Utopian thought and the politics of sustainable development

This article argues that utopian thought is a necessary condition for the politics of sustainable development. Since utopian thought has so far been constrained by some typically Western features from the era of modernity, this requires a shift that transcends the following three fundamental aspects: the notions of fixed truth, fixed territoriality and fixed final goals for politics. The article argues that the concept of global sustainable development can entail three new elements of utopian thought: the disintegration of fixed territoriality, a never-ending story, and prismatic blueprints. Using these elements, utopian thought can provide transformative power, so that politics and policymaking can meet contemporary global challenges to development and the environment.     

Shaping sustainability: Is there an unreleased potential in utopian thought?

This article develops from the argument that sustainable development primarily will be restricted to rhetorical discourse if the utopian dimension of politics and planning is neglected. I will firstly discuss what is typical for utopian thought in general as well as its potential role in politics and planning. Secondly, I will briefly explore of the contemporary politics of sustainable development with the focus on its utopian dimensions, and thirdly, I will also comment on the different kinds and forms of utopian thought that should be relevant for sustainability projects on different levels. My conclusions are that the utopian language is flourishing in many of the discourses on sustainable development, especially in comparison to other fields of politics, but that the role of utopian thought in this area needs to be reflected on and more thoroughly recognized in the practical endeavors taken in this area.     

Upgrading EC strategic choice capacities

The EC faces difficult strategic choices which constitute fuzzy gambles with history. Available capacities, however successful in the past, are inadequate for meeting new challenges. Required are upgrading in political will, realistic visions, policy cogitation, and implementation. Operational recommendations include: preserving and strengthening the authority of the Commission; changing voting rules in the Council, while avoiding membership increases until this is accomplished; building up coherent economic, internal, and external relations-security decision processes; encouraging utopian thinking on EC futures; strengthening coherent policy making by fortifying the Commission Presidency; installation of crisis decision making modalities; reinforcing implementation consideration, monitoring and facilitation; intensive training of high-level Commission staff in strategic choice analysis; establishment of an EC Policy College; and setting up a central EC Think Tank together with improvement of pluralistic EC policy R&D. Since the future is shaped by necessity, chance and choice, upgraded strategic choice does not guarantee the desired effects, but is imperative in terms of both morality and effectiveness.     

Rethinking science for sustainable development: Reflexive interaction for a paradigm transformation

If we postulate a need for the transformation of society towards sustainable development, we also need to transform science and overcome the fact/value split that makes it impossible for science to be accountable to society. The orientation of this paradigm transformation in science has been under debate for four decades, generating important theoretical concepts, but they have had limited impact until now. This is due to a contradictory normative science policy framing that science has difficulties dealing with, not least of all because the dominant framing creates a lock-in. We postulate that in addition to introducing transdisciplinarity, science needs to strive for integration of the normative aspect of sustainable development at the meta-level. This requires a strategically managed niche within which scholars and practitioners from many different disciplines can engage in a long-term common learning process, in order to become a “thought collective” (Fleck) capable of initiating the paradigm transformation. Arguing with Piaget that “decentration” is essential to achieve normative orientation and coherence in a learning collective, we introduce a learning approach—Cohn's “Theme-Centred Interaction”—which provides a methodology for explicitly working with the objectivity and subjectivity of statements and positions in a “real-world” context, and for consciously integrating concerns of individuals in their interdependence with the world. This should enable a thought collective to address the epistemological and ethical barriers to science for sustainable development.     

The dialectic of utopian images of the future within the idea of progress

F. Polak and K. Mannheim's reconceptualization of the role of the utopist as a radical/revolutionary who acts to shatter present reality and reconstruct it according to a vision of the future is evaluated in the light of K. Popper's critique of utopian engineering; also, Popper's proposal of piecemeal engineering is critiqued and found deficient. Polak's thesis of a vital image of the future is tested on the basis of J. B. Bury's idea of progress and found to be modern-born. The historic roots of the dominant utopian image of the future (within the idea of progress) are clarified as the technological/consumer society within industrial civilization. However, as this modern thesis become dystopic, an antithesis, in the form of utopian socialism, emerged to contend with the dominant utopian image of the future throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The dialectical struggle between contending utopic images of the future within the idea of progress brought about the progressivesocialist synthesis, which in turn, opposed by reactionary neoliberalism (a “counter-utopia), has realized a new, postmodern thesis – as global sustainable development – a reconstructed, 21st century utopian image of the future.     

