A new century dawns and New York’s leading lady, the Statue of Liberty, lies shattered on the frozen ground. Humans lie in tiny pods, plugged into virtual reality with no livable Earth left to roam. A boat glides through dark water among the roofs of once-majestic buildings as it carries the sole survivors of a devastating flood.
Take a quick look at the current canon of imagery depicting Earth’s possible futures and you will find a wide range of doomsday scenarios. According to the movies, novels and videogames the distant future is looking rather bleak. The absence of positive visions of the future in popular media is striking, and quite depressing. It does little to inspire or motivate positive action. After all, how do we work towards a brighter future if we can’t even dream one up in our fictional stories?
There is certainly no shortage of devastating climate news from around the world. Scientists warn that although we might still mitigate some of the worst disasters, others have already been set in motion. It’s important to acknowledge this and the many challenges we will face in our future. But, just like watching dystopian science-fiction, doomscrolling through bad news from our current reality hardly inspires a feeling of hope. And boy, do we need some hope.
VISIONS BEYOND 2050
At WDCD Live Amsterdam 2024, participants of the breakout session The Re-Generation: Manifesting Climate Futures Beyond 2050 got the chance to experience what it feels like to envision a future that is optimistic and exciting. One that addresses the climate challenges ahead, but that we would also actually enjoy living in. In short, the session’s main purpose was to turn a feeling of urgency into agency.
Instead of focussing on the commonly cited framework of 2030 and 2050 climate goals, we were encouraged to think of a vision for the future beyond these benchmarks. To make this less daunting, facilitator Gustavo Nogueira de Menezes gave a short but sweet talk about their work in Temporality Research. They provided insight into their work as a professional who researches the different ways we perceive and experience time across cultures, and inspired us to think of time as non-linear. To connect us with both the wisdom of our ancestors as well as the needs of the future, we need to think of different points of time as more intrinsically linked than a linear timeline allows for.
Instead of focussing on the commonly cited framework of 2030 and 2050 climate goals, we were encouraged to think of a vision for the future beyond these benchmarks.
After a short meditation on time and our place in it, participants were divided into teams. Each group was then tasked with envisioning a future focusing on one particular climate urgency. These urgencies ranged from extreme weather, to disconnection and biodiversity loss. To aid our worldbuilding journeys, the session was broken up into three rounds of rapid-fire activities. Guiding us through this structure were our cheery hosts, design researchers Katy Barnard and Sophie Tendai Christiaens, who were also joined by Aleksandar Velinovski of Next Gen Design and Skopje Design Week.
For the first activity it was time to dive deep into our urgency, to get an idea of the issue at hand and who (or what) is affected by it. As soon as the starting signal was sounded, the group I found myself in came alive with opinions and ideas. We were given the climate urgency of ‘disconnection and unawareness’ and this challenge resonated deeply with all of us despite our different backgrounds. We discussed how a sense of disconnection has an effect on our communities and our environment, and what would be needed to change this for the better. We established that for people who live in cities and spend large parts of their days online, the disconnection with nature causes a feeling of anxiety. Many quiet that anxiety by reaching for more stimulation via social media or overconsumption of (unsustainably produced) products, creating a vicious cycle.
Before we knew it, it was time for the second activity. This is where we were able to shift from a place of concern to a more active outlook: how could our manifested future respond to the climate urgency in a positive way? In this second round, we talked about what we wanted a joyful life in this world to look like.
CARE & COHABITATION
In my group, we came to dream of a world where all-encompassing care is a core value. Care for each other and the ecosystems that surround us, as well as care for our own mental and physical health. We envisioned a world of green cities with plenty of space for community food forests and natural playgrounds to connect to nature in a joyful way. One teammate suggested more legislation to combat the influence and presence of Big Tech, to which we all heartily agreed. Together, we enthusiastically imagined urban neighbourhoods as green cohabitation spaces.
We took a brief break at this point to listen to a Q&A with visionary designer Natsai Audrey Chieza, in which she shed light on the way she deploys design solutions and new technologies with a big focus on local community and collaboration. Natsai also shared valuable words of wisdom when it came to turning urgency into agency. She stressed how important it was for us to understand that our response to climate is cultural. That worlds have ended before, and people have persisted. Her own lineage, for example, is one rooted in persistence despite colonialism. World endings are already at play today, and yet people are rising to challenging circumstances with innovation and resilience. We might not have the luxury of despair, and that is actually a very hopeful thing: we can still choose how to approach this. People are making the most out of really extreme times, and so the future we face will ask of us to be brave enough to move forwards. She encouraged us to answer that calling.
We might not have the luxury of despair, and that is actually a very hopeful thing: we can still choose how to approach this.
Energised by Natsai’s words, we dove into the third and last activity of our session. This brainstorm focussed on how we could get from the present to our manifested future. We discussed what kinds of designs might be needed in the world we aspired to. Thinking about what we would have to do to make our imagined future a reality, my group came to the conclusion that for our specific climate urgency it was equally important to think of what design we didn’t need. The Global North has a tendency to prioritise the creation of new innovations, when many sustainable practices and designs already exist. Sometimes we don’t need another new, shiny design. Instead it might be helpful to return to ancient design, to that which emerges within local contexts as a way of co-existence between a community and their natural environment.
This realisation poignantly echoed Gustavo’s talk at the beginning of our session: the present is connected to our past as much as our future. We need to find a balance between the perspectives of different moments in time, so that we can pull from the wisdom that came before us, as well as rise to the problems of tomorrow.
DREAMING TOGETHER
As each group shared their visions of the future to close off the session, there was a sense of giddiness and excitement in the room. And while each group’s future world looked slightly different, we had one observation in common: the future can only be shaped together.
To create visions of a collective, positive future we’re going to need many different voices to come together in conversation. One person’s utopia might be another person’s nightmare — and it’s important to be mindful of different perspectives. After all, we’re going to need all hands on deck if we want to take action towards a better world — and only a collective, inclusive dream of the future will inspire such collective action.
Those present during this session were able to sample what can happen when people from different cultures, abilities, genders and professional backgrounds work together. I can’t remember the last time I saw a group of climate-conscious people smiling while talking about the future of our planet, and found myself touched by the passionate, collaborative spirit of the participants.
Unlike the fictional, dystopian worlds that can be the work of a solitary science-fiction author, the future of our real-life world will only be bright if we envision and shape it collectively. The future is going to need all of us; all of our resilience and all of our hope, all of our perseverance and — indeed — all of our joy.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a group of climate-conscious people smiling while talking about the future of our planet.
All images: Tom Doms and Jasper Ten Tusscher.
