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Geoforum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Towards a future-oriented political ecology of climate change

Maria Rusca
Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, United Kingdom

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Unprecedented climate extremes will likely become a new ‘normal’. Urban political ecology is thus confronted
Climate extremes with the challenge of exploring and theorising emerging geographies of unprecedented climate change. This
Cities raises questions on the extent and ways in which past socionatures can be mobilised for this task. It also urges a
Future-oriented political ecology
critical reflection on what forms of knowledge are needed to meet political ecology’s normative aspirations of
Disasters
Transformative potential
transforming emerging and future socionatures of climate change. I argue that a critique of past and present
socionatures alone is not enough to meet these theoretical and normative goals. The main objective of this paper,
therefore, is to lay the foundations of a future-oriented urban political ecology that approaches geographies of
climate change more experimentally and speculatively. To this aim, I examine the explanatory potential of two
(of many possible) experiments, collaboratively developed by a team of hydrologists, climatologists, and political
ecologists. Both experiments depart from past and present logics of colonial violence, racial capitalism, and
climate change, but explore competing notions of unprecedented futures. The first experiment consists of a
critical-realist scenario approach that examines how power and variability in the exercise of agency might shape
outcomes of future unprecedented climate extremes. The second involves a model that speculatively brings about
a better world in response to climate extremes and lays the foundation of a political ecology of possibility. The
paper thereby serves as a demonstration of how critique can be mobilised to explore and reimagine urban
futures.

1. Introduction regional variability, due to anthropogenic climate change, and are a

From a climate science perspective, ‘unprecedented’ refers to
extreme weather events that are more intense than any other event
recorded in a given location (Rusca et al., 2021a). Over the past decades,
climate scientists and hydrologists have recorded an increasing number
of unprecedented slow- and rapid-onset extreme weather events (Balch
et al., 2020; Blöschl et al., 2019; Field et al., 2012; Marvel et al., 2019;
Seneviratne et al., 2012). These extremes have significant implications
for urban areas, which are suffering from heavy precipitations (Pfahl
et al., 2017) and uniquely severe events like the Millennium Drought in
Australia (2001–2009), and the 2012–2016 drought in California
(Griffin & Anchukaitis, 2014; van Dijk et al., 2013). Cape Town’s
countdown to ‘Day Zero’ (2015–2017) – the day in which the water
utility would run out of water - has drawn public attention globally
(Fallon, 2018). Concurrently, the unprecedented levels of precipitations
of Hurricane Harvey (2017) led to widespread flooding in Houston,
causing 36 fatalities and estimated damages only second to Hurricane
Katrina (2005) in the U.S. history (Blake & Zelinsky, 2018; van Old­
enborgh et al., 2017). These extremes are set to worsen, albeit with
threat to a “safe operating space for humanity” (Rockström et al., 2009,
p. 472). Thus, they raise questions on what societal responses they might
elicit and how they might (re)constitute future socionatural formations
and imaginaries. For Wainwright and Mann (2018, p. 24), these
emerging socionatures mark a historical conjuncture in which the
existing political order is unable (or unwilling) to address challenges
generated by climate change and “the world requires and presumes”
new orders, ideologies and forms of governance. What socionatures,
then, can be expected? A future of renewal and transformation or a
reiteration of the current, deeply regressive, and unequal orders?
The questions above are oriented towards possible futures, which
remain largely unexplored in political ecology. Despite its heterogenous
and eclectic modes of analysis, the field has mostly drawn on a set of
established qualitative methods to develop retrospective critiques of
nature-society relations at multiple scales. More recently, following a
call by Braun (2015a, 2015b) for a more experimental and imaginative
approach to political ecology, work grounded on alternative methods
and conceptual approaches has begun to flourish (see for instance Buck,
2015; Harris, 2021; Whatmore & Landström, 2011). This work

E-mail address: maria.rusca@manchester.ac.uk.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103921
Received 18 November 2022; Received in revised form 17 November 2023; Accepted 27 November 2023
0016-7185/© 2023 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Please cite this article as: Maria Rusca, Geoforum, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103921

M. Rusca
illustrates that experimental political ecologies can take a range of
forms, as the potential of this emerging field lies in the imagination of
the researchers, activists, practitioners, and citizens involved.
