Joost Vervoort
Biographic Data
| ID | 170836 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Joost Vervoort |
| GIVEN NAMES | Joost |
| FAMILY NAME | Vervoort |
| SIGNATURE | VERVOORT J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Utrecht University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8289-7429 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 48 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 787 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Beyond awareness
Care is a valuable lens for engaging with climate futures. Care for the environment is needed as a motivator to prevent further climate change, as is care for other humans and non-human species who face climate change effects. Games are a promising medium for practicing climate care, but little is known about how these games invite players to care for the future. We analyze a database of 287 published games that relate to man-made climate change.…
Understanding games as a site of utopian resonance
Meaningful transdisciplinary collaborations for sustainability
Meaningful transdisciplinary collaborations that weave diverse ways of knowing, doing, and feeling are increasingly recognized as central for enabling just and sustainable transformations. This Special Feature explores the unique contributions of art-science transdisciplinary collaborations in addressing complex social-ecological challenges. Drawing from a series of transdisciplinary projects, we examine how co-created processes between scientist…
Breaking out of conventions
Futures imagined in scenario processes reflect both stakeholder perspectives and broader societal imaginaries: collectively-held, institutionally-stabilized visions of the future. The presence of imaginaries has mostly remained implicit in studies of scenario planning, especially in development contexts. We argue that scenario planning will benefit from reflexivity regarding imaginaries. Here, reflexivity refers to an awareness regarding differen…
Dimensions for evaluating how art and creative practice stimulate societal transformations
There is an urgent need to engage with deep leverage points in sustainability transformations—fundamental myths, paradigms, and systems of meaning making—to open new collective horizons for action. Art and creative practice are uniquely suited to help facilitate change in these deeper transformational leverage points. However, understandings of how creative practices contribute to sustainability transformations are lacking in practice and fragmen…
It's Not Always About You
In the face of a global ecological crisis, culturally dominant framings of subjective experience as separate from living ecologies are no longer sufficient. Games might offer ways to break down these divisions. Alenda Chang has proposed bringing game ecologies to life. To complement her position, in this paper, we aim to inspire game designers and researchers to explore ways in which video games can remodel the perceived player subject as a pathw…
Is anticipatory governance opening up or closing down future possibilities? Findings from diverse contexts in the Global South
There is an urgent need to understand how anticipation processes such as scenario planning impact governance choices in the present. However, little empirical research has been done to analyze how anticipation processes frame possibilities for action. This paper investigates how assumptions about the future open up or close down anticipatory governance actions in a large number of climate-focused anticipation processes. We focused on four Global …
New Insights, New Rules
Games have become established tools within participatory urban planning practice that provide safe spaces for collective actions such as deliberation, negotiation of conflicting agendas, scenario testing, and collaborative worldbuilding. While a body of literature on the effectiveness of games to address complex urban planning issues is emerging, significantly less literature addresses the design and development process of serious games with a po…
Sustainable agrifood systems for a post-growth world
Disruptive seeds
Over the last 2 decades, it has become increasingly evident that incremental adaptation to global environmental challenges—particularly climate change—no longer suffices. To make matters worse, systemic problems such as social inequity and unsustainable use of resources prove to be persistent. These challenges call for, such is the rationale, significant and radical systemic changes that challenge incumbent structures. Remarkably, scholarship on …
The anticipatory governance of sustainability transformations
Anticipation methods and tools are increasingly used to try to imagine and govern transformations towards more sustainable futures across different policy domains and sectors. But there is a lack of research into the steering effects of anticipation on present-day governance choices, especially in the face of urgently needed sustainability transformations. This paper seeks to understand how different perspectives on anticipatory governance connec…
Envisioning alternatives in pre-structured urban sustainability transformations
In the governance of urban sustainability transformations, participatory futures practices are increasingly popular. Yet there is a rising awareness that the success or failure of these practices depends on how they are staged and the context in which they are conducted. These contextual factors are often less than ideal, and futures practices take place at the crossroads of many pre-determined agendas and priorities. We distinguish four factors …
Strengthening foresight for governance of social-ecological systems
