Transcript Document

Designing the future(s)
Net-together – Permaculture
Oxford, September 02004
Jamie Saunders
[email protected]
http://www.futuresedge.info
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Learning objectives
• to assist participants to explore the notions about time
and futures in their design work
• to develop thinking about the intended and unintended
consequences of design as well as dealing with the
inherent uncertainty and unpredictability of futures
• to explore risk, contingency and continuity planning
concepts in relation to applied permaculture
‘…making the invisible visible…’
The future may seem like “the last great wilderness”
…something to respect, be inspired by, learn from
and contribute to…
Spending time in the ‘crow’s nest’…
…developing the skills of a ‘futures scout’…
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Re-vision - Permaculture
“the conscious design of sustainable systems”
Founded on ‘Earthcare’
LANDSCAPE focused – Local place specific solutions
Design model – ‘ZONING’ through space
Zone 00 – Personal development
Zone 0 – Home / Building
Zone 1 – Domestic sufficiency {Garden}
Zone 2 – Small domestic stock and orchard
Zone 3 – Main crop, forage, stored food
Zone 4 – Gathering, forage, forestry, pasture
Zone 5 – Wilderness
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Design Process – methodology
O-BREDIMR – ‘a planning wheel’
B
Observation
R
Boundaries
R
Resources
Evaluation
M
E
Design
Install / implement
Maintain
Review & Learn
I
D
‘…making the invisible visible…’
The Keyline Scale of (relative) Permanence – Ken Yeomans
•
•
•
•
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Climate
Land shape
Water
Roads
Trees
Buildings
Fencing
Soil
http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010126yeomansII/010126ch4.html
‘…making the invisible visible…’
OBSERVATION – CONSTANT VIGILANCE & ALERTNESS
B
B
R
R
R
R
M
M
E
E
I
I
D
D
‘…making the invisible visible…’
The Present is Less than the Future
Mental Experimentation & Temporal Exploration in Design Work
“How designers use mental experimentation and imagination by
actively envisioning various futures, or `possible worlds' in the design
process, and how they use these temporal explorations in conceiving
of novel design concepts…
how designers use temporality: by projecting a future goal; and by
investing this goal or image with an emotional loading, i.e. by `emoting
a vision of the future'.
C. Hellström & T. Hellström, 02004
http://www.ingenta.com/isis/searching/ExpandTOC/ingenta;jsessionid=271626035ejb6.crescent?
issue=pubinfobike://sage/tas/2003/00000012/00000002&index=6
‘…making the invisible visible…’
60 acre city centre design – “the pink carpet”
BCR/Alsops, 2003
‘…making the invisible visible…’
‘Zone 6’ – ‘beyond the boundary’ … in space and time …
Permaculture - ‘Permanent culture’ – characteristics of ‘permanence’
A ‘perma-culture’? – ‘people and their harmonious co-evolution in nature’…
The future…uncertainty…future generations…consequences…our legacy
…foresight…futures…future-proofing… ‘the infinite game’…
Declaration on the Responsibility of Present Generations towards Future Generations,
UNESCO, 01997 http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001108/110827eb.pdf
“Uncertainty is the home ground of the moral person”
Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Love, 02003
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Landscape
INVISIBLE
VISIBLE
Mindscape
‘Info-scape’
Timescape
“Situational Awareness”
‘…making the invisible visible…’
“…what you see depends upon what you thought before you looked“,
M Tribus
Situational Awareness
“…simply, it’s knowing what is going on around you.”
“SA depends on the operator’s perception of the situation’s elements.