The experiments examined in this paper aim to lay the foundations of
a future-oriented political ecology. To set up these experiments, I
collaborated with colleagues from hydrology and climatology, who
routinely engage with research on future climates. Our experiments
bridge political ecology analyses of past climate extremes with future
projections and hydrological data by creatively repurposing scenario-
based approaches and system dynamics models. Although they pre­
serve methodological and epistemological differences, these experi­
ments are more than just a combination of different disciplinary
analyses. Rather, they unlock new research methods and reconfigure
knowledge within political ecology, climatology, and hydrology. On the
one hand, they serve to repoliticise scenario and model-based ap­
proaches and move beyond socially blind and politically naïve expla­
nations of future climates. On the other hand, these experiments lay the
foundation for a future-oriented political ecology that is more attuned to
the materiality of climate change. Indeed, taking seriously the idea of
unprecedented climate extremes also requires engaging with the phys­
ical forces of these events. Thus, drawing on a wide range of disciplinary
perspectives across the natural and critical social sciences (Balch et al.,
2020; Castree et al., 2014; Collard et al., 2018; Raju et al., 2022; Rusca
et al., 2021b), these experiments interpret climate extremes as violent
human-environment interactions, shaped by physical forces and eco­
nomic, political and institutional development trajectories, resulting in
highly uneven outcomes.
The paper proceeds as follows. I first discuss the rationale for
experimental and speculative political ecologies and highlight two key
directions of this field: the orientation towards possible futures as a way
to develop a reparative critique and the commitment to reconfigure the
research process as a way to generate more proactive, creative and
participatory practices of knowledge production. To situate the experi­
ments examined in this paper, I then consider what an interdisciplinary
approach that bridges social and physical sciences can contribute to the
experimental and speculative turn in political ecology. Next, I examine
the two case studies. The first is an experiment that combines retro­
spective political ecology analyses of climate extremes and their uneven
outcomes in cities with climate projections to develop critical-realist
scenarios of societal responses to future unprecedented extremes. The
second leverages theoretical insights from political ecology to inform
system dynamics modelling and reimagine urban futures of climate
extremes. The analysis of the two case studies focuses on three interre­
lated aspects. First, the extent and ways in which power relations are
threaded through the experiments and its findings. Second, how the
tensions between disciplinary perspectives are addressed. Third, what
these approaches add to our understanding of emerging geographies of
unprecedented climate change. Based on these analyses, I conclude by
considering what is to be gained – analytically and politically – from
these experiments and from a future-oriented political ecology.
2. Experimental and Speculative Political Ecologies
2.1. The case for experimental and speculative political ecologies
The recent turn to experimental and speculative political ecologies is
argued on several grounds. First, recent scholarship has raised questions
on the extent to which predominant knowledge practices within politi­
cal ecology work to fulfil the field’s aspirational goals. If political
ecology’s ambition is not only to analyse but also to change the world
“through the melding of theory and political action” (Blomley, 2008, p.
287), can critique meet all the field’s aspirations? Many have argued
that critique might constrain imagination and inspiration and, in turn,
possibilities to reconstitute the world and futures before us (Bennett,
2016; Braun, 2015a; Latour, 2004; Woodyer & Geoghegan, 2013).
Critique, they argue, might leave some disenchanted and overwhelmed,
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thereby obscuring possibilities of other stories and political openings.
Building on this first point, some scholars have argued that critique
might overemphasise the power of capital and become ‘complicit’ to
capitalism by invertedly reinforcing rather than challenging its power.
As aptly illustrated by Bennet (2016, p. 4; see also Gibson-Graham,
1997) “that story has itself contributed to the condition it describes. Its
rhetorical power has real effects”. To challenge disenchanting narratives
that might prevent the emergence of alternative possibilities, Woodyer
& Geoghegan (2013, p. 196) propose “geographical innovation, trans­
forming dulling and deadening apprehension and paralysis into an
affirmative, ‘reparative’ attitude”.
