Search

There is an urgent need to understand how anticipation processes such as scenario planning impact governance choices in the present. However, little empirical research has been done to analyze how anticipation processes frame possibilities for action. This paper investigates how assumptions about the future open up or close down anticipatory governance actions in a large number of climate-focused anticipation processes. We focused on four Global South regions: West Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central America. We apply an analytical framework that identifies four diverse approaches to anticipatory governance and connect this to the notion of opening up or closing down of possibility spaces for action. Across the four regions, we find that many anticipation processes open up dialogue about deep uncertainties and pluralistic worldviews but end up informing mostly technocratic and linear planning actions in the present. We also observe that anticipation processes in the Central American context more often break this trend, particularly when transformative ambitions are formulated. The focus on more technocratic futures and linear planning strategies and reliance on a mostly North-based global futures industry may close down more culturally, socially and politically diverse and regionally relevant future worldviews in anticipation processes.

Sustainable agrifood systems are critical to averting climate-driven social and ecological disasters, overcoming the growth paradigm and redefining the interactions of humanity and nature in the twenty-first century. This Perspective describes an agenda and examples for comprehensive agrifood system redesign according to principles of sufficiency, regeneration, distribution, commons and care. This redesign should be supported by coordinated education and research efforts that do not simply replicate dominant discourses on food system sustainability but point towards a post-growth world in which agroecological life processes support healthy communities rather than serving as inputs for the relentless pursuit of economic growth.

Food system innovations will be instrumental to achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, major innovation breakthroughs can trigger profound and disruptive changes, leading to simultaneous and interlinked reconfigurations of multiple parts of the global food system. The emergence of new technologies or social solutions, therefore, have very different impact profiles, with favourable consequences for some SDGs and unintended adverse side-effects for others. Stand-alone innovations seldom achieve positive outcomes over multiple sustainability dimensions. Instead, they should be embedded as part of systemic changes that facilitate the implementation of the SDGs. Emerging trade-offs need to be intentionally addressed to achieve true sustainability, particularly those involving social aspects like inequality in its many forms, social justice, and strong institutions, which remain challenging. Trade-offs with undesirable consequences are manageable through the development of well planned transition pathways, careful monitoring of key indicators, and through the implementation of transparent science targets at the local level., The Lancet Planetary Health, 5 (1), ISSN:2542-5196

A sustainable future is both dependent on and of the utmost importance for all people living on the planet. In 2015, the United Nations member states adopted the ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs) as ‘a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all’. Higher Education plays a critical role in achieving the SDG agenda as it engages students with the 17 goals both cognitively and affectively through research, teaching, collaboration with stakeholders, and campus practices. Achieving the ambitions described above requires innovative thinking and going beyond standard ways of curriculum development to account for how the goals affect students not just professionally but also personally. Hence, over the past 3 years, we developed a unique location-based, multiplayer mobile serious game: Utrecht2040. This game aims to teach students from all backgrounds and disciplines about key sustainability challenges in a systemic, interdisciplinary, and applied manner. Moreover, it aims to give them the tools to bring in their own personal and disciplinary perspective, and become agents of change. Utrecht2040 focuses on sustainability in urban contexts and can be played in any city.So far, over 2000 students played the Utrecht2040 game, across different faculties and bachelor programs. Our research team has conducted pre- and post-questionnaires with a total number of 225 participants. The players reported a positive effect on their knowledge and appreciation of the SDGs as a proxy for sustainability, specifically in urban contexts, which was significant for all groups. Students also indicated that playing in a group and interacting with citizens gave them new insights about the future possibilities for the city as well as the motivation to act on these insights. Over the next years, we will extend the game to all bachelor students at Utrecht University, as well as to other universities at the (inter-)national level, e.g. within the European University CHARM-EU, an alliance of the European Universities Initiative, where they will play it in their master’s program ‘Global Challenges in Sustainability’.

