Insight
In these scenarios we showed that there are many possible societal models and spatial designs for low-carbon futures. We also introduced the idea of an 8,000-kilogram material footprint as a benchmark for sustainable lifestyles. A tangible norm around which future ways of living could be organised. The scenarios translated that target into different sectors and fields, making it concrete and imaginable.
It was also a methodological step forward. We offered one of the first clear examples of how the backcasting scenario approach can be used to explore alternative futures. Not only at the level of policies and technologies, but in the everyday realities of lifestyles and social practices.
Process
Demos Helsinki received European Commission FP7 research funding as part of the SPREAD – Sustainable Lifestyles 2050 consortium. It was what was called a European social platform project: A way to bring together academic research, social innovations, and the voices of stakeholders from business, policy, research, and civil society. The goal was ambitious yet clear. To create a vision for sustainable lifestyles in 2050.
The scenario process that followed was one of the most thorough of its time. We combined Delphi surveys with a two-day expert workshop that gathered more than fifty participants from across Europe, and citizen workshops in five different countries. The backcasting scenarios and their visual timelines emerged from this multi-layered dialogue – anchored in research but animated by imagination.
Our workshops were demanding, yes. But they were also alive with creativity, asking both experts and citizens to stretch their thinking, to imagine futures not just as policy outcomes but as lived realities.
Outcomes
One of the key outcomes of the SPREAD project was the futures report Scenarios for Sustainable Lifestyles 2050: From Global Champions to Local Loops (Leppänen et al. 2012). The scenarios were presented as visual timelines that traced not only major political, technological and economic developments, but also everyday snapshots of how people might actually live in more sustainable societies. They aimed to show what the transition could feel like – on the scale of daily life as well as global change.
Together with colleagues, we also published an academic article, Low-carbon futures and sustainable lifestyles: A backcasting scenario approach (Futures, 2014). It demonstrated how backcasting can be used to explore alternative low-carbon futures – scenarios that are not only analytical, but also socially and culturally grounded.
Partners
Demos Helsinki: Maria Ritola, Juha Leppänen, Satu Lähteenoja, Outi Kuittinen, Roope Mokka, Tuuli Kaskinen
Kirmo Kivelä, Professor Oksana Mont at Lund University, Professor Anna Meroni at Politecnico di Milano, Francois Jégou, The Collaborating Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production (CSCP), Dr Michael Lettenmeir at D-Mat, John Manoochehri
Reflection
Looking back on the SPREAD scenarios and the process leading to them in retrospect, it is fair to say that it was a rather unique exercise: After having read a number of scenario reports and journal articles describing scenarios and especially backcasting studies, it appears that most of them have a significantly narrower focus, include many details, and depict more conventional narratives of change than our contribution did. One character that makes the scenario publication to stand out is the visualized timeline that contains an extensive amount of images of scenario events and lifestyle bits.
The themes and the contents of the scenarios are not, 13 years after publication, still relevant. We covered topics like social media bubbles, digital manufacturing, collapse of nation states, global institutions and economic systems. Development in many topics has been perhaps slower than the scenario narrative might suggest. The crux of scenarios, however, is not to make a right bet but not to omit relevant issues. This is where this project excelled and is therefore among the works I am most proud of.
