Coproducing futures: A three-mode heuristic for reflexive practice toward sustainability

Coproduction is commonly used as an action-oriented practice to collaborativelyproduce knowledge for different purposes, including supporting institutionalchange to navigate uncertainty and complexity while enabling pathways to sus-tainable futures. Futures thinking and related tools are also used to conceive newpossibilities or alternative futures and increase collective understanding of changeprocesses. Yet, despite common themes of change, uncertainty, and transforma-tion being strongly related to how we envision and imagine the future, there hasbeen relatively little cross-fertilization between coproduction and futures thinking,specifically, to understand how the explicit use of the latter can facilitate sustain-ability transformations. A fundamental question remains about how to facilitatereflexivity and critical thinking across multiple actors, knowledge systems, andvalues, to shape coherent imaginaries of just and sustainable futures. This articleexplores the potential of a heuristic relating three modes of futures thinking (pre-dictive, anticipatory, and speculative) and their interconnections to strengthenreflexive and future-oriented practices in coproduction. We document insights from coproduction researchers and practitioners applying these three modes offutures thinking in their work and how these support reflexive practices. We dis-cuss gaps and opportunities for more future-oriented coproduction that increasecollective awareness and responsible stewardship of nature. Our heuristic canenable critical thinking from researchers and practitioners involved in the pursuitof sustainability transformations to better integrate science, policy, and commu-nity engagement to identify innovative ways to address power imbalances and amore proactive engagement with the future.