Scenario analysis has emerged as a key tool to analyze complex and uncertain future socio-ecological developments. However, currently existing global scenarios (narratives of how the world may develop) have neglected biological invasions, a major threat to biodiversity and the economy. Here, we use a novel participatory process to develop a diverse set of global biological invasion scenarios spanning a wide range of plausible global futures through to 2050. We adapted the widely used “two axes” scenario analysis approach to develop four families of four scenarios each, resulting in 16 scenarios that were later clustered into four contrasting sets of futures. Our analysis highlights that socioeconomic developments and technological innovation have the potential to shape biological invasions, in addition to well-known drivers, such as climate and human land use change and global trade. Our scenarios partially align with the shared socioeconomic pathways created by the climate change research community. Several factors that drive differences in biological invasions were underrepresented in the shared socioeconomic pathways; in particular, the implementation of biosecurity policies. We argue that including factors related to public environmental awareness and technological and trade development in global scenarios and models is essential to adequately consider biological invasions in global environmental assessments and thereby obtain a more integrative picture of future social–ecological developments This research was funded through the COST Action “Alien Challenge” [Grant number TD1209]; the 2017–2018 Belmont Forum and BiodivERsA joint call for research proposals, under the BiodivScen ERA-Net COFUND programme, and with the funding organisations AEI, FWF and BMBF [grant numbers AEI PCI2018-092966 (NRP)/FWF project 4011-B32 (FE, SD, GL, BeL)/BMBF projects 01LC1807A (HS) and 01LC1807B (JMJ)]; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [grant numbers InDyNet, JE 288/8-1; JE 288/9-1, 9-2 (JMJ)/via iDiv FZT 118, 202548816 (MW)]; OP RDE grant EVA4.0 [grant number CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000803] (AML); CONICYT [grant number AFB170008] (AP); UK-SCAPE programme, Natural Environment Research Council [grant number NE/R016429/1] (HER)

Effective science-policy engagement efforts are crucial to accelerate climate action. Such efforts should be underpinned by high-quality knowledge generation that enhances salience, credibility and legitimacy of research results. This is particularly important for the agricultural sector. Agriculture has been identified as a priority for climate action. The sector also constitutes well-established institutions set up to help achieve food and nutrition security. Institutionalizing high quality knowledge generation for climate change adaptation within these institutions presents a major opportunity to catalyze climate action within the sector. To contribute to insights about this institutionalization, we draw on and develop Cash et al.'s 2002 success conditions for enhancing salience, credibility and legitimacy: (1) increased accountability, (2) use of boundary objects, (3) participation across the boundary, (4) mediation and a selectively permeable boundary, (5) translation, and (6) coordination and complementary expertise. We examine how these success conditions apply in a major global case of agricultural research for development under climate change: the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). We explore these success conditions in the wider context of CGIAR reform and response to climate change as the international system for Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D). Our results specify and confirm the practical relevance of the six success conditions for institutional design and reform, but also point to the need to complement these with two inductively-derived success conditions: effective leadership and presence of incentives. To institutionalize these success conditions among AR4D institutions, there is an urgent need to create a conducive environment that enables the development of context-specific science-policy engagement strategies, along with leadership development and efforts to break traditional disciplinary silos which constrain user-oriented knowledge production.

Conventional policy approaches emphasize technical solutions and individual behavioral change, but practice-based policy approaches offer an alternative. This paper examines the operationalization of a practice-oriented futures policy development process. The process builds on practice theory to generate alternative sustainable future pathways and policy intervention ideas, and in doing so, extends the vocabulary for policy-focused futures work. We focus on three practices with implications for urban sustainability - food purchasing, eating out, and home cooking in Bangkok, Thailand. A multi-phase process of interlinked workshops including visioning, scenario evaluation, and transition pathways was enacted with food system actors and policy makers. Role-play and narrative elements were incorporated to elicit transformative and systems knowledge on how practices are or might be embedded in everyday life and generated policy ideas to enable such practices to emerge in the future. Different practices showed varying degrees of amenability to the process, based on participants' sense of agency and individual and community-based practice memories. This paper contributes to our understanding of how future practices are co-constructed and how policies might guide practice trajectories in the future. Practice-oriented futures policy development opens pathways for integrated policy ideas, mirroring the growing recognition for integrated governance structures.

