Features
The future is, and must always remain, in a fundamental sense, unknowable. The best that futures research can do is to explore possible alternative futures. Since we are confronted with such uncertainty about the future, it would be the height of folly to take a single, simplistic view of it, and to claim that we can predict the future. Rather we should limit our claims to exploring multiple, possible futures. For this reason our best hope is to try to bracket the future by means of a set of scenarios, each dealing with possible alternatives.
(Fowles, 1987, quoted in Hicks, 2001, p. 55)
The global dimension in geography emphasises the subject's concern with social, economic and environmental issues. This includes an engagement with the contested concepts of 'futures' and 'sustainability', and the contribution that these make to informed and active citizenship. Thinking geographically encourages us to think about futures, and to consider that change is normal and often disputed. Change impacts on people and conflicts can arise from change. What really matters is that people engage in thinking about the future and recognise that others might not have the same vision. This contributes to citizenship. Ways of seeing the world allow us to put forward our concepts. Sustainable development is one such way of seeing the world. It was the major focus of the Earth Summit in 1992. Consider the suggestion that:
sustainable development prioritises equally the welfare of both people and planet. It emphasises i) increased levels of social and economic well-being, particularly for the least advantaged in society; ii) increased emphasis on the protection of the biosphere on which all life ultimately depends; and iii) that future generations should inherit at least as much wealth, natural and person-made, as we ourselves inherited.
(Hicks, 2001, p. 5)
Activity Resources:
- Images
- Interactive
- Sound
- Text
- Video
Activity
- Click on the Interactive icon and look at the cartoons (Regan, 2002, p. 142, and Regan et al., 1994, pp. 95 and 97).
- What view(s) do the cartoons suggest to you concerning:
- citizenship?
- the future?
- sustainability?
