Exploring Pathways for Change: A Practice-Oriented Integration of Foresight and Sustainability Transitions

Abstract

The world is on a trajectory to exceed the 1.5-degree target set by the Paris Agreement. As the effects of climate change become increasingly evident, there is a pressing need to fundamentally transform our societies towards just and sustainable futures. This paper presents a practical methodology for guiding collaborative transformation processes towards sustainability. Our aim is to contribute to the development of tools that combine insights from foresight with theories from the sustainability transitions literature, specifically scenario planning and multi-level perspective (MLP) approaches. Foresight and sustainability transitions both aim to understand long-term trends shaping production and consumption systems and guide transitions to more desirable socio-technical regimes. However, few scholars have examined overlaps between the fields and explored the potential for practical integration in workshop settings. The MLP can benefit from scenario planning by incorporating directionality and pluralism of futures in transition processes, while the MLP provides a structure for understanding system dynamics and socio-technical change to scenario planning. In this paper, we share our experiences using an integrated MLP-scenario planning framework in a workshop setting where actors from the Swedish food system explored prospective transitions. Using backcasting and pre-mortem related to regime dimensions from the MLP, participants built a common understanding of events, barriers and pathways associated with four normative scenarios of sustainable food systems. Our results show that the MLP and scenario planning can be integrated and implemented on a practical level to facilitate dialogues on current regime lock-ins and thereby pave the way for transformative change.