Manjana Milkoreit: Expanding the Toolbox of Climate Governance: Facilitating Collective Imagination

Political organizations across various scales are engaged in addressing climate change through the design of policies (e.g., a carbon tax), plans (e.g., Adaptation Plans) and institutions (e.g., the Green Climate Fund), the development of new technologies (e.g., electric vehicles), the creation of scientific knowledge, or the support of new norms and behaviors (e.g., limiting flying or eating vegetarian). This toolbox for climate governance keeps expanding, but is currently missing an important set of instruments: processes that facilitate a community’s or society’s collective imagination of climate futures. Developing social-climatic imaginaries, based on shared values and identities of a political community, is important to provide guidance for transformation processes towards uncertain futures. In this lecture, I will explore why imagining the future matters and look at current efforts of imagination in different political organizations. I will discuss whether some organizations should adopt a new role in climate governance: facilitators of collective imagination.

• Komporozos-Athanasiou, Aris, and MariannaFotaki. "A theory of imagination for organization studies using the work of Cornelius Castoriadis." Organization Studies 36.3 (2015): 321-342.
• Milkoreit,Manjana. "Imaginary politics: Climate change and making the future. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene 5 (2017). https://online.ucpress.edu/elementa/article/doi/10.1525/elementa.249/112449