•The 1.5°C target calls for imagining and governing uncertain climate futures.•Anticipatory climate governance becomes central, including the role of foresight.•We review the disconnect between ...foresight and governance research.•Governing foresight, and foresight as governance, both need critical attention.•We offer a conceptual framework for analyzing foresight in anticipatory governance.
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.
In times of accelerating earth system transformations and their potentially disruptive societal consequences, imagining and governing the future is now a core challenge for sustainability research ...and practice. Much social science and sustainability science scholarship increasingly engages with the future. There is, however, a lack of scrutiny of how the future is envisioned in these literatures, and with what implications for governance in the present. This article analyses these two aspects, building on the concept of “anticipatory governance.” We understand anticipatory governance to broadly mean governing in the present to adapt to or shape uncertain futures. We review perspectives within public policy, futures studies, social–ecological systems, environmental policy and governance, transition studies, science and technology studies, and responsible research and innovation literatures. All these literatures engage explicitly or implicitly with the notion of anticipatory governance, yet from distinct ontological and epistemological starting points. Through our review, we identify four approaches to anticipatory governance that differ with regard to (a) their conceptions of and engagement with the future; (b) their implications for actions to be taken in the present; and (c) the ultimate end to be realized through anticipatory governance. We then map onto these four approaches a diverse set of methods and tools of anticipation that each engages with. In concluding, we discuss how these four approaches provide a useful analytical lens through which to assess ongoing practices of anticipatory governance in the climate and sustainability realm.
This article is categorized under:
Policy and Governance > Multilevel and Transnational Climate Change Governance
This article identifies four approaches to anticipatory governance, discernible in the social and sustainability science literatures. Each of these approaches embodies different conceptions of the future, with associated implications for actions to be taken in the present, to realize diverse ultimate ends. The figure depicts these four approaches, mapping them along with two axes (conceptions of the future (x‐axis) and implications for actions in the present (y‐axis). The four boxes of text summarize the key elements of the four approaches, with conception of the future in red text, the actions to be taken in the present in blue, and the ultimate aims in black.
Along with concerns over the effectiveness of earth system governance, ways of enhancing its accountability and legitimacy are increasingly coming to the fore in both scholarly debate and political ...practice. Concerns over accountability and legitimacy pertain to all levels of governance, from the local to the global, and cover the spectrum of public and private governance arrangements. This conceptual article elaborates on the sources, mechanisms and reform options relating to more accountable, legitimate and democratic earth system governance. We proceed in four steps. First, we conceptualize accountability and legitimacy in earth system governance. Second, we place questions of accountability and legitimacy within the larger context of earth system transformation, which, we argue, poses special challenges to the pursuit of accountability and legitimacy. Third, drawing on the contributions to this special section, we analyze different sources and mechanisms of accountability and legitimacy and their effects on the democratic potential and effectiveness of governance. Fourth, in concluding, we outline reform options that may help alleviate persisting deficits in the democratic potential of earth system governance.
► Earth system transformation poses difficult accountability and legitimacy challenges. ► Defining a stakeholder in earth system governance is a key accountability challenge. ► The relationship between input and output legitimacy varies across contexts. ► Reform of decision processes is necessary to enhance accountability and legitimacy. ► Influence of civil society actors in intergovernmental regimes should be strengthened.
Transparency -- openness, secured through greater availability of information -- is increasingly seen as part of the solution to a complex array of economic, political, and ethical problems in an ...interconnected world. The "transparency turn" in global environmental governance in particular is seen in a range of international agreements, voluntary disclosure initiatives, and public-private partnerships. This is the first book to investigate whether transparency in global environmental governance is in fact a broadly transformative force or plays a more limited, instrumental role.After three conceptual, context-setting chapters, the book examines ten specific and diverse instances of "governance by disclosure." These include state-led mandatory disclosure initiatives that rely on such tools as prior informed consent and monitoring, measuring, reporting and verification; and private (or private-public), largely voluntary efforts that include such corporate transparency initiatives as the Carbon Disclosure Project and such certification schemes as the Forest Stewardship Council. The cases, which focus on issue areas including climate change, biodiversity, biotechnology, natural resource exploitation, and chemicals, demonstrate that although transparency is ubiquitous, its effects are limited and often specific to particular contexts. The book explores in what circumstances transparency can offer the possibility of a new emancipatory politics in global environmental governance.
•Foresight is based on very different ideas on how to understand and transform futures.•Different approaches to anticipatory governance are often hybridized in practice.•Hybridization means that ...political plurality and uncertainty are not fully engaged.•Policy action is limited to technical planning and building (adaptive) capacities.•There is a need to engage more fully with deliberation and critical futures.
