3.2 Examining the target state and pathways using methods of futurology

Thinking and imagining the future is important for deciding on and taking action on issues that affect the future. Images of futures, built on perceptions, beliefs and hopes about the future, influence what is considered possible in the first place. People's reality is largely socially constructed. Discussing the future and turning ideas about it into images and stories also builds futures. Images of futures have been explored in fiction through utopias and dystopias. They help to reflect on desirable and undesirable futures and can serve as critical discourses that challenge prevailing assumptions. Utopia and dystopia as tools for imagining a good life were discussed in section 3.4 of the Good life and planetary well-being course.

In recent decades, individual-level images of futures have expanded in many Western countries. The German sociologist Ulrich Beck described modernization as a liberation from the social order produced by industrial society, in which gender roles, the status of one’s family as well as cultural moral concepts, for example, limited the possible futures of individuals more strictly than they now do. The sky might have been the limit of societal progress, but the limit of a woman's future was the door to the nursery or to a vocational institute considered “suitable for women”. In the neoliberal era, the future is entirely individualized: the dominant cultural narrative is that anyone can become anything, if they have enough faith in themselves and are ready to put effort in. The importance of imagining the future has therefore increased, at least when looking at people's life plans at an individual level, because there are more futures that are considered possible. Of course, this narrative does not take into consideration whether the starting points that different individuals have for realizing different futures are actually equal in the first place.

 Photo by Sigezy, CC BY-NC 2.0.

The promotion of sustainability transition combines both private and public imagining and thinking about the future. Public images of futures can be related to probable, possible or desirable futures, and few people are prepared to promote a future that they do not consider possible or desirable. Private images of futures can influence attitudes towards powerful environmental actions: for example, is a more strict climate policy perceived as a threat to one's daily well-being and as a constraint on life, or as a way to lead a more meaningful life? In addition to thinking about the images of futures, it is important to understand how and why certain choices can lead societies towards certain futures, and how to steer a sailboat on the high seas towards the right course despite uncertainties.

Futurology seeks to identify different alternative futures and to increase understanding of the factors that influence societal trajectories and pathways of change: why do certain choices lead societies in a particular direction and what can be done to change that direction? The future is seen as something that can be influenced but not controlled. Futurology, which looks at the big picture and pathways to the future that can be as far as decades away, differs from foresight, which is a very practical way of looking at the near future and is utilized, for example, in planning business, urban planning or investment decisions. Futurology does not only shed light on possible or probable alternative futures; it also involves a critical and thought-provoking perspective. Futurology can challenge beliefs that society has come to take for granted and emphasize the possibility for people to influence the future.

Futurology's approach to the world is systemic. The world is seen as a complex system that can particularly be better understood through interdisciplinary methods that combine map data from different disciplines. The future is therefore not imagined in terms of linear predictions; instead, interactions within and between systems are taken into account.

According to Markku Wilenius, Professor of Futurology, evidence suggests that we are reaching a mature point for an upheaval of current systems and that in regard to the energy sector, transport and food production the world could change radically during the 2030–2040s. In terms of climate action, the assessment is hopeful, as these sectors account for 90% of the climatic effects of human activity. According to Wilenius, it is important to adopt a systems thinking perspective on the world, as various linear projections of a stable pattern of change can easily go wrong. An example of this non-linearity is the development of renewable energy technologies. For example, in the last 12 years, the cost of producing the cells needed to generate solar energy has fallen to a tenth of what it used to be. Mobile technology and the technology associated with mobile phone services was also very rapidly revolutionized. However, non-linear phenomena, such as the real consequences of exponential growth, are more difficult to grasp.

The non-linearity of change is linked to the cyclical nature of the technological and economic development of societies, observed to recur in periods of 40–60 years. Named after the Russian economist Nikolai Kondratieff, cycles, or waves, have been identified in industrialized Western countries since the 1780s. Thus we are now in the sixth cycle – the cycle of intelligent, integrated and resource-efficient technology. It seeks to tackle the environmental impacts of human activity through smart solutions, resource efficiency and the matching of technology and nature. At the same time, global value studies have shown signs of a weakening of materialistic values: good life is increasingly seen as linked to self-expression and self-fulfilment rather than to the pursuit of an increasing standard of living.

The beginnings of the next cycle can be seen in the previous one, as new cycles build on the needs generated by the previous ones. For example, the first cycle, taking place around the time of the invention of the steam engine, was followed by a wave of revolutionary developments in railways and steel production, which in turn was followed by a cycle of electrification. Thanks to this building mechanism, there is already a hunch on the nature of the seventh cycle, from around 2050 onwards. Wilenius calls the coming seventh cycle a technology of living systems, where technology and organic life will become increasingly intertwined: societies will process organic materials and the whole planet will be transformed into a carefully tended big garden.