Science–policy engagement efforts to accelerate climate action in agricultural systems are key to enable the sector to contribute to climate and food security goals. However, lessons to improve science–policy engagement efforts in this context mostly come from successful efforts and are limited in terms of empirical scope. Moreover, lessons have not been generated systematically from failed science–policy engagement efforts. Such analysis using lessons from failure management can improve or even transform the efficacy of efforts. To address this knowledge gap, we examined challenges and failures faced in science–policy engagement efforts of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). We developed an explanatory framework inspired by Cash et al.’s criteria for successful knowledge systems for sustainable development: credibility, salience, and legitimacy, complemented with insights from the wider literature. Using this framework in a survey, we identified factors which explain failure. To effectively manage these factors, we propose a novel approach for researchers working at the science–policy interface to fail intelligently, which involves planning for failure, minimizing risks, effective design, making failures visible, and learning from failures. This approach needs to be complemented by actions at the knowledge system level to create an enabling environment for science–policy interfaces.

Scenario analysis has emerged as a key tool to analyze complex and uncertain future socio-ecological developments. However, current global scenarios (narratives of how the world may develop) have neglected biological invasions, a major threat to biodiversity and the economy. We used a novel participatory process to develop a diverse set of global biological invasion scenarios spanning a wide breadth of plausible global futures through 2050. We adapted the widely used “two axes” scenario analysis approach to develop four families of four scenarios each, resulting in 16 scenarios that were later clustered into four contrasting sets of futures. Our analysis highlighted that socio-economic developments and changes in sustainability policies and lifestyle have the potential to shape biological invasions, in addition to well-known ecological drivers, such as climate and human land use change. Our scenarios align fairly well with the recently developed shared socio-economic pathways, but the factors that drive differences in biological invasions are underrepresented there. Including these factors in global scenarios and models is essential to adequately consider biological invasions in global environmental assessments, and obtain a more integrative picture of future socio-ecological developments.

Future scenarios and pathways of potential development trajectories are powerful tools to assist with decision-making to address many sustainability challenges. Such scenarios play a major role in global environmental assessments (GEAs). Currently, however, scenarios in GEAs are mostly developed at the global level by experts and researchers, and locally imagined, bottom-up scenarios do not play a role in such assessments. In this paper, we argue that addressing future sustainability challenges for achieving more equitable development in GEAs requires a more explicit role for bottom-up inspired futures. To this end, this paper employs an innovative global assessment framework for exploring alternative futures that are grounded in local realities and existing practical actions, and that can be appropriately scaled to the required decision-making level. This framework was applied in the context of the UN’s Global Environment Outlook 6, a major example of a GEA. We developed novel methods for synthesizing insights from a wide range of local practices and perspectives into global futures. We collected information from crowdsourcing platforms, outcomes of participatory workshops in different regions of the world, and an assessment of reported regional outlooks. We analysed these according to a framework also used by an integrated assessment model in the same GEA. We conclude that bottom-up approaches to identify and assess transformative solutions that envision future pathways towards greater sustainability significantly strengthen current GEA scenario-development approaches. They provide decision makers with required actionable information based on tangible synergistic solutions that have been tested on the ground. This work has revealed that there are significant opportunities for the integration of bottom-up knowledge and insights into GEAs, to make such assessments more salient and valuable to decision makers.