Anticipation methods and tools are increasingly used to try to imagine and govern transformations towards more sustainable futures across different policy domains and sectors. But there is a lack of research into the steering effects of anticipation on present-day governance choices, especially in the face of urgently needed sustainability transformations. This paper seeks to understand how different perspectives on anticipatory governance connect to attempts to guide policy and action toward transformative change. We analyze perspectives on anticipatory governance in a global network of food system foresight practitioners (Foresight4Food) – using a workshop, interviews, and a survey as our sources of data. We connect frameworks on anticipatory governance and on transformation to analyse different perspectives on the future and their implications for actions in the present to transform food systems and offer new insights for theory and practice. In the global Foresight4Food network, we find that most foresight practitioners use hybrid approaches to anticipatory governance that combine fundamentally different assumptions about the future. We also find that despite these diverse food futures, anticipation processes predominantly produce recommendations that follow more prediction-oriented forms of strategic planning in order to mitigate future risks. We further demonstrate that much anticipation for transformation uses the language on deep uncertainty and deliberative action without fully taking its consequences on board. Thus, opportunities for transforming future food systems are missed due to these implicit assumptions that dominate the anticipatory governance of food systems. Our combined framework helps researchers and practitioners to be more reflexive of how assumptions about key human systems such as food system futures shape what is prioritized/marginalized and included/excluded in actions to transform such systems.
Crops such as wheat (Triticum spp.) are predicted to face more frequent exposures to heat stress as a result of climate change. Increasing the yield and sustainability of yield under such stressful ...conditions has long been a major target of wheat breeding, and this goal is becoming increasingly urgent as the global population increases. Exposure of wheat plants in their reproductive or grain-filling stage to high temperature affects the duration and rate of grain filling, and hence has a negative impact on wheat productivity. Therefore, understanding the plasticity of the response to heat stress that exists between wheat genotypes, especially in source-sink relationships at the reproductive and grain-filling stages, is critical for the selection of germplasm that can maintain high yields under heat stress. A broad understanding of metabolic dynamics and the relationships between metabolism and heat tolerance is required in order to achieve this goal. Here, we review the current literature concerning the effects of heat stress on sink-source relationships in a wide range of wheat genotypes, and highlight the current metabolomic approaches that are used to investigate high temperature responses in wheat.
Field-grown plants experience cycles of drought stress and recovery due to variation in soil moisture status. Physiological, biochemical and transcriptome responses instigated by recovery are ...expected to be different from drought stress and non-stressed state. Such responses can further aid or antagonize the plant's interaction with the pathogen. However, at molecular level, not much is known about plant-pathogen interaction during drought recovery. In the present study, we performed a microarray-based global transcriptome profiling and demonstrated the existence of unique transcriptional changes in Arabidopsis thaliana inoculated with Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000 at the time of drought recovery (drought recovery pathogen, DRP) when compared to the individual drought (D) or pathogen (P) or drought recovery (DR). Furthermore, the comparison of DRP with D or DR and P transcriptome revealed the presence of a few common genes among three treatments. Notably, a gene encoding proline dehydrogenase (AtProDH1) was found to be commonly up-regulated under drought recovery (DR), DRP and P stresses. We also report an up-regulation of pyrroline-5-carboxylate biosynthesis pathway during recovery. We propose that AtProDH1 influences the defense pathways during DRP. Altogether, this study provides insight into the understanding of defense responses that operate in pathogen-infected plants during drought recovery.
Global transcriptome studies demonstrated the existence of unique plant responses under combined stress which are otherwise not seen during individual stresses. In order to combat combined stress ...plants use signaling pathways and 'cross talk' mediated by hormones involved in stress and growth related processes. However, interactions among hormones' pathways in combined stressed plants are not yet known. Here we studied dynamics of different hormones under individual and combined drought and pathogen infection in Arabidopsis thaliana by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) based profiling. Our results revealed abscisic acid (ABA) and salicylic acid (SA) as key regulators under individual drought and pathogen stress respectively. Under combined drought and host pathogen stress (DH) we observed non-induced levels of ABA with an upsurge in SA and jasmonic acid (JA) concentrations, underscoring their role in basal tolerance against host pathogen. Under a non-host pathogen interaction with drought (DNH) stressed plants, ABA, SA and JA profiles were similar to those under DH or non-host pathogen alone. We propose that plants use SA/JA dependent signaling during DH stress which antagonize ABA biosynthesis and signaling pathways during early stage of stress. The study provides insights into hormone modulation at different time points during combined stress.
This article analyzes the contested politics of including (and accounting for) land-based mitigation in a post-2020 climate agreement. Emissions from land have been only partially included to date ...within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol. The Paris Agreement, adopted in December 2015 and “applicable to all” for the post-2020 period, raises the possibility of unprecedented reliance on land-based mitigation. This has significant consequences for furthering both ambition and equity in global climate mitigation efforts. Yet, what are these consequences, and how have they manifested themselves in the existing (pre-2020) multilateral climate regime? What role do accounting rules for land-based mitigation play herein? In addressing these questions, we identify key dimensions of what we term the “governance by expertise” approach taken to land-based mitigation to date, which has served to reduce the environmental integrity of existing (developed country) mitigation efforts. Specifically, we analyze land-use accounting rules as a site of politics and highlight the “technicalization of politics” underway in this realm, which obscures the political implications of how land has been included to date. We conclude by considering whether the Paris Agreement institutionalizes similar dynamics, and the environmental integrity and equity implications of doing so.
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