Third, the “experimentalization of life” brought about by the ongoing
struggles of climate and global environmental change in the Anthro­
pocene add momentum to the experimental and speculative turn (Braun,
2015a, p. 112). Humans operate in a context of ecological novelty and
uncertainty, which “pulled the rug out from under notions of timeless
and ordered nature” (Braun, 2015a, p. 107). Hydroclimatic extremes
aptly illustrate this, with many regions experiencing unprecedented
events and numerical projections suggesting this trend will worsen in
the coming years (Balch et al., 2020; Blöschl et al., 2019; Field et al.,
2012; Marvel et al., 2019). Thus, as socionatures become progressively
more complex and uncertain they require experimental and speculative
approaches to apprehend and theorise them.
2.2. Doing speculative and experimental political ecologies
The growing recognition that critique might not be sufficient to meet
the theoretical and normative aspirations of the field has led to an
increased engagement with experimental and speculative approaches in
political ecology. However, what the experimental and speculative
project in political ecology entails and what its analytical and normative
aspirations are, has not been fully articulated. However, experimental
and speculative approaches to political ecology share an orientation
towards possible futures as a way to develop a reparative critique and a
commitment to reconfigure the research process as a way to generate
more proactive, creative, and participatory practices of knowledge
production.
Concerning the first point, much of this emerging body of work has
engaged with the concept of possible future(s) by placing undesired
pasts and presents into engagement with imagined and desirable futures.
The Special Issue “Futures: Imagining Socioecological Transformations”
edited by Braun (2015b) for Annals of the Association of American Ge­
ographers has been path-breaking in exploring the relationship between
experimentation and desired futures of socionatural transformations.
For instance, Kallis and March (2015) have extended political imagi­
nation beyond capitalist logics by exploring the potential of a radical
degrowth project. Degrowth, as the authors suggest, is an aspirational
economic, cultural, and political project that has not yet materialised. As
conventional social science methods are not suitable to examine this
aspirational and future-oriented project, the authors developed an
experimental approach. This involved the analysis of Ursula Le Guin’s
The Dispossessed, which, the authors argue, is a “unique case of a
territorialized degrowth” (Kallis & March 2015, p. 361). Here, science
fiction is creatively mobilised as a way to extend analyses beyond what
is probable and known to what is possible but not (yet) actualised.
Similarly, Collard and colleagues (2015) speculate about the potential of
a world grounded on principles of pluriversality (rather than univer­
sality) and animal autonomy. Their manifesto inspired by peasant
movements and Indigenous thought serves to imagine a hopeful and
alternative trajectory for multispecies abundance. Buck (2015, p. 370),
on the other hand, has examined multiple fragments of a more beautiful
Anthropocene, weaving together alternative visions of futures that are
‘charming’ enough to overcome the hegemonic “imagination of capital”.
Through analyses of emerging lived experiments of alternative human
and more than human connections constructed through practices of
care, altruism and creativity she moves beyond anxiety-fuelled and
M. Rusca
disenchanted imaginaries of the Anthropocene towards a more
enchanting imaginary of the future.
Experimentation around imagined and desirable futures has drawn
on creative arts to elicit future-oriented responses from research par­
ticipants. In one experiment, Willemin and Backhaus (2021) developed
a visual-speculative approach that takes photos of waterscapes as a
starting point for farmers to narrate their relationship to the landscape
and their perception of desirable futures. With the aim of making room
for visions of possible futures that are generally overlooked and over­
ridden by hegemonic ones, Aalders et al. (2020) developed a collabo­
rative comic creation experiment. Here the goal was to make space for
imaginaries other than the hegemonic Kenyan Lamu Port-South Sudan-
Ethiopia-Transport (LAPSSET) project. The researchers set up a work­
shop with residents to engage with their expectations, hopes and
memories of the LAPSSET project. The experiment opened up spaces for
imaginaries that are often made invisible by (beautifully) representing
them in co-produced comics. To conclude, whilst very different in form
and approach, all together these experimental approaches have been
instrumental in making space for both a reparative attitude and alter­
native imaginaries of emerging futures.