Futures studies’ backcasting method used for strategic sustainable city planning

Achieving a sustainable city requires long-term visions, integration and a system-oriented approach to addressing economic, environmental and social issues. This paper case studies a sustainable city planning project, Göteborg 2050, that uses the backcasting method. Visionary images of a long-term sustainable future can stimulate an accelerated movement towards sustainability. The paper describes a special kind of scenario methodology to build a future model for city development as a planning tool in facilitating a sustainable society. Backcasting in futures studies is widely discussed together with the comparison of three selected backcasting approaches, including Robinson's approach, The Natural Step Framework, and the Sustainable Technology Development approach. The purposes of this paper are to examine and discuss the use of the backcasting method within the Project Göteborg 2050, lessons learned and findings drawn from the experience. The case study shows that backcasting is an appropriate method in developing action plans for achieving urban sustainability. This work can be served as a model for sustainable city planning in Thailand as well as other countries.     

Why the far-future matters to democracy today

As the complexity of social and political interaction becomes increasingly over-whelming it is only natural that the pragmatic, technocratic, and expert-driven character of contemporary policy-making is even further consolidated. Though making use of existing knowledge this approach may lead to a deprivation of the democratic debate as the time horizons are shortened and the number of significantly different policies is restrained by the framework within which decisions are to be made.

This article analyses the tension between a more holistic or even ‘utopian’ attitude to policy-making and the trial-and-error piecemeal approach which today seems to be prevailing in the industrial countries. It is argued that a theoretical distinction made by Leszek Kolakowski may help us overcome that tension. The distinction is then applied to the classical stage-heuristic for policy-making leading to a discussion about how the power of far-future visions can be brought into the nexus of democratic deliberation.

The article also examines how different time-frames may cause diverging practical policy-recommendations. Finally, the paradoxical merit of negative visions, as in the dystopian literary genre, is presented.     

我国环保政策颁布实施的影响研究

随着经济的高速发展,环境问题成为制约我国经济可持续发展的＂瓶颈＂。为此,我国出台了一系列遏制环境污染的经济政策和行业标准。本文首先对2007～2010年颁布的环保政策及其影响进行初步分析之后,应用事件研究法重点对＂绿色信贷＂政策颁布后股市的反应进行实证研究。在此基础上提出了完善我国环保政策实施的建议。     

The reflective futures practitioner: Balancing salience,credibility and legitimacy in generating foresight knowledge with stakeholders

This paper explores how foresight researchers involved in environmental, nature and planning issues attempt to balance salience, credibility and legitimacy while generating knowledge in interaction with policy-makers and other social actors. Engaging stakeholders in foresight processes can increase the robustness of foresight knowledge, broaden the spectrum of issues addressed, and create ‘ownership’ of the process. While in foresight practices stakeholder participation becomes more and more popular to resort to as enabling factor for generating salient, legitimate and credible foresight knowledge, participation can also compromise these qualities. We analysed two foresight projects conducted at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, one that developed future visions for Dutch nature policy and another that focused on future pathways for Dutch urban sustainable development policy. We illustrate that the dynamics of the research setting – changes in the socio-political context and the internal dynamics of the participatory efforts – complicated the balancing process. We conclude that one of the main challenges for futures practitioners is, therefore, to work within the dynamics of the research setting, and to position themselves strategically in this setting; by acting as ‘reflective futures practitioners’.     

经济结构调整目标下的财政货币政策协调

财政政策与货币政策在宏观调控中有不同的作用,在经济结构调整目标下两者的协调显得愈加重要。新时期中国的宏观经济面临着诸多的挑战,在此阶段财政政策和货币政策应在宏观经济调控目标指导下,在工具选择、政策时效与政策功能等方面积极协调配合,努力解决当前经济发展中的突出矛盾,优化经济结构,增强可持续发展能力。     

