An element of the last post about potential futures resembling branches of a tree must have stuck in my mind over the past week - now in planning a review piece about political ecology I find myself using the same metaphor to describe the role of geography in drawing together thinking about human-environment interaction.
This time the roots of the tree are a range of factors affecting an event or situation - political, socio-cultural, economic, biophysical, leading to the contemporary expression of that event or situation - the trunk of the tree. This event could be any aspect of human-environment interaction - environmental degradation, global climate change, the HIV/AIDS epidemic - all of which are complex issues affected by a range of factors and studied by specialists from a range of disciplines. The suggestion is that geography has the ability to draw together these diverse range of inputs (from a range of different epistemological positions), and to map a range of possible future scenarios - the branches of the tree.
The original idea behind this came from a UNAIDS document entitled Aids in Africa: Three Scenarios to 2025 which uses the tree metaphor as a scenario building and storytelling device - drawing on scenario methodology promoted by the Royal Dutch Shell corporation (not a common source of inspiration for me...)
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The branches of the tree show that there is more than one idea of the future. Many people involve with future studies now say futures studies to express this branching. No scenario is as compelling standing alone as contrasted with others.
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