Futurology methods to help creating maps and pathways

Scenarios

Scenarios are maps of possible futures: they describe both the state of a particular future (an imagining of a future) and the paths that lead to that future. Pathways depict causalities and help to understand the trajectories that may lead to particular futures, and to identify places of change and influence along those pathways. Scenarios are not predictions, nor can a vision that emerges from general thinking about the future be called a scenario: research-based scenario work is defined by its systematicity, its reliance on research data and its documentation.

Descriptive scenarios systematically outline possible futures on the basis of the data that has been collected. It is not enough to simply have historical information about how something has developed, as there are many possible futures and there are many ways in which they can be influenced. For example, an estimate of population change by 2050 is a forecast based on historical data, not a scenario. Scenarios and models support each other. As IPBES, for example, has stated in its Scenarios and Models Assessment, scenarios describe possible futures by taking into consideration different drivers of change. Models, in turn, assess the impacts of these different scenarios on different species and ecosystem processes.

Scenarios can be built using both qualitative and quantitative methods. What many of the methods have in common, is a broad view on the landscape (i.e. operational environment). While a scenario may focus on a very specific topic, such as consumption habits, the energy system or, for example, part of the food system, scenario work takes into account a wide range of possible background variables. These background variables are related to the system's operating environment; they are a variety of factors that influence the functioning of the system.

Political, economic, social, technological and environmental (ecological) factors of an operating environment can be identified separately (so called PESTE analysis; sometimes PESTLE to include legal factors separately). They can all contribute to the trajectories of a system. Sometimes, the description of the landscape is further enriched, for example, by looking at culture, values or legislation. Of course, there is always a certain degree of artificiality in the classification: for example, subsidies for electric cars are equally political and economic factors. However, the multidimensionality of the classification reminds us of an important point: a change of a system or resistance to a system changing is always explained by many types of factors, not just by the political system, the economy or technological developments. When outlining a landscape, it is also essential to identify both the changes that have already begun and those that humans have not encountered before but that are possible. Thinking about brand new changes is often the most challenging.

PESTE analysis of landscape can be used to outline, for example, the future of work in Finland. Image from the textbook on futures research at tulevaisuus.fi.

Descriptive scenarios and modelling of the consequences of scenarios also give a concrete picture of what could happen in the world if adequate action is not taken to mitigate climate change and halt the biodiversity loss. The Club of Rome's “Limits to Growth” report (1972) was the first modelling of the planet's future that took the complexity of systems into account. In many cases, it is important to model the so-called Business as Usual (BAU), i.e. to assess what the future will look like if societies or specific industries continue to operate as they do today.

Desirable futures and backcasting

Backcasting methods related to desired futures (therefore, goal-oriented methods) are particularly relevant to the sustainability transition, as they respond more directly to the core question of research on possible futures: how to build pathways to a sustainable future and planetary well-being? Backcasting method provides information on pathways to the desired future.

The work starts by identifying the variables and their numerical values that are relevant to the desired future state – for example, land use that safeguards different habitat types, a carbon neutral society, or, as a more specific example, a working life or food system that is sustainable from the perspective of the environment and human well-being. Once the main characteristics of the desired future have been identified, the next step is to identify the measures that can be taken to proceed towards the desired future. To create a plausible pathway, check marks, or milestones, are marked along the way, and often creating them starts closer to the desired future (hence the name backcasting): for example, if in 2050 the transport system should be carbon neutral, what should the situation be in, say, 2040, to make the goal possible? Many people are familiar with the everyday, lightweight version of backcasting from studies, work, or fitness, where the method can be used to achieve different kinds of goals.

Backcasting helps to structure, evaluate and compare different pathways towards the future – or futures. In outlining pathways, it is important to identify the impact of different drivers of change (e.g. policy direction, business decisions, and cultural or technological changes). For example, a transition may look very different if it is driven by businesses or if it is driven by strong political leadership.

Participatory futures work

Participatory futures research has produced an increasing number of methods both to support scientific work and to serve as tools for thinking about the future and making decisions (i.e., doing futures work) in the rest of society. Some of the best-known methods of participatory futures work include Delphi, which emphasizes the role of experts, and future workshops, which emphasizes broader participation. We will now briefly explore these two methods.

The Delphi method was originally developed in the 1950s as a tool to support rapid decision-making that needs to take into account multiple perspectives and to be used, for example, in crisis situations. Today, Delphi studies are based on expert panels and seek to capture the elusive but valuable “hunches” held by experts in the field about possible or desirable future developments. Central to Delphi is the multi-round process of bringing together the views of experts, giving participants the opportunity to update their views as a result of additional information gained from the previous round and (anonymous) exchange of ideas.

