Towards deliberative climate and energy foresight (DECENT)

© photo: Aziz Acharki (Unsplash)

The purpose of DECENT is to examine medium and long-term future-oriented governmental decision-making in Finland, with particular focus on the formation and impact of national climate and energy strategy. The research project:

• Identifies and assesses the potential use, non-use and misuse of scenarios and examines scenario-based information of carbon sinks and carbon dioxide emissions in the strategic discussion of climate and energy policy, through cases of national decision-making.
• Examines the present-day mechanisms of creation and intake of futures knowledge in  governmental decision-making focusing on climate and energy strategies. The project investigates the narrative forms, argumentation and types of alternative futures within the policy documents addressing climate and energy policies, with comparison to mainstream media representations.
• Proposes, develops and tests a scenario process that acknowledges different viewpoints to enable fact-based, long-term and systematic strategy work that supports national deliberative decision-making.

The relevance of the project stems from the need to a) make societal decisions more environmentally sound, b) avoid scenario work that has little or potentially detrimental impact, c) incorporate the various needs, values and knowledge bases of stakeholders to the discussion of the future, and d) develop scenario works in order to make them useful in environmental planning and decision making.

The DECENT is based on collaboration between Finnish Futures Research Centre (FFRC), University of Turku;  Natural Resources Institute Finland and Finnish Environment Institute. The project is coordinated by Prof. Petri Tapio (FFRC). The main task of the Finnish Environment Institute is to analyse how future is represented in climate and energy debates of the media.

The research project is funded by the Academy of Finland and it is operational during 2019-2023.

Senior researcher Jari Lyytimäki

Researcher Suvi Vikström