Speculative futures reveal complex relationships with woodland

To build a sustainable future, it is important to create coherent visions about alternative ways people might engage with nature. But how can we articulate hidden differences (and tensions) between the futures that people desire? A recent article by, among others, Centre researchers, Liam Carpenter-Urquhart, Laura Pereira, Jan Kuiper and Garry Peterson demonstrates that participatory future visions can help bring coexisting values to the surface.

During two workshops, participants from Mombera Kingdom, a traditional community in Malawi, envisioned positive futures for people and nature in their community, which artists captured in visual artworks. The visions contain multiple coexisting desires for what the woodland might become, including a reemergence of an imagined precolonial landscape, an enabler for non-urban prosperity, and a stage for culturally embedded management practice. Speculative fiction stories (including the BSFA-nominated “Hiraeth”) explored hidden tensions in the visions. These stories, published in the Mombera Rising anthology, share this community’s novel imagination with international audiences.

At local scales, articulating differences in what people desire can help communities negotiate what future they want. At higher scales, it can help institutions recognize the complexity hidden behind words like “forest” or “woodland.”