Plantocene 2050
This project proposes a new paradigm for world politics: the Planetocene, which emphasizes that all forms of life – including humankind – are dependent on the well-being of nature. Drawing insights from the Arctic Ocean, which is under increasing human activity due to climate change, technological development, and geopolitical rivalry, the project examines how a planetary just transformation toward the Planetocene could plausibly unfold by 2050.
Coordinator: Arctic Centre, University of Lapland
Budget: 497 572 EUR
Duration: 01.09.2023 - 31.08.2027
Funded by: Research Council of Finland
The project’s novel approach combines International Relations, Sustainability Science, and Futures Studies and produces qualitative scenarios at the intersection of art and science. The project will seek to facilitate “out of the box” thinking about how world politics could look if traditional state-centric political imaginaries were replaced with planetary imaginaries. Further, it will envision how world politics would unfold if planetary justice was established as the guiding norm of the international community – a necessary development to save the Arctic, and the world, from a looming ecological catastrophe.
Methodologically, the project seeks to go beyond traditional IR's ontological and epistemological groundings. The project utilises various research data and qualitative methods, including backcasting-based scenario methodology to achieve this. The research data consists of interviews with local people, international documents and agreements, expert interviews, and survey data gathered with the Delphi method. The material will be analysed with narrative, content, and discourse analysis.
The project seeks to answer the following research question: What kind of reimagining of human-nature relationships could plausibly nourish a planetary just transformation in world politics by 2050? This key question can be broken down into four sub-questions:
What kind of, and whose, collective imaginaries about the relationship between humans and more-than-humans presently organize world politics?
What could a balanced relationship between humans and more-than-humans look like in2050?
How could planetary visions of world politics and governance plausibly be realized by 2050?
How would the key concepts of IR, such as security, power, and agency, be rethought if planetary boundaries were fully addressed in the discipline?