Introduction
Anticipation has been widely studied within numerous different fields, and under diverse names, in fields including biology, psychology (Louie
2009; Louie and Poli
2011; Poli
2009,
2010,
2011), resilience (Almedom et al.
2007; Almedom
2009; Martin-Breen and Anderies
2011; Zolli and Healy
2012), Future Studies (Miller
2006,
2007,
2011,
2012), and governance (Fuerth
2009,
2011; Karinen and Guston
2010; Fuerth and Faber
2012).
All attempts to understand, imagine, and benefit from the future can be seen as modes of anticipation, a constant feature of human behavior (Poli
2011). Prophecies and ideas of imaginable futures are the focus of substantial current discussion, e.g., ‘forecasting’ financial markets, or modeling Earth’s ecological boundaries. Such anticipatory practice, in situations of noteworthy and alarming change, are conceivably highly beneficial to imagine how to elucidate complexity and decipher ‘wicked’ problems, and engage with new mechanisms to harness the future. Early exploration of anticipatory practice suggests that anticipation potentially helps to raise awareness about the types of futures mankind may encounter and sensitize society to the consequences of choices and actions of individuals and societies (Poli
2009,
2010,
2011).
To date, there have been partial systematic efforts to construct an in-depth understanding of different forms of anticipation, their uses and risks. The research foundation is in progress, but it is disjointed (Poli
2010). In the cognitive sciences, Gilbert and Wilson (
2007) have proposed the controversial notion of ‘prospection’—the psychology of imagining the consequences of hedonic future events (Fukukura et al.
2013). Critics of Prospection Theory say it reflects deterministic explanations of cognition, as it does not advance conscious decision making or agency. The field of Futures Studies focuses on building a theory of adaptation where we still lack understanding about how societies cope, prepare, and adapt to change (Floyd
2012). This field is generally understood to be strong on practice and facilitation of scenarios rather than on its theoretical foundations. The field of social-ecological resilience believes that humanity is now influencing every aspect of the Earth on a grand scale (Rockström et al.
2009), which is aligned with many broader fields, including geography (Goudie
1989,
2013; Turner
1990), biological and environmental sciences (Vitousek et al.
1997), and economics (Swanson
1996). The planet has entered a new geological era called the Anthropocene (Zalasiewicz et al.
2010). Human impacts on the planet are thought to be significant, interconnected in complex ways, containing a risk of an irreversible and uncertain sequence of changes, leading societies into a profoundly different future to anything experienced by humans in the past (
www.anthropocene.info/en/home). Berkes et al. (
2003) say “The challenge is to anticipate change and shape it for sustainability in a manner that does not lead to loss of future options” (p. 354). Hence, anticipation is a critical component for building resilience. Yet, apart from a few exceptions (Tschakert and Dietrich
2010), resilience literature does not drill down into theories and approaches that explore the relationship between anticipation and adaptation, in decision making and planning for environmental futures.
This paper seeks to identify how anticipation is defined and understood in the literature and to explore the role of anticipatory practice to address individual, social, and global challenges. In particular, we focus on the importance of anticipation to building resilience of coupled ecosystems and livelihoods under a changing climate by developing an approach that is capable of framing and enhancing the potential of anticipatory practices. Our work is primarily contextualized within the social–ecological systems (SES) research field, but our review of anticipation is broad and the empirical case focuses on the aspects of anticipation of generic interest, also for policy science, planning, and futures studies. The study’s overarching goal is to contribute to wider discussions of defining and studying anticipation empirically.
Our research questions used to explore these aims are as follows: Firstly, in theory, how is anticipation defined and understood, and to what extent is anticipation considered a core mechanism for adaptation in SES? Secondly, in practice, how anticipatory are governance structures? i.e., how do organizations and government agencies anticipate changes to vulnerable ecosystem services (e.g., water) in the Mälardalen Region of Stockholm, Sweden, and adapt governance accordingly?
The paper is set out as follows. The next section defines anticipation and describes literature on anticipation and SES resilience and the relationship with existing forms of governance. The case study is then presented, with findings from the Mälardalen region in Sweden. The paper discusses these results and speculates on the risks and uses of an anticipatory approach. The paper concludes with thoughts on the potential opportunities to lay the foundation for understanding anticipation to enhance decision and policy making for uncertain futures.