In recent decades, foresight has been connected to various disciplines that engage with complex societal problems, leading to specific interpretations of foresight. We offer an interdisciplinary perspective on foresight's increasing use for governance of social-ecological systems (SES). We seek to strengthen the use of foresight in this domain by bridging to insights from other disciplines that can help overcome its limitations. Participatory for…
Picture the future, play the present
The urban sustainability transformations that are urgently needed will have significant effects on the daily lives of city dwellers. As ways to imagine and co-design sustainable urban futures, experiments within the present-day urban environment are increasingly popular. This paper investigates how such an experimental approach can serve as the base of an applied urban futures game that enables its players to reflect on and imagine ways to addres…
Constructing practice-oriented futures for sustainable urban food policy in Bangkok
Conventional policy approaches emphasize technical solutions and individual behavioral change, but practice-based policy approaches offer an alternative. This paper examines the operationalization of a practice-oriented futures policy development process. The process builds on practice theory to generate alternative sustainable future pathways and policy intervention ideas, and in doing so, extends the vocabulary for policy-focused futures work. …
Not just playing
Simulation games are increasingly popular tools for opening up future imaginaries, especially in the arena of sustainability policy-making and decision support. However, there is a lack of understanding regarding the potential power of games in anticipatory governance. We argue that the utility of simulation games in support of anticipatory climate governance can be greatly increased when game processes are consciously designed to impact present …
Advancing a toolkit of diverse futures approaches for global environmental assessments
Global Environmental Assessments (GEAs) are in a unique position to influence environmental decision-making in the context of sustainability challenges. To do this effectively, however, new methods are needed to respond to the needs of decision-makers for a more integrated, contextualized and goal-seeking evaluation of different policies, geared for action from global to local. While scenarios are an important tool for GEAs to link short-term dec…
Unlocking the potential of gaming for anticipatory governance
Games offer unique possibilities for imagining and experimenting with new systems of governance for more sustainable futures – new rules and institutions, new roles, and new dynamic worlds. However, research on sustainability games has mostly investigated games as a type of futures method, largely divorced from its societal contexts. In this paper, we argue that to unlock the potential of gaming for anticipatory governance in the service of a mor…
Grounding global environmental assessments through bottom-up futures based on local practices and perspectives
Future scenarios and pathways of potential development trajectories are powerful tools to assist with decision-making to address many sustainability challenges. Such scenarios play a major role in global environmental assessments (GEAs). Currently, however, scenarios in GEAs are mostly developed at the global level by experts and researchers, and locally imagined, bottom-up scenarios do not play a role in such assessments. In this paper, we argue…
Alternative futures for global biological invasions
Scenario analysis has emerged as a key tool to analyze complex and uncertain future socio-ecological developments. However, currently existing global scenarios (narratives of how the world may develop) have neglected biological invasions, a major threat to biodiversity and the economy. Here, we use a novel participatory process to develop a diverse set of global biological invasion scenarios spanning a wide range of plausible global futures throu…
Futures literacy and the diversity of the future
In this paper, we argue that a key component of futures literacy is reflexivity regarding different attitudes toward the future. Various intellectual traditions and futures practices make epistemologically distinct claims about the future and its manifestations in the present. Through their different outlooks on analyzing, understanding, and influencing the future, these diverse approaches represent fundamentally different attitudes to what it me…
Participatory scenario planning and framing of social-ecological systems
Rutting, L., J. M. Vervoort, H. Mees, and P. P. J. Driessen. 2021. Participatory scenario planning and framing of social-ecological systems: an analysis of policy formulation processes in Rwanda and Tanzania. Ecology and Society 26(4):20. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12665-260420
Innovation can accelerate the transition towards a sustainable food system
Four approaches to anticipatory climate governance
In times of accelerating earth system transformations and their potentially disruptive societal consequences, imagining and governing the future is now a core challenge for sustainability research and practice. Much social science and sustainability science scholarship increasingly engages with the future. There is, however, a lack of scrutiny of how the future is envisioned in these literatures, and with what implications for governance in the p…
Multispecies sustainability
Non-technical summary The sustainability concept seeks to balance how present and future generations of humans meet their needs. But because nature is viewed only as a resource, sustainability fails to recognize that humans and other living beings depend on each other for their well-being. We therefore argue that true sustainability can only be achieved if the interdependent needs of all species of current and future generations are met, and prop…