…three possible types of situation:
the real world situation;
the perceived situation; and
the desired, or expected, situation
(Boy, 1987)
…complexity is reduced to manageable proportions by adopting manyto-one mappings between the real system and a … mental
representation of that system.”
http://www.searchtech.com/articles/hics98.htm
http://www.colorado.edu/geography/cartpro/cartography2/spring2001/dettloff/time/prism_map.html
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Pace layers of civilisation – Stewart Brand, 01999
‘…making the invisible visible…’
• ‘Timescape’
– “a timescape perspective stresses the temporal features of living”,
‘to enable us to see the invisible’, Adam 01998
• ‘Dynamic time’ & ‘Deep time’
– to break with the ‘tyranny of the present’
– Challenge the ‘culture of immediacy’ & acceleration
• Slow Movement / Take Back Your Time
– Pay attention to the ‘extended present’
– Develop alternatives
• beyond ‘the Big Here’ and ‘the future-perfect’
• TINA - “there is no alternative”, reclaim the future…
• Time virtuosity / ‘time mastery’
• ‘Temporal imagination’
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Patchiness of Space and Time
1 mm 1 cm
1 m 1 km 100 km
Log Time (years)
5
4
10,000 yrs
landscape
1 millenium
3
forest
2
1 century
stand
1
1 decade
crown
needle
0
-1
1 year
1 week
-2
-6
-4
-2
0
2
4
Log Space (km)
APK: Hohokam Irrigation Workshop, Feb-March 03
Integration - System Scales
Figure 4-1. Insitutional hierarchy of rule sets. In contrast
to ecological hierarchies, this one is structured along
dimensions of the number of people involved in rule set
and approximate turnover times (Gunderson et al.
1995b).
Excerpted from Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and
Natural Systems L. H. Gunderson and C. S. Holling, eds. Copyright ©
2001 by Island Press. Posted to this website by permission of Island
Press, Washington, D. C., and Covelo, California. All rights are reserved.
Figure 3-11. Decision hierarchies in the boreal forest. Shown
are relative positions in the hierarchy for decisions about food
choice, home range, or migration that would be made by each
of three species from three differenct body mass lump
categories. For example, a deer mouse establishes a home
range over tens of meters, a beaver over kilometers, and a
moose over tens of kilometers.
Excerpted from Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and
Natural Systems L. H. Gunderson and C. S. Holling, eds. Copyright © 2001 by
Island Press. Posted to this website by permission of Island Press, Washington,
D. C., and Covelo, California. All rights are reserved.
‘…making the invisible visible…’
‘Temporal design’ on the edge…
- from the present to the future… from the nano- to the cosmic
http://staff.aist.go.jp/y.soeta/time2.html
• ‘The Long Now’ – 10,000 years…
‘…making the invisible visible…’
“Memories of the future” - Time paths and options
“We need to build ourselves a series of ‘memories of the future’ –
anticipation of events that might or might not happen”
“The only relevant questions about the future are those where we
succeed from shifting the question from whether something will
happen to what we would do if it did happen"
Arie de Geus via http://www.shell.com
“We increase our chances by widening the range of
alternatives we consider.”
Graham May, 01997
"The result of remaining on the edge is a wider range of
strategic options and a better sense of which option to
choose.“
Competing on the Edge, Shona Brown, 01998 HBS Press
‘…making the invisible visible…’
• Vulnerability and Resilience
– towards more robust ‘designs’…
•
•
•
•
•
‘Sites’ – beyond the fence
Projects – beyond the now
Organisations – beyond today
Neighbourhoods & settlements – ‘sustainable communities’
Households & lifestyles – through lifespans, across generations
• Permaculture meta-design, design and tactics
– eg rolling permaculture
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Resilience is key to enhancing adaptive capacity
4 critical factors during periods of change…
• learning to live with change and uncertainty;
• nurturing diversity for resilience;
• combining different types of knowledge for learning; and
• creating opportunity for self-organization towards socialecological sustainability.
Folke et al. (2002)
‘…making the invisible visible…’
“Imagination is more important than knowledge”
Albert Einstein
The future or futures?…
Multiple futures
• Possible {art}
• Probable {science}
• Preferable {politics}
– Roy Amara, 01978
Creativity – ‘the ability to think and the inclination (and
courage) to rebel’, Bakunin
Contested futures, Brown et al, 02000
‘…making the invisible visible…’
“People use their ideas about the future to direct their actions in the
present”
James Dator, 01998
“…at the moment fear and uncertainty are leading to some strange
reactions. We have few institutional frameworks for serious thinking
about what the future is bringing.”