Materials and methods
Firstly, we conducted an extensive review of the literature by searching for key words ‘anticipation’, ‘adaptation’, ‘resilience’, ‘climate governance’ and a combination of these on the Web of Science and Google Scholar broadly across areas of anthropology, biology, psychology, philosophy, and physics, and specifically on SES resilience, governance, planning, and futures to identify definitions of ‘anticipation’ and criteria to examine anticipation as an approach. We selected the case study of water governance and early warning network configurations in ecosystem management in the Mälardalen region, Sweden. We studied the actors and institutions in the urbanizing Mälardalen region and their capacity to govern resources under uncertain change. This provides a fascinating case of potential anticipatory practices for individuals, organizations, and society. We studied the actors involved in governing water and those who use water-related ecosystem services at the regional scale. We conducted qualitative interviews (
n = 21 including two Stockholm region municipalities) over 10 months during 2013. Interviews were analyzed with open coding using the ATLAS.ti software to identify key patterns (Coffey and Atkinson
1996; Patton
2002) on anticipatory behavior, foresight, and adaptation to novel changes. Criteria selection for our case included: geographical scale (regional drainage basin), governance scale (multilevel governance system, focus on regional actors), water quality (engaged in governance of), actors (influencing or engaged), and the system being affected by climate change. Given these boundary conditions, the study aimed to interview the complete set of relevant regional actors around Lake Mälaren in Mälardalen region. Limitations of the study include the possibility that all relevant actors were not identified through our scoping and review work and through the snowball method used (Noy
2008). We were also resource constrained in the number of interviews possible with larger actors, e.g., County Administrative Board, which fulfills different functions.
Discussion
There are varied and conflicting understandings of anticipating, predicting, and forecasting futures. We discuss how anticipation can potentially improve our understanding of living with uncertain futures and where gaps lie.
What have we learned?
This paper sets out to examine two questions. Firstly, in theory, how is anticipation defined and understood, and to what extent is anticipation considered a core mechanism for adaptation in SES? Secondly, in practice how anticipatory are governance structures? i.e., how do organizations and government agencies anticipate changes to vulnerable ecosystem services and adapt governance accordingly?
Lessons from the literature
We explored that an anticipatory approach is potentially helpful for improving our foresight capacity and in the co-design of solutions relevant to managing ecosystem services under climate change. The analysis mapped out different forms of anticipation from the literature and identified varied and conflicting understandings of predicting and forecasting futures. Definitions of anticipation vary and a unified definition does not exist (Poli
2010). In the relationship between anticipation and resilience, many of the literatures mention anticipation, but authors provide limited detail about how to build resilience using anticipatory systems/theory of anticipation. For example, Almedom (
2009) define resilience as “the capacity of individuals, families, communities, and institutions to anticipate, withstand and/or judiciously engage with catastrophic events and/or experiences; actively making meaning out of adversity, with the goal of maintaining ‘normal’ function without fundamental loss of identity.” Anticipation plays a key role in this resilience research, but is treated in a superficial manner.
The review helped us to clarify how anticipation is both an active sense-making force and a way to anticipate dimensions of the present, with potentially important implications for the decision-making and choice-related questions at the heart of collective action (and inaction). It is imperative to continue unpacking the theory of anticipation with regard to how it features as a core of everyday social relations, affects the ability to plan under uncertainty, and contributes to adaptiveness (Folke et al.
2005; Boyd and Folke
2012). There is further scope to elaborate on a theory of anticipation and how it relates to social-ecological resilience. The review unearthed significant attention to the role of social–ecological memory, local knowledge, and anticipation. For example, Gómez-Baggethun et al. (
2012) say that new environmental governance approaches should use traditional knowledge and social–ecological memories of local cultures. Linking research on social–ecological memory and anticipatory governance would benefit from further focus.
Many fields are looking at anticipatory governance, including public health (Ozdemir et al.
2009), geography (Goodchild
2007), biodiversity conservation (Barlow et al.
2010), and climate change (Boyd and Cornforth
2013). Themes are emerging around citizen science, networks, and volunteering of data sharing. In many parts of the world, networks act as local early warning systems in the face of a changing environment, ranging from disease detection, e.g., Ash (
Fraxinus excelsior) dieback, and RTM to help governments detect early onset of famine (Boyd et al.
2013). To avoid a narrow framing of anticipation, it will be important to draw insights from Futures Studies to develop further explanations, with relative clarity, of anticipation, and anticipatory governance. Borrowing methods and tools from Futures Studies, we hope to better understand critical relationships, e.g., between the role of anticipatory governance and agency in building adaptive capacity. Future Studies is generally considered to be strong on practice and facilitation rather than on theoretical foundations. Thus, we can also draw on the rapidly emerging field of ‘sustainability transitions’ (McGrail
2012) informed by complex systems and governance theory (Loorbach
2010). Sustainability transition adopts a long-term perspective for short-term development (i.e., developing long-term visions and backcasting from them) and focuses on alternative ‘images of sustainability’ and associated possible ‘transitions paths’, and seeks to mobilize actors and instigate associated experiments.