Exploring the governance and politics of transformations towards sustainability
The notion of 'transformations towards sustainability' takes an increasingly central position in global sustainability research and policy discourse in recent years. Governance and politics are central to understanding and analysing transformations towards sustainability. However, despite receiving growing attention in recent years, the governance and politics aspects of transformations remain arguably under-developed in the global sustainability…
New directions in earth system governance research
The Earth System Governance project is a global research alliance that explores novel, effective governance mechanisms to cope with the current transitions in the biogeochemical systems of the planet. A decade after its inception, this article offers an overview of the project's new research framework (which is built upon a review of existing earth system governance research), the goal of which is to continue to stimulate a pluralistic, vibrant a…
Futures literacy and the diversity of the future
In this paper, we argue that a key component of futures literacy is reflexivity regarding different attitudes toward the future. Various intellectual traditions and futures practices make epistemologically distinct claims about the future and its manifestations in the present. Through their different outlooks on analyzing, understanding, and influencing the future, these diverse approaches represent fundamentally different attitudes to what it me…
Scenarios and the art of worldmaking
Challenges to scenario-guided adaptive action on food security under climate change
This paper examines the development and use of scenarios as an approach to guide action in multi-level, multi-actor adaptation contexts such as food security under climate change. Three challenges are highlighted: (1) ensuring the appropriate scope for action; (2) moving beyond intervention-based decision guidance; and (3) developing long-term shared capacity for strategic planning. To overcome these challenges we have applied explorative scenari…
Anticipating climate futures in a 1.5 °C era
The anticipatory governance of sustainability transformations
Anticipation methods and tools are increasingly used to try to imagine and govern transformations towards more sustainable futures across different policy domains and sectors. But there is a lack of research into the steering effects of anticipation on present-day governance choices, especially in the face of urgently needed sustainability transformations. This paper seeks to understand how different perspectives on anticipatory governance connec…
Four approaches to anticipatory climate governance
In times of accelerating earth system transformations and their potentially disruptive societal consequences, imagining and governing the future is now a core challenge for sustainability research and practice. Much social science and sustainability science scholarship increasingly engages with the future. There is, however, a lack of scrutiny of how the future is envisioned in these literatures, and with what implications for governance in the p…
Seeds of good anthropocenes
Scenario development helps people think about a broad variety of possible futures; however, the global environmental change community has thus far developed few positive scenarios for the future of the planet and humanity. Those that have been developed tend to focus on the role of a few common, large-scale external drivers, such as technology or environmental policy, even though pathways of positive change are often driven by surprising or botto…
Linking regional stakeholder scenarios and shared socioeconomic pathways
The climate change research community's shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) are a set of alternative global development scenarios focused on mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. To use these scenarios as a global context that is relevant for policy guidance at regional and national levels, they have to be connected to an exploration of drivers and challenges informed by regional expertise. In this paper, we present scenarios for West …
Transformative spaces in the making
Creating a just and sustainable planet will require not only small changes, but also systemic transformations in how humans relate to the planet and to each other, i.e., social–ecological transformations. We suggest there is a need for collaborative environments where experimentation with new configurations of social–ecological systems can occur, and we refer to these as transformative spaces. In this paper, we seek a better understanding of how …
Stepping into futures
Strengthening foresight for governance of social-ecological systems
In recent decades, foresight has been connected to various disciplines that engage with complex societal problems, leading to specific interpretations of foresight. We offer an interdisciplinary perspective on foresight's increasing use for governance of social-ecological systems (SES). We seek to strengthen the use of foresight in this domain by bridging to insights from other disciplines that can help overcome its limitations. Participatory for…
Exploring future changes in smallholder farming systems by linking socio-economic scenarios with regional and household models
New frontiers in futures games
In the last decade, games have grown into a dominant and highly diverse form of media, characterized by a number of transformations in the game sector that offer new opportunities for games in a futures context. These developments include changes in the cultural presence, the production and dissemination of games, which in turn have led to changes in their content and forms. This paper investigates to what extend such game sector developments hav…