The new enterprise culture, Geoff Mulgan & Perri 6, Demos 8/1996
“Hard imaginative thinking has not increased so as to keep pace with the
expansion and complications of human societies and organizations.” This
is “the darkest shadow upon the hopes of mankind.”
H. G. Wells cited by Thomas Homer-Dixon
Speculative fiction…
‘Pattern dustdevils’ – Kim Stanley Robinson…Antarctica, Mars …
‘…making the invisible visible…’
COMBAT FUTURES
“AFTER THE WORLD war there was a world government. It was officially known as the
United Nations, unofficially as the US/UN , and colloquially as the Yanks. It kept the
peace, from space, or so it claimed. What it actually did was prevent innumerable tiny
Wars from becoming big wars. But in order to maintain its power , it needed the little
wars, and they never stopped. We had war without end, to prevent war to the end. The
US/UN kept the most advanced technology in its own hands, to keep it out of 'the wrong
hands' - i.e., any hands that could be raised against the US/UN's dominion. It was not as
dreadful as generations of American dissidents had feared. It wasn't, by a long way, as
dreadful as generations of global idealists had hoped. That leaves a lot of leeway for
bad government.
The Restoration Settlement, the fragmented system of 'communities under the King',
was Britain's contribution to the tale of infamy. In the interstices of the Kingdom all sorts
of Free States flourished: regionalist, racialist, creationist, socialist; even - in the case
of our own Norlonto - anarcho-capitalist.
The Kingdom was a caricature of a minimal state, which bore about the same
relationship to my utopia as once-actually-existing-socialism did to my father's. The
people who did best of all under the arrangement were the marginals who squatted
the countryside and called themselves New Settlers, and whom we city folk called new
barbarians- 'the barb'.
After twenty years of slow-burning war of all against all the Army of the New Republic
proclaimed the Final Offensive for the fourth time.”
Page 198, The Stone Canal, Ken Macleod, 01996
– describing the ‘world’ in his first ‘speculative’ fiction work, The Star Fraction
‘…making the invisible visible…’
“We understand how beautiful the whole Earth once
was. And we can make it that way again. On the far side
of our hard time I can see a returned clarity, as fewer of
us get along ever more cleverly, our technologies and
our social systems all meshed with each other and with
this sacred Earth, in the growing clarity of a dynamic
and ever-evolving permaculture...We are the primitives
of an unknown civilisation…we re-drew all our county
lines to match the watershed boundaries, a long time
ago”
Kim Stanley Robinson, Antarctica, 01997
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Complexity - continuity, change and transitions
• Consequences – intended and unintended…
• Foresight – anticipation
• Uncertainty – unpredictability - ‘spread betting’
– Hazards, Risks, Surprises, Danger
– Continuity management & contingency planning
– Prevention & preparedness…response & recovery
• Facing a “disruptive challenge” – scenarios to inform the present…
– Bounce back
– Reasonable adjustment
– Phase change
– Aftershock
– Dieback
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Hazard
Economic
Social
Ecological
Other
Now
Soon
Later
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Traps in Futures Thinking--and How to Overcome Them
The most-common traps in futures thinking :
•
•
•
•
•
•
"This is it!" thinking
paradigm blindness
trend-faith
cultural contempt
overenthusiasm; and
disparagement of everything new. ...
…a kind of disturbance generator (‘cognitive dissonance
creator’ - J) to keep you awake in front of the turbulent
future(s)...
