Envisioning alternative futures of socio-ecological practice: navigating an uncertain world with a compass of scenarios
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EDITORIAL
Envisioning alternative futures of socio‑ecological practice: navigating an uncertain world with a compass of scenarios Wei‑Ning Xiang1
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020
to compose scenarios and, through such a scenario lens, to foresee possible futures for decision-making in an uncertain world (Schwartz 1996, p. 29). The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity for us to take full advantage of this scenariobuilding capability in our strategic thinking and planning for coping with this hitherto unprecedented common threat and its unpredictable aftermath.1 To grasp this window of opportunity, the SEPR editor looks for contributions from around the world that compose socio-ecological practice scenarios Wei-Ning Xiang, the editor in chief
The editor in chief of Socio-Ecological Practice Research (SEPR) plans to publish a special issue in 2021 with the theme Our alternative futures in the 2020s and beyond: scenarios of socio-ecological practice in an uncertain world. This Call for Prospectus outlines the aims and scope of the special issue and provides guidelines for the prospectus preparation and submission.
1 What does the SEPR editor look for and why? In his widely acclaimed book The art of the long view: planning for the future in an uncertain world, American futurist Peter Schwartz claims, on the grounds of the latest evidence from neuroscience, that we, the human beings, are “the scenario-building animal” who has an innate ability * Wei‑Ning Xiang [email protected] 1
University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA
1. to foresee alternative futures of socio-ecological practice in the 2020s and beyond: What would the socio-ecologi‑ cal practice look like in the aftermath of this pandemic? What if the pandemic persists indefinitely? and 2. to envision, under each alternative future, the cor‑ respondingly coping strategies for socio-ecological practitioners and scholars: How could socio-ecological practitioners cope? Could they “reboot” (Collier 2020)? If so, how and at what cost? How could scholars con‑ duct socio-ecological practice research that is useful— directly relevant, immediately actionable, and foresee‑ ably efficacious (Xiang 2019a, p.9)? As an instrument for strategic thinking and option search, a socio-ecological practice scenario by definition is a synopsis of a possible (not probable) sequence of events or course of action in socio-ecological practice an individual or group imagined (for a generic scenario definition, see MerriamWebster 2020a). In taking the long view into alternative 1
A common threat by definition is a danger—something or someone that can hurt or harm people—that might happen to every individual human being in a certain place. A common threat comes either from a natural disaster or human conflict to which no one in a certain place (e.g., the earth, a country, a region, a city, a village, a community, etc.) is immune. At the global scale, for example, the COVID-19 pan‑ demic exemplifies the former, and World War II the latter
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