Imagining transformative futures
Hebinck, A., J. M. Vervoort, P. Hebinck, L. Rutting, and F. Galli. 2018. Imagining transformative futures: participatory foresight for food systems change. Ecology and Society 23(2):16. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10054-230216
Choosing diverse sets of plausible scenarios in multidimensional exploratory futures techniques
Multispecies sustainability
Non-technical summary The sustainability concept seeks to balance how present and future generations of humans meet their needs. But because nature is viewed only as a resource, sustainability fails to recognize that humans and other living beings depend on each other for their well-being. We therefore argue that true sustainability can only be achieved if the interdependent needs of all species of current and future generations are met, and prop…
Is anticipatory governance opening up or closing down future possibilities? Findings from diverse contexts in the Global South
There is an urgent need to understand how anticipation processes such as scenario planning impact governance choices in the present. However, little empirical research has been done to analyze how anticipation processes frame possibilities for action. This paper investigates how assumptions about the future open up or close down anticipatory governance actions in a large number of climate-focused anticipation processes. We focused on four Global …
Exploring farmer preference shaping in international agricultural climate change adaptation regimes
Future sustainability and images
Sustainable agrifood systems for a post-growth world
Disruptive seeds
Over the last 2 decades, it has become increasingly evident that incremental adaptation to global environmental challenges—particularly climate change—no longer suffices. To make matters worse, systemic problems such as social inequity and unsustainable use of resources prove to be persistent. These challenges call for, such is the rationale, significant and radical systemic changes that challenge incumbent structures. Remarkably, scholarship on …
Not just playing
Simulation games are increasingly popular tools for opening up future imaginaries, especially in the arena of sustainability policy-making and decision support. However, there is a lack of understanding regarding the potential power of games in anticipatory governance. We argue that the utility of simulation games in support of anticipatory climate governance can be greatly increased when game processes are consciously designed to impact present …
New pathways for governing food system transformations
Mangnus, A. C., J. M. Vervoort, S. R. McGreevy, K. Ota, C. D. D. Rupprecht, M. Oga, and M. Kobayashi. 2019. New pathways for governing food system transformations: a pluralistic practice-based futures approach using visioning, back-casting, and serious gaming. Ecology and Society 24(4):2. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11014-240402
Evaluating Swiss pollen productivity estimates using a simulation approach
Future sustainability and images
Stepping into futures
Exploring Dimensions, Scales, and Cross-scale Dynamics from the Perspectives of Change Agents in Social-ecological Systems
Vervoort, J. M., L. Rutting, K. Kok, F. L. P. Hermans, T. Veldkamp, A. K. Bregt, and R. van Lammeren. 2012. Exploring dimensions, scales, and cross-scale dynamics from the perspectives of change agents in social–ecological systems. Ecology and Society 17(4): 24. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-05098-170424
Visualizing Stakeholder Perspectives for Reflection and Dialogue on Scale Dynamics in Social–Ecological Systems
An understanding among societal actors of how social-ecological systems interact across multiple levels and scales contributes to better governance of those systems. This paper introduces a tool, Scale Perspectives, developed to help societal actors share their perspectives on issues of social-ecological systems governance in a multilevel framework. A first version showed that participants in a local and European case study associated a diverse r…
Exploring future changes in smallholder farming systems by linking socio-economic scenarios with regional and household models
Challenges to scenario-guided adaptive action on food security under climate change
This paper examines the development and use of scenarios as an approach to guide action in multi-level, multi-actor adaptation contexts such as food security under climate change. Three challenges are highlighted: (1) ensuring the appropriate scope for action; (2) moving beyond intervention-based decision guidance; and (3) developing long-term shared capacity for strategic planning. To overcome these challenges we have applied explorative scenari…
A sense of change
Vervoort, J. M., D. H. Keuskamp, K. Kok, R. van Lammeren, T. Stolk, T. (A.) Veldkamp, J. Rekveld, R. Schelfhout, B. Teklenburg, A. Cavalheiro Borges, S. Jánoškóva, W. Wits, N. Assmann, E. Abdi Dezfouli, K. Cunningham, B. Nordeman, and H. Rowlands. 2014. A sense of change: media designers and artists communicating about complexity in social-ecological systems. Ecology and Society 19(3): 10. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-06613-190310
Exploring farmer preference shaping in international agricultural climate change adaptation regimes
Scenarios and the art of worldmaking
Bright spots
The scale, rate, and intensity of humans’ environmental impact has engendered broad discussion about how to find plausible pathways of development that hold the most promise for fostering a better future in the Anthropocene. However, the dominance of dystopian visions of irreversible environmental degradation and societal collapse, along with overly optimistic utopias and business‐as‐usual scenarios that lack insight and innovation, frustrate pro…