Mika Mannermaa http://www.wfs.org/volexecsum04.htm
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Anticipating the external environment
• identifying and monitoring change
• Certainties
• Cycles
• Trends & events
• Emerging issues
• Wild cards & surprises
•
considering and critiquing the impacts of change
•
imagining alternative possible futures
•
visioning preferred futures
•
planning, team-building & implementing desired change
– (contingency planning for undesired change – JMS)
Schultz, 01997
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Short term
1-20yrs
Certainties
Cycles
Trends & events
Emerging issues
Wild cards &
Surprises
Mid-term
20-1,000yrs
Long-term
1,000 to 10,000yrs
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Short term
1-20yrs
Social
Technological
Economic
Ecological
Political
Other…
Mid-term
20-1,000yrs
Long-term
1,000 to 10,000yrs
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Futures Wheel – ‘creating preferred futures’
Using the "futures wheel" tool will help you explore the consequences of a trend, event, emerging
issue, or decision. You will discover first-, second- and third-order impacts of a particular trend, event,
or emerging you identified from your environmental scan through the use of a futures wheel. It will help
you organize your thinking concerning the future and will increase your understanding of the results of
your research including, but not limited to, an environmental scan.
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Models of Change
Change is the norm, but its pace may be ‘accelerating’
Older models that help us understand change and its
dynamic impacts include:
• linear change, evolution, cyclical change, and dialectical
change between thesis-antithesis-synthesis.
Newer models of interest to futures researchers include:
• step jump models (sudden shifts in a system without a prior breakdown)
• evolutionary spirals
• series of S-shaped curves of breakdowns and
breakthroughs; and
• chaos.
Linda Groff http://www.wfs.org/volexecsum04.htm
‘…making the invisible visible…’
A stylised panarchy - A panarchy is a cross-scale, nested set of adaptive cycles, indicating the
dynamic nature of structures depicted in the previous plots.
Excerpted from Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems
L. H. Gunderson and C. S. Holling, eds. Copyright © 2001 by Island Press. Posted to this website by
permission of Island Press, Washington, D. C., and Covelo, California. All rights are reserved.
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Revision…
Situational awareness
•
Environmental and political context
•
Vigilance & ‘early warning’– constant attention and alertness
• Adaptability and transition management skills
Environmental / horizon scanning
•
Breadth and depth of ‘intelligence gathering’
•
STEEP – Social, technological, economic, ecological, political
• GLIMPSE, EPISTLE
Foresight
• Appraisal of consequences – ‘whole-life cycle’ analysis
• Anticipation & contingency planning - preparation and preparedness
•
Vision, alternative futures, options, strategy and tactics
‘…making the invisible visible…’
…to understand the differences between:
• Best sustainable option (BSO)
• Best sustainable option
– not exceeding excessive ‘cost’ (BSONEEC) or
– within available resources (BSOWEAR)
• Least sustainable option (LSO)
…Reclaiming the future …
…practising “the art of the long view”…
…designing with futures
Intentionally blank
‘…making the invisible visible…’
“A key role for futurists is therefore to inspire decisionmakers with alternative futures and choices,
demonstrating their technical feasibility, and warning of
the consequences of inaction.
But behind every corporate decision there is a battle for
hearts and minds - and they have rules of their own.”
Closing the deal: how to make organizations act on futures research
Jerome C. Glenn; Theodore J. Gordon; James Dator,
Foresight - The journal of future studies, strategic thinking and
policy, 2001
Vol. 3 No. 3 Page: 177 – 189, Emerald
‘…making the invisible visible…’
http://fourps.wharton.upenn.edu/forecast/insidecover.pdf
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Panarchy, Buzz Hollings
Developing a strategic sense of how to proceed.
Do not try to plan the details, but invent, experiment, and build. Although this may
sound easy, at such times existing centers of local power resist larger
opportunity because of the threats they perceive in the unknown.
Consequently, it is essential to do the following:
• Encourage innovation through a rich variety of experiments and transformative
approaches that probe possible directions. It is important to encourage experiments that
have a low cost of failure to individuals, the environment, and careers, because many of
these experiments will fail.
• Reduce inhibitions to change, which are common when systems get so locked up.
• Protect and communicate the accumulated knowledge and experience needed for
change.