Cities face increasing risks due to climate change, and many cities are actively working towards increasing their climate resilience. Climate change-induced risks and interventions to reduce these risks do not only impact urban risk management systems and infrastructures, but also people’s daily lives. In order to build public support for climate adaptation and resilience-building and stimulate collaboration between authorities and citizens, it is necessary that adaptation and resilience-building are locally meaningful. Thus, interventions should be rooted in citizens’ concerns and aspirations for their city. Urban policymakers and researchers have started the search for better citizen participation in adaptation. However, tools to connect the relatively strategic and long-term notions of adaptation to a gradually changing climate held by planners and scientists with how citizens experience today’s climate and weather remain elusive. This paper investigates the use of ‘narratives of change’ as an approach to elicit perceptions of past, present and future weather, water, and climate, and how these relate to citizens’ desired futures. We tested this by eliciting and comparing narratives of change from authorities and from citizens in the Dutch city of Dordrecht. Our analysis of the process showed that historical events, embedded in local memory and identity, have a surprisingly strong impact on how climate change is perceived and acted upon today. This contributes to an awareness and sense of urgency of some climate risks (e.g. flood risks). However, it also shifts attention away from other risks (e.g. intensified heat stress). The analysis highlighted commonalities, like shared concerns about climate change and desires to collaborate, but also differences in how climate change, impacts, and action are conceptualized. There are possibilities for collaboration and mutual learning, as well as areas of potential disagreement and conflict. We conclude that narratives are a useful tool to better connect the governance of climate adaptation with peoples’ daily experience of climate risks and climate resilience, thereby potentially increasing public support for and participation in resilience-building. Keywords: Climate resilience, Narrative analysis, Citizen engagement, Flooding

Technologies and systemic innovation are critical for the transformation of the food system. This Perspective identifies promising technologies, assesses their readiness and proposes eight action points to accelerate innovation.Future technologies and systemic innovation are critical for the profound transformation the food system needs. These innovations range from food production, land use and emissions, all the way to improved diets and waste management. Here, we identify these technologies, assess their readiness and propose eight action points that could accelerate the transition towards a more sustainable food system. We argue that the speed of innovation could be significantly increased with the appropriate incentives, regulations and social licence. These, in turn, require constructive stakeholder dialogue and clear transition pathways.

Creating a just and sustainable planet will require not only small changes, but also systemic transformations in how humans relate to the planet and to each other, i.e., social–ecological transformations. We suggest there is a need for collaborative environments where experimentation with new configurations of social–ecological systems can occur, and we refer to these as transformative spaces. In this paper, we seek a better understanding of how to design and enable the creation of transformative spaces in a development context. We analyse nine case studies from a previous special issue on Designing Transformative Spaces that aimed to collect examples of cutting-edge action-oriented research on transformations from the Global South. The analysis showed five design phases as being essential: Problem Definition Phase; Operationalisation Phase; Tactical Phase; Outcome Phase; and Reflection Phase. From this synthesis, we distilled five key messages that should be considered when designing research, including: (a) there are ethical dilemmas associated with creating a transformative space in a system; (b) it is important to assess the readiness of the system for change before engaging in it; (c) there is a need to balance between ‘safe’ and ‘safe-enough’ spaces for transformation; (d) convening a transformative space requires an assemblage of diverse methodological frameworks and tools; and (e) transformative spaces can act as a starting point for institutionalising transformative change. Many researchers are now engaging in transdisciplinary transformations research, and are finding themselves at the knowledge–action interface contributing to transformative space-making. We hope that by analysing experiences from across different geographies we can contribute towards better understanding of how to navigate the processes needed for the urgent global transformations that are being called for to create a more equitable and sustainable planet Earth.