碳定价、双重金融摩擦与“双支柱”调控

本文构建包含异质性企业、双重金融摩擦和“双支柱”政策的DSGE模型来探究碳税和碳交易这两种碳定价政策对中国宏观经济的长短期影响和作用机制。研究发现:(1)两种碳定价政策均会导致经济在短期出现一定衰退,但在长期则有助于推进经济高质量发展,达到更高的均衡水平;(2)在面对碳排放技术冲击时,相比碳税政策,碳交易政策下,碳价大幅波动会进一步加剧经济波动,在碳交易市场中对碳价设定上下限,可以有效地减轻碳排放技术冲击所导致的经济波动;(3)面对气候政策冲击,包含金融部门风险规避的双重金融摩擦会进一步加剧气候政策对宏观经济的负面影响;(4)在经济转型过程中,结构性供需不平衡会引发一定的通胀现象,但此时货币政策不宜对通胀做出过多反应,而应刺激产出,支持绿色发展,推动供需平衡,从根源上解决通胀问题。引入“双支柱”调控后发现,考虑到经济转型风险的宏观审慎政策能显著减弱气候政策所导致的经济波动和金融不稳定,提高居民福利。     

The end of neoliberal history—the future of economics

The future of economics needs discussion both negatively, as the denial of neoliberal perspective, and positively as a science that is able to handle the historic welfare-freedom-culture paradox. The authors state that this alternative is political economy, which they define as a science searching for materialisation of social visions in the economic sphere. This tradition dates back to ancient cultures and does not coincide with the present usage of political economy. The article discusses the political economy of the information age and beyond. The core idea is that the human alternative of ongoing technological changes executes long run visions of mankind: co-existence of freedom and welfare under cultural leadership in a global scale.     

Co-evolutionary policy processes: Understanding innovative economies and future resilience

The great debates of most fields associated with economic development rest on emergence versus intention and the interplay between the two. The ‘residual’ of unexplained divergence between goal and outcome, in this sense, can be ascribed in part to the interplay, or co-evolution, between policies (intention) and self-organizing (emergent) development. Do public policy and economic development co-evolve in technologically innovative economies, and if so, how? This paper discusses the basic premise that the gap between economic development strategies and their poor implementation cannot simply be removed by creating better-intended strategies, tools or institutions. The analysis uses evolutionary thinking for an analysis of economic development, and ends with some postulates for future study on innovative regions and the concept of resilience.     

Future-oriented higher education: Which key competencies should be fostered through university teaching and learning?

Universities play an important role in shaping the future of the world society in terms of sustainable development by generating new knowledge as well as contributing to the development of appropriate competencies and raising sustainability awareness. During the last years, many universities have undertaken activities for implementing Higher Education for Sustainable Development (HESD). Many have asked which key competencies are most relevant for sustainable development and hence should be developed in future-oriented higher education. Different approaches for the selection of sustainability key competencies have been developed, but there is little international agreement in the debate around the most important key competencies. Consequently, this paper asks which individual key competencies are crucial for understanding central challenges facing the world society and for facilitating its development towards a more sustainable future, and thus identifies those competencies which should be fostered through university teaching and learning. The empirical design of the study is related to a Delphi study in which ‘sustainability key competencies’ are defined by selected experts from Europe (Germany, Great Britain) and Latin America (Chile, Ecuador, Mexico). The results show that twelve key competencies crucial for sustainable development can be identified; the most relevant ones are those for systemic thinking, anticipatory thinking and critical thinking.     

Accounting and sustainable development: An exploration

As the social and environmental impacts of human activity have become more evident, the role of sustainable development as an organising principle in a variety of policy contexts and over multiple scales has become central. There are, at least, two implications that emerge from this observation. First, morally infused problems that need to be addressed have become more intractable, requiring innovation in our modes of thinking. Second, new spaces have emerged where the academy might explore how knowledge is created, validated and translated (or not) alongside policy and practice settings. One outcome of these trends has been the emergence of a stream of work (sustainability science) which investigates how disciplines might develop knowledge that progresses sustainable development. The aim of this paper, in line with the focus of the special issue, is to explore what possibilities emerge for accounting in light of a sustainability science approach. To achieve this end the paper starts with an exploration of the frustrations expressed in the literature over the perceived lack of progress made by social and environmental accounting towards addressing sustainable development. The paper then introduces sustainability science with the aim of imagining how an accounting for sustainable development might emerge. The paper closes with two illustrations of how a sustainability science approach to accounting could develop.     