• Promote discourse among all parties involved to try to understand where we are going
and how to achieve it.
• Encourage new foundations for renewal that build and sustain the ability of people,
economies, and nature to deal with change, and ensure that these new foundations
consolidate and expand our understanding of change.
• Allow sufficient time. This pulse is a global phenomenon, and it could potentially affect all
levels of the hierarchy, all the way up the chain, from the individual/family to national and
global systems.
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss1/art11/index.html
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Adaptive Cycles
The Back Loop
New system that
emerges may replicate
earlier cycle (repeat
same adaptive cycle),
or may be something
entirely new (‘flip’ into
new basin of
attraction, or adaptive
cycle).
APK: Hohokam Irrigation Workshop, Feb-March 03
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Myths of nature - the limitations of strongly held world views or myths.
"Nature flat"
describes a system in which there are few or no forces affecting
stability. It is a nature that is infinitely malleable and amenable to
human control and domination if only the "right" values and the "right"
timing are chosen.
“Nature balanced"
describes a view of nature existing at or near an equilibrium condition.
Hence if nature is disturbed, it will return to an equilibrium through (in
systems terms) negative feedback.
"Nature anarchic"
is a view of fundamental instability where persistence is only possible
in a decentralized system where there are minimal demands on
nature. It is a view where the precautionary principle of policy
dominates, and social activity is focussed on maintenance of the
status quo.
"Nature resilient“
is a view of multi-stable states, some of which become irreversible
traps, others natural alternating states that are experienced as part of
the internal dynamics. It is a view of multiple stable states in
ecosystems, economies and societies and of policies and
management approaches that are adaptive.
Figure 1-1. Depictions of four myths of nature: (A) Nature Flat, (B) Nature Balanced, (C) Nature Anarchic, and (D) Nature Resilient. Each myth has three representations or
metaphors: as stability landscape (left), phase diagram (center), and time-course chart or trajectory of key system variables over time (right).
Excerpted from Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems L. H. Gunderson and C. S. Holling, eds. Copyright © 2001 by Island Press. Posted to
this website by permission of Island Press, Washington, D. C., and Covelo, California. All rights are reserved.
‘…making the invisible visible…’
"Nature evolving" (not shown in the figure)
is a view much like nature resilient, except that it is also
evolutionary and adaptive.
It is a view of abrupt and transforming change which exposes
a need for understanding unpredictable dynamics in
ecosystems with a corollary focus on institutional and
political flexibility.
Figure 1-1. Depictions of four myths of nature: (A) Nature Flat, (B) Nature Balanced, (C) Nature Anarchic, and (D) Nature Resilient. Each myth has three representations or
metaphors: as stability landscape (left), phase diagram (center), and time-course chart or trajectory of key system variables over time (right).
Excerpted from Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems L. H. Gunderson and C. S. Holling, eds. Copyright © 2001 by Island Press. Posted to
this website by permission of Island Press, Washington, D. C., and Covelo, California. All rights are reserved.
‘…making the invisible visible…’
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Panarchical connections.
Three selected levels of a panarchy are illustrated, to
emphasize the two connections that are critical in creating
and sustaining adaptive capability. One is the "revolt"
connections, which can cause a critical change in one cycle
to cascade up to a vulnerable stage in a larger and slower
one. The other is the "remember" connection, which
facilitates renewal by drawing on the potential that has been
accumulated and stored in a larger, slower cycle.
…
For institutions, those three speeds might be operational
rules, collective choice rules, and constitutional rules
(Ostrom 1990; Chapter 5);
for economies, individual preferences, markets, and social
insitutions (Whitaker 1987);
for developing nations, markets, infrastructure, and
governance (Barro 197);
for societies, allocation mechanisms, norms, and myths
(Westley 1995, Chapter 4);
for knowledge systems, local knowledge, managment
practice, and worldview (Gadgil et al. 1993; Berkes 1999;
Chapter 5).