Building on the first point, I move to the reconfiguration of the
research process in experimental and speculative political ecologies.
Central to several experiments is the practice of bringing together
different communities within and beyond academia and across different
sectors to redistribute agency and co-produce knowledge. To illustrate,
the creation of collaborative comics (Aalders et al., 2020) discussed
above required a large and diverse research team (a comic author and
playwright; two illustrators and a geographer) and several resident
volunteers. Similarly, with the aim of addressing (rather than critiquing)
climate challenges as interventions, Harris (2021) set up two large
public workshops in which activists, storytellers and scientists came
together to discuss climate change through storytelling. The aim here
was to leverage controversies around climate futures and energy tran­
sitions in Appalachia to co-produce new climate knowledge and con­
sciousness. The reconfiguration of the research process is also central in
Whatmore’s, Lane’s, Landström’s and colleagues (Landström et al.,
2011; Lane et al., 2011; Whatmore, 2013; Whatmore & Landström,
2011) experiment of public engagement in science. Here the aim was to
address (rather than ‘only’ analyse) a flood controversy between resi­
dents, the local government and scientists in Yorskhire. This involved
establishing a Competency Groups (CG) composed by physical and so­
cial scientists, volunteer residents affected by floods and a facilitator. By
leveraging the power of socionarural hazards to “force thought in those
affected”, the Competency Groups provided a platform for research
collaborations ranging from field visits to flood modelling (Whatmore,
2013, p. 33). The authors concluded that redistributing expertise is
essential to develop more grounded and context-sensitive flood risk
management strategies, as well as to generate new technical and polit­
ical possibilities.
As noted by several of these authors, bringing together different
groups of participants and a wider range of expertise means that the
design and implementation of the research project often require a sig­
nificant amount of planning and coordination. Moreover, research
involving experimental methods and a variety of participants and col­
laborations can generate a degree of uncertainty on the outcome of the
research itself. For Harris (2021, p. 336), however, even though results
of his workshops were “raw and unpredictable”, the experiment gener­
ated meaningful conversations on climate change within communities
that are unwilling or unlikely to engage on this topic and with one
another. Several participants, the author argues, left the workshop with
renewed ideas about climate change and an enhanced climate con­
sciousness. In this light, these experimental approaches have animated
the field, not only by expanding ways of knowing and doing political
ecology, but also by generating spaces of possibilities for change. Thus,
they demonstrate that by engaging nature-society relations more pro­
actively (Harris, 2021) and by creating different forms of collaborative
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spaces “new possibilities for politics might emerge along with new po­
litical subjectivities” (Braun, 2015b, p. 241).
3. Interdisciplinarity as experimentation
To situate the experiment discussed in this paper, I turn to reflect on
the potential of an interdisciplinary experimental political ecology that
crosses social and natural sciences. This demands both retracing UPE’s
engagement with bio-physical sciences within its wider intellectual and
political project, as well as reflecting on future directions.
Urban political ecology scholarship has taken an ambivalent position
towards the biophysical sciences. On the one hand, there is a growing
body of political ecology research that draws on a variety of concepts
and methods from the bio-physical sciences and that has engaged in
collaborative work with hydrologist, water engineers, climatologists and
soil scientists to advance urban and environmental research (Bhatta­
charyya, 2018; Cousins & Newell, 2015; Demaria & Schindler, 2016;
Landström et al., 2011; Lane et al., 2011; McClintock, 2015; Meehan
et al., 2020; Rusca et al., 2017; Rusca et al., 2021b; Tiwale et al., 2018;
Whatmore, 2013). For political ecologists, the aim of these collabora­
tions is to strategically mobilize research and methods from these fields
for critique and emancipatory politics (Rusca & Di Baldassarre, 2019).
