New pathways for governing food system transformations: a pluralistic practice-based futures approach using visioning, back-casting, and serious gaming

Abstract

2019. New pathways for governing food system transformations: a pluralistic practice-based futures approach using visioning, back-casting, and serious gaming. Ecology and Society 24(4):2. https://doi.ABSTRACT. The global environmental change that characterizes the Anthropocene poses a threat to food systems. Cities increasingly serve as the spaces where civil society, private actors, and local governments come together to strategize toward more sustainable food futures and experiment with new forms of food governance. However, much of the futures literature in the context of sustainability focuses on large-scale, global scenarios. These are important pieces of knowledge, but they often do not effect a change in local perspectives and practices. In this paper we respond to the need for novel futures approaches to help urban coalitions of societal actors create pathways to sustainability transformations. We investigate how existing examples of good practices, or "seeds," can be used to open up novel, desirable, bottom-up futures in the case study of Kyoto (Japan). Innovative combinations of methodologies (visioning, back-casting, simulation games) are used and assessed in order to create multiple ways of experimenting and engaging with food system futures. Our results consist of a pluriform pathway to a sustainable Kyoto food system. Each method brings in its unique pathway elements: visioning to formulate a desired end goal, back-casting to create a step-by-step action plan, and gaming to practice with the future. The combination of Kyoto-based "seeds" with initiatives from elsewhere and with a new food system governance model (a food policy council) resulted in participants learning about new food system practices, extending their networks, and support for actualizing a food policy council. We conclude that multimethod futures processes that combine existing practices and new modes of governance are a promising new way to outline various pathways for sustainability transformations.Ecology and Society 24(4): 2 https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol24/iss4/art2/ reasons for the success of specific alternatives as inspiration, combining them to generate holistic alternative futures rooted in the present (Bennett et al. 2016).

Sustainable Agri-Food Systems: Environment, Economy, Society, and Policy

“…In fact, many multi-stakeholder mechanisms (that involved actors from the public, private, and civil society realms), aiming at improving the governance of local and city-region food systems, have been analyzed in the literature. These multi-stakeholder groups include food (policy) councils [274,368,[377][378][379][380][381][382], networks [281,344,383], and partnerships [384,385]. The innovative governance mechanisms allow increasing the participation and inclusion of stakeholders in managing food systems, thus democratizing it [261,262,268,[270][271][272][273][274][275][276].…”

Imagination and transformations to sustainable and just futures

“…A number of articles in this collection focus on the intentional design of collective imagination processes, often with the expectation that the processes can support both the future-thinking capacity of the participants and cultivate the social interactions needed to strengthen collective imagination. These methods and others explored elsewhere, such as backcasting (Robinson, 2003), sci-fi prototyping (Merrie et al, 2018), participatory theater (Heras and Tàbara, 2016;Brown et al, 2017), games and simulations (Mangnus et al, 2019;Rosa and Sweeney, 2019;Vervoort, 2019), along with virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality technologies, are all emerging areas of study across various disciplines, especially for addressing sustainability challenges. We conclude that these arts-based and technology-supported efforts ensure that there are opportunities for imagining "from the inside," as Kind and Kung (2016) describe.…”

Planning for change: Transformation labs for an alternative food system in Cape Town, South Africa

“…Another challenge was how to foster diversity and difference in opinions whilst simultaneously acting for ‘the common good’ as well as to seek ways to scale impact appropriately across different contexts ( Ely et al 2020 ). The inclusion of certain actors, the sectors that they represent and the power dynamics that they bring into the room are very important considerations - as with all participatory processes - but especially when there is a direct link to governmental planning initiatives ( Darrah et al 2018 ; Dinesh et al 2018 ; Mangnus et al 2019 ).…”