© 2018, The Author(s). Recently, consumers’ awareness regarding food production has increased, leading to a growing focus on shorter food supply chains and regional or local food systems. In the livestock sector, these developments are closely related to a regionalization of feed production. At the same time, a low self-sufficiency rate in protein feed is being reported for many European countries. In this paper, we analyze market impacts resulting from a complete switch to regionally produced feed in the European livestock sector. We simulate a shortening of feed supply chains in European livestock production using a large-scale agricultural sector model. Livestock production was restricted to feed that can be produced within the same EU member state. Our work represents a first step towards a simulation of regional or local food systems. The results reveal large increases in the prices of livestock products in Europe due to the shortening of feed supply chains. This is a result of a significant increase in livestock production costs. The ability to supply livestock products with regionally produced feed in the EU would be improved through a reduced consumption of livestock products. ispartof: FOOD SECURITY vol:10 issue:6 pages:1401-1410 status: published

Questions of equity, justice, and fairness in the international agricultural adaptation regime have emerged in recent years, prompting interest in regime power dynamics. Here, a three-dimensional conceptual framework of ‘power as domination’ is applied to the UNFCCC adaptation regime. We argue that this ‘power-over’ framing is an important lens through which to view adaptation, a field dominated by ‘power-to’, capacity-based constructs. The framework distinguishes between power-over manifesting through decision-making, agenda setting and preference shaping. Through a literature review we demonstrate that first and second dimension behavioral views of power-over fail to account for the subtle ways in which the interests and preferences of smallholder farmers are unknowingly shaped and restricted within the regime. Potential sources of third dimension preference shaping power are explored in a survey with high-level decision makers involved in National Adaptation Plans (NAP) development in seven countries. The results suggest that several inter-related features of the international agriculture adaptation regime collectively contribute to the shaping of interests and preferences of smallholders: prevailing discourses of uncertainty and the perceived limited capacity of smallholders; the resulting privileged status of ‘expert’ decision makers; the predominance of neoliberal development rationalities; and systemic biases resulting from the nation state as the principle unit of UNFCCC negotiation. These forces lie beyond the explanatory scope of first and second dimensions of power-over and help to explain why stakeholder engagement in adaptation decision making remains superficial in nature and why adaptation responses in agriculture can be considered ‘common and non-differentiated’. We argue for increased awareness of third dimension manifestations and impacts of power in adaptation literature to facilitate the improved participation of marginalized stakeholders in UNFCCC and domestic adaptation decision making forums, to increase the diversity of adaptation options available to smallholders, and ultimately, to improve the attribution of responsibility for adaptation outcomes.

Chapter Highlights\ud \ud 1. The rapid urbanization associated with the Anthropocene provides an imperative for humans to think differently about the future.\ud \ud 2. The “seeds” approach describes how niche experiments can, over time, coalesce to shift the dominant regime onto a more sustainable trajectory.\ud \ud 3. To achieve positive urban futures, it is vital to ensure that more positive narratives inform our lived experience so that, as humans, we are able to act differently in the face of seemingly overwhelming challenges.\ud \ud 4. Novel scenarios can be developed by imagining futures in which seemingly disparate ideas must coexist; fostering this creativity is important if we are to create positive visions of futures that we would like to achieve.\ud \ud 5. Urban transformations are complex phenomena; the seeds approach is a tool that can help us understand how transformations occur and how to nudge them towards more sustainable trajectories.

Global urbanization promises better services, stronger economies, and more connections; it also carries risks and unforeseeable consequences. To deepen our understanding of this complex process and its importance for global sustainability, we need to build interdisciplinary knowledge around a systems approach. Urban Planet takes an integrative look at our urban environment, bringing together scholars from a diverse range of disciplines: from sociology and political science to evolutionary biology, geography, economics and engineering. It includes the perspectives of often neglected voices: architects, journalists, artists and activists. The book provides a much needed cross-scale perspective, connecting challenges and solutions on a local scale with drivers and policy frameworks on a regional and global scale. The authors argue that to overcome the major challenges we are facing, we must embark on a large-scale reinvention of how we live together, grounded in inclusiveness and sustainability. This title is also available Open Access.

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.