On the other hand, political ecology studies have been and remain
critical and vary of these fields. As an example, political ecologists have
critiqued the global environmental research agenda for generating
“depoliticizing ontologies” of the environment, perpetuating techno­
cratic solutions and promoting post-political imaginaries that constrain
political possibilities for action (Castree et al., 2014; Ernstson &
Swyngedouw, 2018; Lövbrand et al., 2015; Swyngedouw, 2014;
Swyngedouw & Ernstson, 2018, p. 3). Robbins (2015) has described this
ambivalent position towards the natural sciences as experimental and
strategic. Political ecology, he argues, draws on methods from and de­
velops alliances with bio-physical sciences, whilst remaining critical of
these fields. It is this capacity to reinvent itself through the language and
methods of other fields, he concludes, that explains the longevity of
political ecology.
Despite these strengths, the future of urban political ecology – its
ability to continue innovating, taking new directions, and adapting to
rapidly changing urban worlds – must be continuously remade. In a
recent intervention, Mathew Gandy has offered a critical and timely
perspective on this. Urban political ecology, he argues, must renew its
intellectual project to avoid marginalization from emerging debates on
the urban environment within the fields (among others) of urban ecol­
ogy and global environmental change (Gandy, 2022). Returning to the
old question of the ‘ecology’ in political ecology (Walker, 2005), he
considers the explanatory potential of mobilizing the concept of ‘ecol­
ogy’ as “more than a conceptual leitmotif” and the implications of
engaging with different sub-fields of the biophysical sciences (Gandy,
2022, p. 25). In a similar vein, the growing field of critical physical
geography has called for a “sustained integration of physical and critical
human geography” to advance theorizations of socionatures at multiple
scales (Lave et al., 2014, p. 2; McClintock, 2015).
Building on these new directions in political ecology scholarship, the
experimental and speculative turn opens new possibilities for a critical
reconfiguration of the field towards more interdisciplinary and ecolog­
ically informed approaches. As noted above, collaborative research is
ubiquitous in experimental political ecology. These collaborations work
best when they value different forms of knowledges and draw on diverse
intellectual resources to reconfigure knowledge of each participant. The
Competency Group discussed above (Landström et al., 2011; Lane et al.,
2011; Whatmore, 2013; Whatmore & Landström, 2011) aptly illustrate
how bringing together different groups of participants within and
beyond academia generates a unique learning process within the col­
lective involved. Landström et al. (2011 p. 1618) describe this as a dy­
namic process of “‘dissociations’ and ‘attachments’”, to refer to the
“active distancing from previously dominant defining connections and
M. Rusca
the forming of new relationships that become constitutive of agency in
relation to the matter of concern”. The experiments examined in this
paper are situated within this knowledge project. As further discussed
below, they are grounded on novel conceptual-methodological ap­
proaches that allow to explore research questions on urban futures
beyond what would be achievable within disciplinary boundaries.
4. Critical realist scenarios of unprecedented climate extremes
This experiment aimed to develop critical realist scenarios of societal
responses to future unprecedented climate extremes in cities. Future-
oriented examinations of nature-society relations have largely focused
on aspirational futures, generating imaginaries of desirable socionatural
configurations (see for instance Braun, 2015b; Buck, 2015). At the same
time, there is also a need to capture critical realist futures to explore the
dialectic relation between current geographies of climate change and
the future of the climate crisis under persisting logics of colonialism,
patriarchy, and racial capitalism. From a political perspective, antici­
pating possible socionatural formations can serve to prepare for and
resist these emerging undesirable futures (Bluwstein and De Rosa, this
issue).
As a critical research field concerned with the power and economic
relations that drive and shape climate and environmental change, po­
litical ecology has combined historical and discourse analysis, ethnog­
raphy, qualitative interviews and, occasionally, soil analysis and other
quantitative methods to theorise past and present human-environment
relations. An engagement with the materiality and future implications
of unprecedented climate extremes, therefore, presents new methodo­
logical and conceptual challenges for the field.
