We often approach sustainability by extrapolating past and current trends into the future. This is called forecasting. We can also start with desirable futures and the changes and actions needed to move in their direction. This is called backcasting. IICADD director, Rafael Ziegler explains how backcasting takes us to the core challenge of sustainability: joint reflection on needs and desires. He shares the benefits of this approach for working with organizations drawing on the evaluation of an award-winning teaching approach at HEC Montréal. Throughout, he also explores the link to both the societal dimension and the individual capability of reflecting on desirable futures.
Over the last years, this approach has been used to work with cooperatives as well as cooperative federations to work on sustainability topic, including climate change, biodiversity, food provision and sharing, agriculture, circular economy and coop governance among others.
Watch the conference below!