Ce texte présente le projet européen SUSFANS., This paper defines the research agenda of the SUSFANS project, describes its history and its potential societal impacts. It contributes to balanced and encompassing views on how to strengthen food and nutrition security outcomes in the EU and how to improve the performance of the food system in the EU from the perspective of social, environmental and economic sustainability. The research is led by the notion that improvements in the diets of the European consumer must come from, and be supportive of, sustainable food systems. Its holistic, integrative approach builds a set of metrics, models and foresight tools, useable for navigation on sustainable food and nutrition security. This results in a coherent and supported vision on sustainable food and nutrition security in the EU and globally, and underpins a perspective on how EU policies on farming, fishing, food and nutrition could contribute to that vision with greater efficacy than today.

We are running out of water, robots will take our jobs, we are eating ourselves to an early death, old age pension and health systems are bankrupting governments, and an immigration crisis is unravelling the European integration project. A growing number of nightmares, perfect storms, and global catastrophes create fear of the future. One response is technocratic optimism — we’ll invent our way out of these impending crises. Or we’ll simply ignore them as politically too hot to handle, too uncomfortable for experts — denied until crisis hits. History is littered with late lessons from early warnings. Cynicism is an excuse for inaction. Populism flourishes in the depths of despair. Despite the gloom, there is another way to look at the future. We don’t have to be pessimistic or optimistic — we can find realistic hope. This book is written by an international and influential collection of future shapers. It is aimed at anyone who is interested in learning to refresh the present, forge new common ground, and redesign the future.

In this exploratory paper we propose 'worldmaking' as a framework for pluralistic, imaginative scenario development. Our points of departure are the need in scenario practice to embrace uncertainty, discomfort and knowledge gaps, and the connected need to capture and make productive fundamental plurality among understandings of the future. To help respond to these needs, we introduce what Nelson Goodman calls worldmaking. It holds that there is no singular, objective world (or "real reality"), and instead that worlds are multiple, constructed through creative processes instead of given, and always in the process of becoming. We then explore how worldmaking can operationalise discordant pluralism in scenario practice by allowing participants to approach not only the future but also the present in a constructivist and pluralistic fashion; and by extending pluralism to ontological domains. Building on this, we investigate how scenario worldmaking could lead to more imaginative scenarios: worldmaking is framed as a fully creative process which gives participants ontological agency, and it helps make contrasts, tensions and complementarities between worlds productive. We go on to propose questions that can be used to operationalize scenario worldmaking, and conclude with the expected potential and limitations the approach, as well as suggestions for practical experimentation.

This chapter examines three examples of foresight exercises and discusses the kinds of institutional changes they led to, and the key elements of their success. It includes recommendations about the conditions for going from foresight to institutional innovation or policy-making. In the late 1990s, the foresight approach was not common in research programs, and it contributed to three types of innovations: new research projects, new research questions and methods, and new partnerships. Foresight is 'a systematic, participatory and multi-disciplinary approach to explore mid- to long-term futures and drivers of change'. The Agrimonde foresight exercise was launched in 2006 by Cirad and Inra in order to build scenarios on how to adequately feed a population of nine billion individuals in 2050 while at the same time preserving the ecosystems. To improve decision-making for institutional innovation or policy-making, three recommendations are proposed.

Current environmental problems are often extremely complex, uncertain, and affecting multiple actors and institutions across sectors and scales. Earth System Governance (ESG) is a field of research that is highly relevant for understanding social interactions across scales and sectors and addressing complex problems. ESG refers to the broad collection of formal and informal rules, mechanisms, and networks ranging from the local to the global scale which deal with environmental changes1. ESG can be seen as both an empirical phenomenon and as a political project2. It refers to a social phenomenon observed in the interactions and activities of many international regimes, bureaucracies, local and transnational activists groups, and expert networks. At the same time, it is also a political effort to unite stakeholders, aiming to strengthen the institutions and networks addressing complex governance challenges associated with ESG. Participatory research is one very important way to appeal to ESG both as a social phenomenon - as a way to better understand the complex empirical dynamics associated with ESG – and as a political endeavour – by engaging different stakeholders in (academic) research and fostering processes of learning.