In this experiment, I seek to address these challenges by collabo­
rating with colleagues from fields that routinely engage with future
climates. This has the immediate advantage of the exposure to a set of
future-oriented methodological approaches to examine the materiality
of future climates and to identify plausible areas at risk of experiencing
unprecedented extreme events. Whilst this is crucial for developing
future-oriented research on unprecedented climate extremes in cities,
scenarios continue to be based on a simplified understanding of societal
processes and fail to provide power sensitive accounts of these
Fig. 1. Schematic of the Social-Environmental Extremes Scenarios Approach (SEEA). The approach synergistically combines: Event-based analyses of climate
projections (Pillar 1); Empirical analyses of the construction of risk, vulnerability, and uneven recovery trajectories from a past climate event in the city selected for
the scenario (Pillar 2); Theoretical explanations from a rich geographical scholarship on the social construction of disaster (Pillar 3); Empirical analyses of the
construction of risk, vulnerability, and uneven recovery trajectories from a past climate event in a city that has experienced an event of greater magnitude and that is
locally unprecedented (Pillar 4).
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phenomena (Garb et al., 2008; O’Neill et al., 2020; Wiebe et al., 2018).
In line with what has been argued for environmental research more
broadly (see for instance Castree et al., 2014; Swyngedouw, 2014),
scenarios grounded in depoliticised analyses generate reductionist in­
terpretations of socio-climatic future and perpetuate technocratic solu­
tions that reproduce rather than challenge systemic inequalities (Rusca
et al., 2021b).
In this experiment, we repoliticised scenarios of future unprece­
dented extremes by developing an interdisciplinary approach that
combines political ecology analyses and climate projections. We termed
this novel approach Social-Environmental Extremes Scenarios Approach
(SEEA) (Rusca et al., 2021a). From a climate science perspective, the
SEEA is grounded on a shift from a probabilistic to an event-based
approach (see also Shepherd et al., 2018). Recalibrating climate ana­
lyses from forecasting regional weather patterns to exploring how an
extreme event might unfold in a specific location generates climate
scenarios that are context-specific and that can be placed into engage­
ment with political ecological analyses of the drivers and uneven out­
comes of unprecedented climate extremes. In this way, our scenario
works as a boundary object that bridges analytical approaches from
political ecology and climatology, as well as social and natural worlds of
climate change (see also Garb et al., 2008).
We thus move from depoliticised scenarios solely based on climate
information to an interdisciplinary approach that largely rests on po­
litical ecology critique rather than on quantitative data and probabilistic
analyses (Fig. 1). Climate projections are used to identify a city that is
likely to experience an unprecedented event in the near future, and to
explore plausible characteristics of that future hazards (Pillar 1). How­
ever, the core of the scenario is grounded on context specific analyses of
the construction of risk, vulnerability, and uneven recovery trajectories
from a past climate event (Pillars 2–4). Specifically, Pillar 2 examines
how differential agency, choreographies of power and economic visions
shaped uneven outcomes of and differential recovery from a past
extreme event in the city for which the scenario is developed. This pillar
is essential to develop a scenario that is context-specific and historically
informed. At the same time, only focusing on past events in the city for
which a scenario is developed does not provide sufficient insights to
explore impacts of future unprecedented extremes in that same location.
M. Rusca
Although the past always matters in relation to possible futures, the
emergence of unprecedented climate extremes implies that futures
might increasingly differ from past socionatures (Braun, 2015b).
Apprehending unprecedented futures, therefore, calls for new, creative
ways of mobilising past socionatures.
To account for uncertainty and the unprecedented nature of future
extremes our scenario integrates the analysis of past events in the
selected city with two additional components. The first concerns theo­
retical explanations of nested societal responses to and experiences of
unprecedented extremes in cities (Pillar 3). These are identified through
a narrative literature review of Political Ecology, Critical Disaster
Studies, and Environmental Justice scholarship on three interrelated
aspects: how multiple dimensions of inequality intersect in the con­
struction of differential vulnerability to and recovery from extreme
events; the relationship between vulnerability and broader patterns of
uneven development; and the transformative potential triggered by an
extreme event and the related socio-political crisis. Moreover, the sce­
nario draws on a second case study of a city that has experienced an
extreme event of greater magnitude than the city selected for the sce­
nario (Pillar 4). Here too the analysis focuses on how risk is constructed,
as well as on the uneven geographies of vulnerability and recovery
trajectories from the unprecedented extreme event. The aim is to iden­
tify patterns and dynamics that might also emerge, albeit in a contex­
tually specific form, in the location for which the scenario is developed if
it were to experience an extreme event of greater magnitude. In this
way, we seek to creatively build on theoretical insights and empirical
examinations of past socionatures to examine plausible futures.
