Future governance for just sustainability transitions

The development of positive visions has proliferated as an approach to imagine, analyze, and navigate transformations toward resilient, equitable, and sustainable futures. Anticipatory processes such as participatory scenario building involve a diversity of stakeholders and knowledge systems to co-produce inclusive pathways and strategies toward those futures. In the conversation about futures, however, governance systems remain poorly articulated. As efforts to imagine sustainable futures continue to grow, it is crucial to develop appropriate methods that push our collective imagination on what constitutes good governance. We aim to enter into a process of co-learning about how to create more just future governance structures, including educating ourselves in the work of Indigenous, queer, feminist, African American, and disability scholarship.

This working group has two objectives: (1) to examine how governance arrangements are conceptualized in existing scenarios and futures developed through anticipatory processes across diverse contexts and geographies worldwide. In particular, we examine how imagined futures address governance structures and processes, power dynamics, and knowledge systems; and (2) to develop a proposal that builds upon the analysis and synthesis of the first goal to pursue conceptual and methodological advances that intentionally imagine and build governance processes and structures towards more just, sustainable, and resilient futures. Throughout the 1.5 years of the working group, we will identify and invite scholars with expertise in justice-focused participatory processes to work with us in exploring tools and methods that more appropriately help push the imagination on governance futures.

Working Group Coordinators:

• Tischa A. Muñoz-Erickson – USDA Forest Service, International Institute of Tropical Forestry, Puerto Rico
• Marta Berbés-Blázquez – University of Waterloo, Canada
• Katinka Wijsman –  The New School, USA
• Liliana Caughman – Arizona State University, USA

Working Group Participants:

• Elizabeth Cook – Barnard College, USA
• Nancy Grimm – Arizona State University, USA
• Robert Hobbins – Georgia State University, USA
• David M. Iwaniec – Georgia State University, USA
• Duván López – Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
• Lelani Mannetti – Georgia State University, USA
• Thaddeus Miller – University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
• Marieke Veeger – University for International Cooperation, Costa Rica