This paper examines the development and use of scenarios as an approach to guide action in multi-level, multi-actor adaptation contexts such as food security under climate change. Three challenges are highlighted: (1) ensuring the appropriate scope for action; (2) moving beyond intervention-based decision guidance; and (3) developing long-term shared capacity for strategic planning. To overcome these challenges we have applied explorative scenarios and normative back-casting with stakeholders from different sectors at the regional level in East Africa. We then applied lessons about appropriate scope, enabling adaptation pathways, and developing strategic planning capacity to scenarios processes in multiple global regions. Scenarios were created to have a broad enough scope to be relevant to diverse actors, and then adapted by different actor groups to ensure their salience in specific decision contexts. The initial strategy for using the scenarios by bringing a range of actors together to explore new collaborative proposals had limitations as well as strengths versus the application of scenarios for specific actor groups and existing decision pathways. Scenarios development and use transitioned from an intervention-based process to an embedded process characterized by continuous engagement. Feasibility and long-term sustainability could be ensured by having decision makers own the process and focusing on developing strategic planning capacity within their home organizations.

We explore how smallholder agricultural systems in the Kenyan highlands might intensify and/or diversify in the future under a range of socio-economic scenarios. Data from approximately 3000 households were analyzed and farming systems characterized. Plausible socio-economic scenarios of how Kenya might evolve, and their potential impacts on the agricultural sector, were developed with a range of stakeholders. We study how different types of farming systems might increase or diminish in importance under different scenarios using a land-use model sensitive to prices, opportunity cost of land and labour, and other variables. We then use a household model to determine the types of enterprises in which different types of households might engage under different socio-economic conditions. Trajectories of intensification, diversification, and stagnation for different farming systems are identified. Diversification with cash crops is found to be a key intensification strategy as farm size decreases and labour costs increase. Dairy expansion, while important for some trajectories, is mostly viable when land available is not a constraint, mainly due to the need for planting fodders at the expense of cropland areas. We discuss the results in relation to induced innovation theories of intensification. We outline how the methodology employed could be used for integrating global and regional change assessments with local-level studies on farming options, adaptation to global change, and upscaling of social, environmental and economic impacts of agricultural development investments and interventions.

The scale, rate, and intensity of humans’ environmental impact has engendered broad discussion about how to find plausible pathways of development that hold the most promise for fostering a better future in the Anthropocene. However, the dominance of dystopian visions of irreversible environmental degradation and societal collapse, along with overly optimistic utopias and business‐as‐usual scenarios that lack insight and innovation, frustrate progress. Here, we present a novel approach to thinking about the future that builds on experiences drawn from a diversity of practices, worldviews, values, and regions that could accelerate the adoption of pathways to transformative change (change that goes beyond incremental improvements). Using an analysis of 100 initiatives, or “seeds of a good Anthropocene”, we find that emphasizing hopeful elements of existing practice offers the opportunity to: (1) understand the values and features that constitute a good Anthropocene, (2) determine the processes that lead to the emergence and growth of initiatives that fundamentally change human–environmental relationships, and (3) generate creative, bottom‐up scenarios that feature well‐articulated pathways toward a more positive future.

Morphological analysis allows any number of dimensions to be retained when framing future conditions, and techniques within morphological analysis determine which combinations of those dimensions represent plausible futures. However, even a relatively low number of dimensions in future conditions can lead to hundreds or even thousands of plausible future scenarios. Creating highly diverse but conceivable visions of the future in which to explore decision-making, exploratory futures techniques rely on the selection of a small number of plausible scenarios from the larger set. In this paper we describe a new method for finding maximally diverse sets containing a small number of plausible scenarios from a multi-dimensional morphological analysis. It is based on a mathematical optimization of diversity that is robust to the uncertainty in the framing of future factors and states and in what stakeholders might consider diverse combinations of those factors and states. We also describe implementation of the method as a software tool and its performance in recent exploratory scenario development by CGIAR and partners for regional environmental change, food security and livelihoods.