On the other hand, the success of Delphi is critically dependent on the successful selection of the expert panel. While defining expertise in cardiac surgery is relatively straightforward, expertise in sustainability transition can take very diverse forms and its definition requires an awareness of prevailing social value hierarchies and mainstream frameworks of thinking. If expertise is defined in a way where only mainstream views can be seen as expertise, Delphi knowledge can reinforce and reproduce dominant paradigms in a harmful way (more on this in section 3.3, Making wise pathway choices). Today, a crowdsourcing version of Delphi is also being developed: in this version, collecting ideas, problem solving or evaluating the solution options is crowdsourced to a wider audience.

Future workshops are a widely adaptable way of future work. The method was originally developed to empower “ordinary people” to imagine, reflect and build the future. All future workshops share a practical approach and a desire to create new solutions together. The issues discussed in the workshops can also be smaller and take place in the near future, as opposed to the big maps outlined in futurology. Conversational knowledge generation can increase the participants' understanding of the different perspectives on the problem. The different stages of the work include defining the problem together, freely brainstorming solutions in as imaginative a way as possible, and, eventually, returning to reflect on the practical steps that could be taken to solve the problem given the constraints of the present.

Future workshops are also a key tool for participatory decision-making. They are not suited to producing binding decisions because of their limited number of participants, but they can provide advisory insights and new solutions, and help decision-makers and policy-makers to understand the particular concerns that citizens have around the issue at hand. Many working methods from stories to visual methods and backcasting can be used in workshops. As no prior knowledge or preparation is usually required from workshop participants, careful planning of the workshops is critical to their success. For example, the information provided as a basis for working in a workshop – especially if the topic is about challenging issues related to the sustainability transition, such as lifestyles or controversial land use – can also be unsettling and evoke negative feelings. Workshop organizers need to have good facilitation skills in order to lead participants beyond conflict and difficult emotional reactions towards constructive cooperation instead of confrontation.

Roadmaps to a more sustainable future

The use of roadmaps has become increasingly common, especially in the context of climate action. In Finland, for example, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment directed 13 major industrial sectors to draw up their own sector-specific low-carbon roadmaps to support Finland's goal of being carbon neutral by 2035. The roadmaps were drawn up by the energy industry, chemical industry, forest industry, technology industry, food industry, commerce, logistics and transport, agriculture, hospitality industry, construction industry, property owners and developers, sawmill industry, textile industry, and bioenergy industry. Summaries of the roadmaps were also compiled in the ministry's own report (link).

Creating roadmaps, or roadmapping, helps to structure and visualize the future of a given activity, the step-by-step means to move towards the target state, and the context in which changes along the route need to be monitored and taken into account (larger map). Roadmaps can provide very specific directions for action (e.g., business technology roadmaps), represent general visualized stories of development options and changes in the landscape (strategy roadmaps) or be something in between the former two (policy roadmaps). A strategy roadmap emphasizes the idea of multiple possible pathways and the need to stay on track so that the direction of action can be constantly revisited in response to a changing landscape. In simple terms, a technology roadmap is like a marathon training program that takes you towards your goal step by step, while a strategy roadmap is an orienteering map where the map reader has to make the route choices themself, but where the map provides the essential background information needed to make good pathway choices and find the destination.

A policy roadmap is a useful tool to support the maneuvering of social systems. It outlines the drivers of change (trends, megatrends) that influence the achievement of the desired future, the policy actions that can be carried out in different time frames to support the transition, and the changes in key areas of production and consumption, such as technological innovations and cracks in the regimes that allow for the introduction of larger transitions. A policy roadmap can also be supported by a technology roadmap that outlines in more detail, for example, the changes in the way energy is produced and the solutions that these changes will enable, the market changes, and the key actors and their resources that will support the change.

Roadmaps typically consist of three elements: (1) a definition of the target state, e.g. carbon neutrality of a company or a municipality; (2) time frames, starting with a description of the current state and progressively moving towards a far-reaching vision; and (3) thematic levels of analysis (e.g. drivers of change, technologies enabling new solutions, current state of the regime in terms of regulation, markets, products or practices, etc.).

Structure of a policy roadmap and a technology roadmap based on Ahlqvist et al. 2012. A single policy roadmap can include several detailed technology roadmaps.

Roadmaps can be drawn up for almost anything. A small-scale roadmapping draws on existing reports and previously collected data, which are transformed into a roadmap by examining information on the current state and pathway options in relation to the desired future. Mapping work calls for writing out concrete steps towards, for example, a low-carbon target. Extensive roadmapping work is based on generating new knowledge, for example through workshop processes and expert interviews.