The potential of this approach can be illustrated through the scenario
of an unprecedented drought in Maputo, Mozambique (Fig. 2) (Rusca
et al., 2023a). Maputo is a relevant case study, as hydroclimatic pro­
jections suggest that a future unprecedented drought is plausible (Pillar
1). The scenario rests on an empirical analysis of the power relations that
engendered spatially and socially variegated outcomes of the
2015–2018 drought in Maputo (Pillar 2). This is complemented by
theoretical explanations of nested societal responses to and experiences
of urban droughts (Pillar 3). Last, the 2015–2017 drought in Cape Town,
is mobilised to identify possible power dynamics and societal responses
Fig. 2. Illustration of a scenario of unprecedented drought in Maputo, Mozambique. The scenario synergistically combines: Event-based analyses of climate pro­
jections of Southern Africa (Pillar 1); Empirical analyses of the construction of risk, vulnerability of, and uneven recovery trajectories from the 2015–2018 drought in
Maputo (Pillar 2) Theoretical explanations from a rich geographical scholarship on the social construction of drought crises and uneven disaster outcomes (Pillar 3).
Empirical analyses of the construction of risk, vulnerability of, and uneven recovery trajectories from the 2015–2017 drought in Cape Town (Pillar 4).
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that have not occurred in Maputo but are plausible in the event of an
unprecedented drought in the city.
From the empirical analysis of the 2015–2018 drought in Maputo
(Pillar 2) it can be inferred that an unprecedented drought will likely
exacerbate multiple dimensions of urban inequalities. During the
drought, the water rationing measures introduced by the water utility
affected low-income residents at the margins of the water supply
network significantly more than affluent ones residing in the city centre.
At the margins, water shortages were significantly longer and intense,
with cascading effects on wellbeing, health, and gender inequalities.
Women experienced greater psychological and physical stress, as well as
loss of income and higher risks of violence for having to collect water
from distant locations or at night. Water shortages in conjunction with
flash floods, inadequate on-site sanitation, and the practice of cutting
pipes to access water from better served areas generated localised
cholera outbreaks. Moreover, in Mozambique, cholera is often described
as the disease of dirty hands (doença das mãos sujas), stigmatising those
who contract it and implicitly placing the responsibility of being healthy
on households. The scenario infers that these dynamics are likely to be
reproduced in the event of an unprecedented drought. This is because
uneven water circulation is inscribed in Maputo’s infrastructural design,
which prioritizes the city center and works to mediate the impacts of
extreme droughts for higher income groups. Whilst the water utility
frames this as a technical problem, the strategic location of water dis­
tribution centres reveals the politics of the network design. For instance,
as noted by the former president of the water supply regulatory body
(CRA), “we put water in the city centre and distribute it towards the pe­
riphery. We need to put [distribution centres] in the periphery and the city
centre, to avoid that the periphery only gets the water that the city centre does
not consume”. Similarly, exclusionary developments and racial segrega­
tion during colonial times, subsequent housing and planning policies, as
well as the neoliberalisation of on-site sanitation have generated uneven
risks of waterborne diseases across the city. Thus, these service config­
urations are likely to continue to generate localised public health crises
in the event of a future unprecedented drought.