How effective are multi-stakeholder scenarios- building processes to bring diverse actors together and create a policy-making tool to support sustainable development and promote food security in the developing world under climate change? The effectiveness of a participatory scenario development process highlights the importance of ''bound- ary work'' that links actors and organizations involved in generating knowledge on the one hand, and practitioners and policymakers who take actions based on that knowledge on the other. This study reports on the application of criteria for effective boundary work to a multi-stakeholder scenarios process in East Africa that brought together a range of regional agriculture and food systems actors. This analysis has enabled us to evaluate the extent to which these scenarios were seen by the different actors as credible, legitimate and salient, and thus more likely to be useful. The analysis has shown gaps and opportunities for improvement on these criteria, such as the quantification of scenarios, attention to translating and communicating the results through various channels and new approaches to enable a more inclusive and diverse group of participants. We conclude that applying boundary work criteria to multi-stakeholder scenarios pro- cesses can do much to increase the likelihood of developing sustainable development and food security policies that are more appropriate.

In this paper, we present a strategy for the development of interactive media scenarios to help communicate uncertainties and complexities in coupled human and natural systems. Insights arising from Complex Adaptive Systems theory advocate the need for more adaptive perspectives on natural resources management. For the collaborative exploration of future complexities and uncertainties, participatory scenario development has proven to be a powerful approach. A range of communication strategies with benefits for conveying complexity, however, has not yet been adopted by scenario developers. We present a framework of criteria with which we structurally analyze the benefits of interactive media communication. First, we consider requirements of feasibility, flexibility and stakeholder contributions. Then, we synthesize criteria for the communication of Complex Adaptive Systems. Finally, we set criteria for communicatory clarity and engagement. Using this framework, we review several science communication fields, including landscape visualization, serious gaming and visual analytics. We then develop a strategy for interactive media communication in participatory scenario development, including two work-in-progress examples. This strategy employs mixed media, micro-games and accessible stakeholder contributions in a geo-web context, and is suitable for participatory work in live settings as well as on-line, from a local to a global scale.

Ambitions for sustainable development invariably lead to pondering the future, because sustainability issues require a future oriented transition of existing, unsustainable systems and practices. Working towards transition requires thorough experimentation with a broad range of innovation projects. However, in the public arena, many such projects are met with stereotypical images, which influence their innovative potential in often unpredictable ways. What is the role of multiple images in complex sustainable development issues, and what are promising approaches to deal with their associated problems? We report current insights from selected cases from TransForum, a large-scale innovation programme toward transition of Dutch agriculture. Our preliminary results show that that simple images can cause a disregard of complexity and that a negative societal image can stifle a project's innovative potential. Images need to me monitored and managed to increase the future potential of innovation projects. Visualisation techniques may foster taking complexity into account in an innovation project. Furthermore, increasing image awareness can help a project to adapt more effectively to existing societal discourses and the images embedded in them. Finally, fostering effective transition requires the creation of new, enticing, images, that do justice to the ambition for transition. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

We simulated pollen assemblages for 11 sites on the Swiss Plateau (Schweizer Mittelland) based on a low resolution land cover map and pollen productivity estimates (PPE) from this region. A comparison between observed and simulated pollen data demonstrated that the majority of the simulated pollen proportions were within a range of 5% of over- or underestimation, and that at eight of the 11 sites the dominant taxon was correctly estimated. The modelled sum of arboreal pollen was correct within ±11% at nine sites. Our results indicate that the PPE established for the Swiss Plateau can be used to simulate pollen assemblages with reasonable accuracy. Moreover, our results justify the use of the POLLSCAPE simulation using the Prentice-Sugita model and its variations of pollen dispersal and deposition in more complex topographic landscapes than those to which they have hitherto been applied.