CCE Discussion Event with Professor Hideaki Shiroyama and Professor Yee Kuang Heng, University of Tokyo
25 September 2023, Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge
The Centre for Climate Engagement hosted a discussion on futures work and climate action with a select group of attendees from academia, industry, and the UK civil service. The attendees shared their thoughts on how futures work and best practices can drive impactful action to build climate resilience and accelerate the global transition to net zero. The conversation featured special guests from the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School for Public Policy, Professor Hideaki Shiroyama and Professor Yee Kuang Heng.
Main Takeaways
Futures Work and Climate
The discussion explored how incorporating futures thinking into policymaking and driving climate action share several clear parallels. Drawing on lessons from Japan, Singapore and the UK, there was general agreement that there are several shared elements that serve as drivers or barriers across the different contexts.
High-level effective leadership, use of the right language, and allocation of dedicated resources were identified as the common essential factors to accelerate purposive and meaningful action.
On the other hand, challenges such as political shifts, difficulties with quantifying impact, and a lack of immediate incentives can hinder long-term efforts.
The discussion explored how incorporating futures thinking into policymaking and driving climate action share several clear parallels. Drawing on lessons from Japan, Singapore and the UK, there was general agreement that there are several shared elements that serve as drivers or barriers across the different contexts.
High-level effective leadership, use of the right language, and allocation of dedicated resources were identified as the common essential factors to accelerate purposive and meaningful action.
On the other hand, challenges such as political shifts, difficulties with quantifying impact, and a lack of immediate incentives can hinder long-term efforts.
“How can better futures literacy enhance the capacity of governments, civil society and industry to tackle climate change?”
Resilience and Efficiency
Navigating complex issues that operate across timescales and varying degrees of uncertainty, such as the climate crisis, requires resilience thinking that builds in flexibility. In embracing resilience, there needs to be an acceptance that there will be some level of redundancy to plan effectively for different scenarios and contexts.
However, this can sometimes run counter to efficiency. It can be challenging to measure resilience with traditional quantitative metrices for efficiency. This highlights the need for a more nuanced approach to measuring progress in the face of uncertainty which is inherent to climate policy and futures work.
“Maybe we need to aspire for resilience rather than efficiency. And it seems that they pull in different directions. Now, clearly, you need to do things well, even if you want to be resilient and that’s part of being resilient. But actually, resilience is about saying, okay, we accept some redundancy.”
Framing
At the academic and policy interface, getting the framing right is key to motivating meaningful action. The catastrophic narratives sometimes associated with climate policy can be counterproductive, engendering a sense of helplessness rather than inspiring practical solutions.
Using language and concepts that resonate with the priorities of decision-makers, on the other hand, can focus risks into actionable insights which encourages buy-in from stakeholders and cultivates a healthy environment for those stakeholders to engage in an open discussion.
“One of the officials I spoke with shared that the goal is to simply get people to share a common lingo, so that you at least can have a working understanding of the issue, be it politics, AI, or climate change. We want to have a common baseline for different agencies to at least be able to engage with each other with the same vocabulary, and same language.”
Conclusion
Building on the commonalities between climate action and futures work, incorporating futures thinking and best practices could be helpful in building resilient and robust climate policy suited to drive long-term impactful action through uncertainties. Given that there are also shared challenges facing policymakers in different countries, strengthening global networks for dialogue and creating platforms to collectively reflect may offer useful insights on the best way forward.