Choosing diverse sets of plausible scenarios in multidimensional exploratory futures techniques
Exploring the governance and politics of transformations towards sustainability
The notion of 'transformations towards sustainability' takes an increasingly central position in global sustainability research and policy discourse in recent years. Governance and politics are central to understanding and analysing transformations towards sustainability. However, despite receiving growing attention in recent years, the governance and politics aspects of transformations remain arguably under-developed in the global sustainability…
Linking regional stakeholder scenarios and shared socioeconomic pathways
The climate change research community's shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) are a set of alternative global development scenarios focused on mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. To use these scenarios as a global context that is relevant for policy guidance at regional and national levels, they have to be connected to an exploration of drivers and challenges informed by regional expertise. In this paper, we present scenarios for West …
Harnessing the plurality of actor frames in social-ecological systems
This article uses a case study on ecological sanitation as a basis for lessons on identifying and harnessing the plurality of actor frames in social-ecological systems, thereby moving beyond the advocacy positions often taken by implementing NGOs. The study aimed to explore how perspectives between the implementing agencies of an ecological sanitation project in rural Bolivia and the owners of a urine-diverting dry toilet (UDDT) relate to each ot…
Anticipating climate futures in a 1.5 °C era
Imagining transformative futures
Hebinck, A., J. M. Vervoort, P. Hebinck, L. Rutting, and F. Galli. 2018. Imagining transformative futures: participatory foresight for food systems change. Ecology and Society 23(2):16. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10054-230216
Transformative spaces in the making
Creating a just and sustainable planet will require not only small changes, but also systemic transformations in how humans relate to the planet and to each other, i.e., social–ecological transformations. We suggest there is a need for collaborative environments where experimentation with new configurations of social–ecological systems can occur, and we refer to these as transformative spaces. In this paper, we seek a better understanding of how …
New frontiers in futures games
In the last decade, games have grown into a dominant and highly diverse form of media, characterized by a number of transformations in the game sector that offer new opportunities for games in a futures context. These developments include changes in the cultural presence, the production and dissemination of games, which in turn have led to changes in their content and forms. This paper investigates to what extend such game sector developments hav…
Seeds of good anthropocenes
Scenario development helps people think about a broad variety of possible futures; however, the global environmental change community has thus far developed few positive scenarios for the future of the planet and humanity. Those that have been developed tend to focus on the role of a few common, large-scale external drivers, such as technology or environmental policy, even though pathways of positive change are often driven by surprising or botto…
New directions in earth system governance research
The Earth System Governance project is a global research alliance that explores novel, effective governance mechanisms to cope with the current transitions in the biogeochemical systems of the planet. A decade after its inception, this article offers an overview of the project's new research framework (which is built upon a review of existing earth system governance research), the goal of which is to continue to stimulate a pluralistic, vibrant a…
New pathways for governing food system transformations
Mangnus, A. C., J. M. Vervoort, S. R. McGreevy, K. Ota, C. D. D. Rupprecht, M. Oga, and M. Kobayashi. 2019. New pathways for governing food system transformations: a pluralistic practice-based futures approach using visioning, back-casting, and serious gaming. Ecology and Society 24(4):2. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11014-240402
Innovation can accelerate the transition towards a sustainable food system
Four approaches to anticipatory climate governance
In times of accelerating earth system transformations and their potentially disruptive societal consequences, imagining and governing the future is now a core challenge for sustainability research and practice. Much social science and sustainability science scholarship increasingly engages with the future. There is, however, a lack of scrutiny of how the future is envisioned in these literatures, and with what implications for governance in the p…
Multispecies sustainability
Non-technical summary The sustainability concept seeks to balance how present and future generations of humans meet their needs. But because nature is viewed only as a resource, sustainability fails to recognize that humans and other living beings depend on each other for their well-being. We therefore argue that true sustainability can only be achieved if the interdependent needs of all species of current and future generations are met, and prop…
Sociology (30 works) · Political science (24 works) · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance (22 works) · Computer Science (21 works) · Economics (21 works) · Futures contract (21 works) · Ecology (20 works) · Business (18 works) · Sustainability (16 works) · Geography (15 works)