Consulting experts helps to verify the accuracy of the map. For example, when working to mitigate biodiversity loss and climate change, it is important that the measures outlined in the roadmap are genuinely effective, rather than simply introducing increasing purchasing of local food and avoiding the use of plastic as sufficient measures to achieve the organization’s emission reductions (these measures have a very small impact on GHG emissions or may even lead to an increase in emissions, if, for example, imported chicken, fish or vegetarian food is replaced by locally produced beef, or if avoiding plastic leads to product spoilage, or to replacing plastic bags by cotton bags, which have a much bigger environmental load unless they are used thousands of times).

A simple action plan put on a timeline is not a systematic roadmap, although for a small company or organization it can be a resource-wise way to create a plan towards the future. A systematic roadmap includes a broader whole that seeks to outline the ‘map landscape’ as well. It includes both visual and text-based descriptions of pathways towards carbon-neutrality, planetary well-being or other target state, as well as more detailed action plans.

A roadmap concretizes and phases the sustainability work, while reminding us of the system-level variables and the big picture of the transition. This will also allow actions to be adjusted along the way, if necessary, and the pathway to be altered in response to changes in the landscape. The idea of the roadmap is also to show "Plan B" options (so that, for example, the cessation of gas imports from Russia would not lead to the introduction of fossil fuels, as we have learned happened in European countries in 2022). A roadmap needs to be monitored: without clear steps and measurable or otherwise monitorable milestones, it is also difficult to say if the pathway is headed to the right direction and if the pace is sufficient. 

An example: a visualization of Kuopion Energia's roadmap to production free of GHG emissions. The visualization shows the roadmap's target state, current state and annual milestones of transition. The thematic levels of analysis include the recent history of the system to be changed and the trend of change, the development of the number of customers, and technologies and measures to reduce emissions (Photo: Kuopion Energia Oy and Kuopion Sähköverkko Oy).

Possibilities and limitations of examining the future

The methods of futurology and futures work make different alternative futures conceivable and thus more visible and possible. Laura Pereira, a researcher specialized in sustainability transformations, has noted that we humans are often surprisingly bad at imagining possible futures and easily condemn as impossible many things that are entirely possible.

Already, a host of futures have come true in the world that were once considered impossible (or so ridiculously unlikely that they were hardly worth thinking about): for example, Darryl Zanuck, a film producer at 20th Century Fox, predicted in 1946 that television would last no more than six months on the market, and engineer Robert Metcalfe, one of the pioneers of the internet, thought the internet would die in 1996. Since the core of futures work is not about predicting, but about describing and viewing different possible futures in relation to each other, futures methods emphasize agency as well as choice for the trajectories of society. Although the future or the transition cannot be completely controlled, they can be navigated and their trajectories influenced by influencing human systems and processes.

Creating pathways through scenario work helps us to see the range of possible courses of action and acts as an antidote to the biases of the human mind and its tendency to simplify causal judgements (for more on biases of reasoning, see Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman's book Thinking, Fast and Slow).) Sustainability transition cannot be built by, so to speak, putting all eggs in one revolutionary basket – be it a technological leap or a cultural shift in values. Identifying multiple pathway options is also important for building hope and agency regarding the future: if there are many pathways to a sustainable future, the game is not lost even if one of the pathways turns out to be difficult to travel.

Futurology also has its challenges. Human systems have become increasingly complex, with more and more components that are now marginal but which may give rise to new developments and life-changing opportunities. In the 1940s, when the first computers were built, Peter Watson, head of the IBM computer company, estimated that there was a market for perhaps five computers in the whole world. Peter Schwartz (The Art of the Long View, 1991), a pioneer of scenario thinking who was much better at predicting the virtualization of the world in the 1990s, also failed to foresee, for example, the revolutions in big data, the development of artificial intelligence or data processing that took place over the course of the next few decades.

These upheavals also shape the way we study the future and foresee it. The technological limits of futurology are moving further away as computing power improves, but the human mind is a major constraint on whether researchers can really imagine possible futures and pathways. It is also important to remember that scenarios are not predictions of real futures, and taking them too literally can rule out alternative courses of action. It is also important to bear in mind that the premises of most of the perspectives on thinking about the future described above are entirely human-centered and focused on human systems. The real challenge would therefore be to try to imagine futures in ways that would incorporate the rest of all life in a rich way, describing their agency and activity instead of treating them as reservoirs and processes of resources that enable human activities.

At its best, human imagination helps to make desired futures and the pathways to them more real, and futures work helps to empower people and increase their faith in the future. At worst, the same powers and processes of imagination can lead to the colonization of the future and the exclusion of more just futures or more just pathways to the future. These themes will be discussed further in the next sub-section