全球变化知识资源中心

This article explores the concept of the "future" through the lens of human geography. We examine how space may influence the way we perceive the future and how actors connected to this space will determine or undermine the kind of future to be unfolded. Particularly, we are interested in who influences the ideas of the future that explains how futures could be imagined and constructed. Already, the ideas of the future have utilized concepts of sustainability and climate change to demonstrate how futures may unfold. However, these envisioned futures, which mostly originate from a narrow perspective within a single space-time dimension, can be misleading. The ideas of the future can be challenged because space-time evolution alters the social structure of actors connected to space in multiple dimensions. As space-time evolves, new actors will be introduced, and actors who have been traditionally power-less may emerge to contest and negotiate access to power to provide alternative ideas of the future. Understanding how power is negotiated and contested by these actors in the future is critical to understanding who has the future power.