Excerpted from Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in
Human and Natural Systems L. H. Gunderson and C. S.
Holling, eds. Copyright © 2001 by Island Press. Posted to
this website by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.
C., and Covelo, California. All rights are reserved.
‘…making the invisible visible…’
Design principles (for robustness) derived from studies of long-enduring institutions for governing
sustainable resources
1. Clearly Defined Boundaries
•
The boundaries of the resource system (e.g., irrigation system or fishery) and the individuals or households with
rights to harvest resource units are clearly defined.
2. Proportional Equivalence between Benefits and Costs
•
Rules specifying the amount of resource products that a user is allocated are related to local conditions and to rules
requiring labor, materials, and/or money inputs.
3. Collective-Choice Arrangements
•
Most individuals affected by harvesting and protection rules are included in the group who can modify these rules.
4. Monitoring
•
Monitors, who actively audit biophysical conditions and user behavior, are at least partially accountable to the users
or are the users themselves.
5. Graduated Sanctions
•
Users who violate rules-in-use are likely to receive graduated sanctions (depending on the seriousness and context
of the offense) from other users, from officials accountable to these users, or from both.
6. Conflict-Resolution Mechanisms
•
Users and their officials have rapid access to low-cost, local arenas to resolve conflict among users or between users
and officials.
7. Minimal Recognition of Rights to Organize
•
The rights of users to devise their own institutions are not challenged by external governmental authorities, and users
have long-term tenure rights to the resource.
•
For resources that are parts of larger systems:
8. Nested Enterprises
•
Appropriation, provision, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution, and governance activities are organized in
multiple layers of nested enterprises.
Source: Based on Ostrom (1990).
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss1/art18/index.html
‘…making the invisible visible…’
•
Dynamic time - http://www.creativeinquiry.org/fields-of-inquiry/Organizational%20Development/knowingthe-future
•
Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia Gregory Benford
– http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0380975378/104-0908540-2459910?v=glance
•
Futurist Tools – Creating Preferred Futures –
•
•
Local Government Association Futures Toolkit for Local Government, LGA, 02000
•
•
•
http://www.cpfonline.org/cpf/f_tools.html
http://www.lga.gov.uk/Briefing.asp?lsection=0&ccat=-1&id=SXCFC3-A7805B01
A Futurist’s Toolbox, Cabinet Office, PIU, Strategic Futures Team, 02001
•
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/innovation/2001/futures/A%20Futurists%20Toolbox%20Methodologies%20in%20Future
s%20Work.pdf
•
Strategic Futures http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/innovation/2001/futures/main.shtml
•
The Future and how to think about it - http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/innovation/2000/strategic/future.shtml
A practical guide to regional foresight, FOREN, 02001
•
http://foren.jrc.es/
‘…making the invisible visible…’
•
The Clock of the Long Now, Stewart Brand, 01997
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Contested futures, Nik Brown et al, 02000
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The Living Company, Arie de Geus, 01999
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The Ingenuity Gap, Thomas Homer-Dixon, 02000
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The Seventh Enemy, Ronald Higgins, 01978
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Heaven in a chip {fuzzy future}, Bart Kosko, 02000
•
The future is ours, Graham May, 01996
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Why things Bite Back, Edward Tenner, 01996
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Infinite futures - http://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/~wendy/if.html - Wendy Schultz,01997
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The art of the Long View, Peter Schwartz, 01999
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Futurist Tools – Creating Preferred Futures - http://www.cpfonline.org/cpf/f_tools.html
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LGA Futures Toolkit for Local Government, LGA, 02000
•
A Futurist’s Toolbox, Cabinet Office, PIU, Strategic Futures Team, 02001
•
A practical guide to regional foresight, FOREN, 02001
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‘Your Future in Business – the Foresight Training Toolkit’, 02001
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Futuring: The Exploration of the Future, Edward Cornish, 02004
•
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Ecocide, Jared Diamond, 02005
Antarctica & Mars Trilogy, Kim Stanley Robinson