Futures dreaming outside and on the margins of the western world

In this article, we challenge the hegemony of western science fiction, arguing that western science fiction is particular even as it claims universality. Its view remains based on ideas of the future as forward time. In contrast, in non-western science fiction the future is seen outside linear terms: as cyclical or spiral, or in terms of ancestors. In addition, western science fiction has focused on the good society as created by technological progress, while non-western science fiction and futures thinking has focused on the fantastic, on the spiritual, on the realization of eupsychia—the perfect self.However, most theorists assert that the non-west has no science fiction, ignoring Asian and Chinese science fiction history, and western science fiction continues to ‘other’ the non-west as well as those on the margins of the west (African–American woman, for example).Nonetheless, while most western science fiction remains trapped in binary opposites—alien/non-alien; masculine/feminine; insider/outsider—writers from the west’s margins are creating texts that contradict tradition and modernity, seeking new ways to transcend difference. Given that the imagination of the future creates the reality of tomorrow, creating new science fictions is not just an issue of textual critique but of opening up possibilities for all our futures.

Science fiction has always been nearly all white, just as until recently, it’s been nearly all male

(Butler as quoted in [1]).

Science fiction has long treated people who might or might not exist—extra-terrestrials. Unfortunately, however, many of the same science fiction writers who started us thinking about the possibility of extra-terrestrial life did nothing to make us think about here-at home variation—women, blacks, Indians, Asians, Hispanics, etc [1].

Is all science fiction western? Is there non-western science fiction? If so, what is its nature? Does it follow the form and content of western science fiction, or is it rendered different by its own local civilizational historical processes and considerations? Has western science fiction moulded the development of the science fiction of the ‘other’, including feminist science fiction, in such a way that anything coming from outside the west is a mere imitation of the real thing? Perhaps non-western science fiction is a contradiction in terms. Or is there authentic non-western fiction which offers alternative visions of the future, of the ‘other’?     

当前我国经济发展方式转变进程中的财税政策选择

“十一五”以来,我国把转变经济发展方式,实现节能降耗和经济可持续发展做为经济工作的重点,并采取了一系列的政策和措施,但是受体制机制、国际环境、贸易条件、资源约束、技术瓶颈、财税政策等诸多因素的影响,我国经济发展方式转变进程缓慢,“高投入、高消耗、高污染、高浪费、低成本、低收益”的经济发展格局没有得到根本性的改变,对生态环境造成的破坏逐渐严重,资源供给愈显紧张,煤炭、钢材、水泥等资源消耗巨大,极端天气频繁发生,社会居民的生态安全面临严峻考验。我们必须以复苏经济为契机,采取积极完善体制机制、健全财税政策等措施,切实缓解人与自然和环境的矛盾．从根本上实现国民经发展方式的转变。     

Carpe the academy: Dismantling higher education and prefiguring critical utopias through action research

This paper engages with the challenge of re-imagining higher education. We start from the position that the ascent of the increasingly corporatized university is deeply problematic precisely because of the neoliberal realist position on ‘the future’ that it assumes and perpetuates: the view that there is no alternative to neoliberal capitalist market principles, that present and future realities can diverge only to the extent permitted by existing market forces and rationales (Amsler, 2011). In this context, ‘education’ takes the form of preparing and socializing the next generation of workers: a future focus severely limited in the possibilities it considers. Thus we are faced with a mutually-constitutive relationship where constrained visions of future needs and demands serve to constrain present educational offerings; a dynamic which becomes self-reinforcing and which admits little disruption. In this paper, we draw on the concrete body of practice known as action research to consider how we might prize open spaces for thinking much more expansively about what ‘the future’ might entail, and what forms of education and organization are necessary in the present to keep open, rather than shut down, diverse possibilities and democratic debate around this. We focus on critical utopian action research and systemic action research as illustrative of key qualities of prefigurative and critical utopian engagement with educational presents and futures. We conclude that the capture of the university by neoliberal logics can be resisted and challenged through radical methodologies, like action research, which explicitly set out to be ongoingly anti-hegemonic, critical, self-reflexive, pluralistic, and non-recuperative (Firth, 2013, Garforth, 2009).     

Sustainable futures: policies for global development

Global sustainable development is the overarching challenge for social and economic policy today. The paper elaborates the concept of sustainable development, identifies some of the levers and policies that might help attain it, describes a modeling system used for analysis, and presents the results of evaluating the impacts of policies and an integrated scenario built upon them.Particular attention is given to measures related to research, technology development and the wider use of networking technologies, and to the hypothesis that investments in these areas offer a ‘triple-win’ opportunity for growth, greater equity and resource-efficiency. We show that the combination of policy initiatives in these areas can offer a valuable alternative and/or complement to constraints on businesses and life-styles that are commonly proposed for sustainable development.