Backcasting

The concept of “backcasting” is central to a strategic approach for sustainable development. It is a way of planning in which a successful outcome is imagined in the future, followed by the question: “what do we need to do today to reach that successful outcome.” This is more effective than relying too much on forecasting, which tends to have the effect of presenting a more limited range of options, hence stifling creativity, and more important, it projects the problems of today into the future.

In the context of sustainability, we can imagine an infinite number of scenarios for a sustainable society – and ‘backcasting from scenarios’ can be thought of as a jigsaw puzzle, in which we have a shared picture of where we want to go, and we put the pieces together to get there. However, getting large groups of people to agree on a desired future scenario is often all but impossible. Further, scenarios that are too specific may limit innovation, and distract our minds from the innovative, creative solutions necessary for sustainable development.

So strategic sustainable development relies on ‘backcasting from principles for sustainability’ – which are based in science, and represent something we can all agree on: if these principles are violated, at some point our global society will collapse. To achieve a sustainable society, we know we have to not violate those principles – we don’t know exactly what that society will look like, but we can define success on a principle level. In that way, backcasting from principles is more like chess – we don’t know exactly what success will look like, but we know the principles of checkmate – and we go about playing the game in a strategic ways, always keeping that vision of future success in mind.

Strengths:

(1) Backcasts are not intended to reveal what the future will likely be, but to indicate the relative feasibility and implications of different policy goals.
(2) Suggests the implications of likely futures, chosen not on the basis of their likelihood but on the basis of other criteria defined externally to the analysis (e.g. criteria of social or environmental desirability).
(3) Determines the freedom of action, in a policy sense, with respect to possible futures.

Weaknesses:

(1) No estimate of likelihood is possible.
(2) Does not seek to discover the underlying structural features of the world that would cause the future to come about.

References :

http://strategiesforsustainability.blogspot.com/2006/08/backcasting_26.html

http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/DSE/wcmn203.nsf/LinkView/6B2879E72156CA84CA2570340024AD8AF0262F6E20F33AE3CA2570910006165A