Lessons from the case study
Our case of Lake Mälaren explored the anticipatory elements used by formal actors in a developed country pursuing initial work to adapt governance to anticipated future climate change. The case study shows that managing complexity for problems where anticipatory governance is needed, such as climate change, is inherently difficult; it requires both the openness and participation of adaptive governance, and coordination and simplification of knowledge to be able to make credible predictions and create and share future visions/scenarios. There is inbuilt tension between the need for complexity and the requirement for such anticipatory elements being comprehensible and easily accessible. Problem awareness is often high, and the lack of priority given to CCA and the challenges for ecosystem services is more due to lack of capacity to imagine and comprehend complex futures than out of ignorance. A longitudinal temporal framework matters to improve governance actions to respond to CCA combined with RTM of environmental events (through networks).
Collective and complex collaboration in anticipatory forms of governance puts even more requirement on coordination. Stakeholder integration with active participation and adaptive forms of governance is an increasingly common approach and observed in our case, but knowledge and learning are limited by the lack of feedback over time. As concluded by others, there is a great risk that social learning approaches does not give lasting effects (Nilsson et al.
2012). Long-term time horizons are found in the anticipatory elements of our case, and we believe that time scale per se is not the problem. Policy makers are well aware of the challenge with analyzing problems across space and time and the uncertainties this introduces. The challenge lies at the limited capacity to develop a wider range of discourses and policy problems simultaneously.
We are left with a profoundly political question of “how are the overall goals of government or society chosen in the first place?” (Toffler
1970). What will it take to move toward an anticipatory approach in which agency of individuals is connected into systems of governance genuinely producing effective social-ecological outcomes? Ultimately, the challenge is to reconcile the ‘enclaves’ of the past and future—i.e., overcome societal resistance to change and find mechanisms for societies to break away from unsustainable traditions, and learn and build decision support that engages with uncertain futures. This may require “a revolution in the very way we formulate our social goals” (Toffler
1970).
Risks and limitations of an anticipatory approach
We identify a number of limitations to the anticipatory approach. Firstly, the literature review reveals divergent views on what anticipation means and ambiguity of meaning. This relates to the absence of theory and lack of empirical cases of anticipatory approaches to date. Secondly, anticipatory approaches in the context of resilience could be criticized for being deterministic (overlooking agency) or predetermined in that people cannot question sustainability as the end goal. This reflects criticism encountered in the lack of attention to agency in resilience literature. Critics argue that both the multiple scales of system complexity and human agency (individual and collective) need to be more thoroughly explored if resilience is to continue to have resonance more broadly (Jerneck and Olsson
2008; Hornborg
2009; Davidson
2010).
There are also limitations to ‘the practice of anticipation’, which require further exploration. In the case study, complexity is seen as a barrier, which limits the most anticipatory forms of governance. Through an SES resilience lens, we identified a strong demand for knowledge in a simpler, more accessible format. The most significant barrier is that of real politics. CCA is on the agenda, but not in a wider sense; in relation to challenges for ecosystem services, anticipatory analysis is lagging behind. Anticipatory governance developing vision requires a strong enough mandate in order for actors to coordinate. This could be one of the most challenging components to building anticipatory governance, as many actors are willing to work on the issues, but there are few incentives for sharing and building toward a common vision. Looking forward, we seek to explore ways to avoid the risks and limitations of anticipation and enhance future understanding. This challenge could be facilitated with the assistance of complementary approaches touched on in this paper, including well-established theoretical approaches and new futures methods and anticipatory actions.
Conclusion
Anticipation has been widely studied within a number of different fields and the research base is in development, but it is fragmented. This research explored the importance of anticipation in the literature and in an empirical case study from Sweden. Anticipation is defined in different ways depending on the field. Social–ecological memory features strongly in the SES resilience literature. There is scope for further development of anticipatory theory. In practice, there is evidence of anticipatory governance operating within existing structures, yet there are limitations, such as a desire to reduce complexity, lack of effective coordination mechanisms, and real politics. Further development of tools and methods are required from across a range of fields to overcome these limits, and to lend insights about how to do this in ways that address politics, complexity, and individual and collective agency.