Anticipation and futures: reframing justice, responsibility, and agency in sustainability transformations

The case for humanity's geological impact is well-established and regardless of whether we are headed toward it, or already exist within it, the very notion of the Anthropocene fundamentally ruptures the foundations of modern thought and the way we govern. The sustainability crises societies are facing forces not only a reflexive approach to the planetary boundaries but also to justice. The consequences of unsustainable actions (e.g., global warming) are unequally distributed, affecting particularly the regions and groups within society that are least responsible for causing it (e.g., through their limited emissions). Yet these groups are often least capable of adapting and protecting themselves from the negative consequences. Hence, transformative change is required: a complete restructuring of how we live, do business, and organise our societies. This change will fundamentally alter the way we understand governance, agency, human-environment interactions, and the power structures that created the crises we now face.

'Anticipation and futures: reframing justice, responsibility and agency in sustainability transformations' seeks to address this agenda in an interdisciplinary way. Our vision for this work is to bring together the perspectives of scientists who are consciously seeking new and alternate approaches to this conversation, with a view to elevate their work as well as deepen our collective understanding of the concepts of anticipation, justice, responsibility, and agency as they pertain to transformative governance. Within this field, we aim to do three things. First, we seek to engage meaningfully with the notion of anticipation, with views to strengthen its conceptualisation in the transformative governance process. To achieve this, we redefine anticipation into two processes and seek to enrich this understanding through bolstered future thinking, influenced by the field of Futures Studies and anticipation literature. Second, reflecting on this, we move to examine the question: who is responsible for different futures? Here we explore how justice through the Anthropocene shows clashing perspectives on responsibility and throws up new notions of responsibility. Specifically, we refer to questions of responsibility: for and by whom/what? By whose/what means? Toward whose/what end and at whose/what cost? Third, with a firm understanding of anticipation and responsibility, we move to explore the role of agency in transformative governance, both in the way it is enacted as part of the transformative governance process, and how it must be reimagined through the Anthropocene.

We invite innovative and new papers that address one or more of the concepts above, in the framework and the aims described. We would like to encourage you to find synergies, patterns, relations, trade-offs, etc. between the concepts of anticipation, futures, justice, responsibility, and agency in a way that has not been elaborated before. The topics can be on a variety of themes, linked to sustainable crises in which transformations are deemed necessary, for example, climate change, energy, climate adaptation, agriculture, biodiversity, air pollution, water, soil, transportation, migration, urban growth, etc. We encourage both conceptual and empirical contributions that draw on the interrelation between the mentioned concepts in the form of discourse analysis, case studies, longitudinal or comparative research, amongst others.

Keywords: Futures Anticipation Justice Responsiblity Governance Agency Transformation Sustainability

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.