

Introduction to the Special Issue on ＂Exploring Paths to a Viable Future＂

Journal of Futures Studies, 2016

This Special Issue is focused on "Exploring paths to a viable future: obstacles and opportunities; requirements and strategies". In our invitation for submissions we said: "Today we find ourselves at a difficult crossroad: although we know that business as usual is unsustainable, the path to a viable future is not clear…. This call for papers asks for articles, reports and essays exploring the enormous challenge of how the global political economy can be rapidly transformed into a sustainable system." The current approach to major global issues-such as the interconnected problems of climate, water, food and energy-represents a massive failure to understand and manage critical risks. For example, although there is an international consensus that average global temperatures should not be allowed to increase more than 2°C, no practical plans have been made for staying within this limit (Heinberg, 2015). Moreover, 2°C is hardly a safe thresholdit is considered the point at which there is a 50% chance of dangerous outcomes (Anderson & Bows, 2011). Almost no-one would take a flight that had a 1% chance of having a dangerous outcome, let alone a 50% chance. Nevertheless, we-all of humanity-are taking this perilous trip because our leaders assure us (and we want to believe) that everything will work out fine. We can do much better. Our species is very good at managing risks-when we put our minds to it (e.g. ISO, 2015). It is safe to fly because airplanes are designed, built, operated and maintained to strict standards that ensure that there is less than a 1 in 4 million chance of a major accident occurring per flight (IATA, 2014). We need to apply similar risk management principles (e.g. Smith & Simpson, 2010) to our greatest problems: preventing the catastrophic collapse of nature and society and creating a safe, sustainable future. The first step is to determine unacceptable risks-the factors that could cause the failure of critical biophysical and social systems. Then we need to discover how the global system must be transformed to ensure safe outcomes. The next challenge is determining how it can be transformed. We then need to develop viable strategies-to decide how we will transform the global system. The final tasks will be building consensus around various strategies and implementing them. Of course this is easier said than done. While a CEO can order a company to develop and implement a business plan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations has no power to order