Chapter 4: The Study of Sustainable Futures

This chapter provides a brief overview of the need to study sustainable futures. It provides an outline of the importance of inventing futures in the third decade of the twenty-first century. It offers conceptual tools for building sustainable futures scenarios and discusses the importance of long-term thinking in business, government and society. This chapter is divided into four sections. Section One presents the opportunities to invent futures and the role of long-term scenarios. Section Two describes the contest for reimagination and the reinvention of futures. Section Three provides the historic background of the evolution of scenario methodology. Section Four offers a concise introduction to futures studies and futurology. Finally, a short preamble on the empirical research on Sustainable Futures for Latin America and the Caribbean considers climate change.