Recurring Tree Metaphor

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...)