The analysis of the drought in Maputo is then integrated with theo­
retical explanations and findings from Cape Town. As an example,
M. Rusca
during the 2016–2018 drought, Cape Town increased the water tariff to
reduce the city’s water consumption. However, these measures ended up
reducing the already limited water consumption of lower-income
households, rather than significantly changing water use patterns of
higher income groups. The risk of water demand management measures
exacerbating inequalities in access also emerged from the theoretical
synthesis (Pillar 3, see for instance Kaika, 2003; Millington, 2018; Satur
& Lindsay, 2020). We thus concluded that this is a plausible pathway in
the event of a future drought in Maputo. Similarly, the post-crisis
roadmap of Cape Town focused on fast-tracking the development of
additional water storage infrastructure to augment the city’s supply by
300 ML/day. This, in turn, perpetuated unsustainable consumption by
urban elites. The scenario foresees that this dynamic might also unfold in
Maputo. Importantly, this assumption is not just grounded on Cape
Town’s response to the drought. Rather, it draws on the response of the
Mozambican government to the 2016–2018 drought in Maputo. Here,
water conservation measures were limited to public campaigns rather
than targeted sanctioned restrictions. Moreover, the drought was
discursively framed as natural, thereby placing large infrastructure
development at the centre of the government’s drought management
vision. Whilst limited capital availability has delayed these plans, it is
plausible that a future unprecedented drought might revive these ini­
tiatives. Concurrently, theoretical explanations suggest that develop­
ment lending to finance water infrastructures is likely to lead to utility
indebtedness (Pillar 3,see for instance Bakker, 2013; Furlong, 2020), as
pre-paid metres, cost recovery mechanisms, disconnections for non-
paying users, are introduced as a debt repayment strategy. Our sce­
nario therefore infers that whilst benefitting for-profit development
enterprises augmenting water resources might further exacerbate in­
equalities in water access if issues of equity, distribution and sustain­
ability continue to be overlooked.
To conclude, the SEEA can contribute to advance political ecology
scholarship by extending critique to emerging and future socionatures of
climate change. It develops impact focused examination of how and
where intensifying extreme weather events might deepen urban vul­
nerabilities and inequalities rooted in racial capitalism, patriarchy,
environmental injustices, and colonial legacies. In this way, it provides
future-oriented insights on how human and non-human processes of
climate change might coevolve under current development and eco­
nomic logics. Second, this approach leverages strengths of and accom­
modates differences between disciplinary perspectives involved in this
experiment. Methodologically, we draw on and creatively repurpose an
approach commonly used in climate science to generate politically
informed scenarios of future climates. Social scientists have argued that
interdisciplinary collaborations often develop in asymmetrical relations,
in which social sciences – and, I argue, especially critical social sciences -
are placed in a “end-of-pipe” (Lowe et al., 2013, p. 208) or “service” role
(Viseu, 2015, p. 291). Our experiment did not reproduce these dy­
namics. On the contrary, the SEEA is firmly grounded in critical social
sciences, which inform three of its four research Pillars. Last, this
approach also carries significant policy implications. By centring pro­
cesses of exclusionary development and selective (dis)investment pri­
orities, racial capitalism and colonial legacies in our scenario, this
approach contributes to generate insights on future climates that are
more attuned to question of power and climate justice. Only by ac­
counting for these dimensions, as we do with the SEEA, it is possible to
apprehend urban futures of unprecedented climate change and to pro­
vide actionable insights for transformative policy responses and
pathways.
5. (Re)imagining climate changed futures through system
dynamics modelling
This experiment aimed to break from past and present socionatural
configurations of colonial violence and racial capitalism and to
reimagine urban futures of climate change through a system dynamics
6
Geoforum xxx (xxxx) xxx
model. As noted by Braun (2015b) and Gibson-Graham (2006), gener­
ating a politics of possibility and imagining alternative futures can be
challenging for geographers formed within a field grounded on critique.
Indeed, “critique is in political ecology’s DNA” and has served to unravel
the political economy of environmental degradation and climate change
at multiple scales and in different geographical contexts (Braun, 2015a,
p. 103). At the same time, this critical stance might have prevented the
emergence of what could be termed a “political ecology of possibility”
that extends the possible and reimagines emerging futures of unprece­
dented climate change (Rusca et al., 2023b, p. 581).
This experiment consisted in exploring the potential of system dy­
namics modelling to provide a methodological avenue for reimagining
urban futures. In climate and hydrological research, this method is
generally used to explore hypotheses on the interplay between society,
hydrology and climate change, rather than for predictive purposes
(Mazzoleni et al., 2021). System dynamic models, therefore, can work to
articulate different futures of unprecedented climate change in cities
and support the generation of what Stengers has termed a “thought
experiment” (2018, p. 30). For Stengers, thought experiments are a
mode of thinking that places greater emphasis on extending the possible,
rather than on focusing on the probable. The aim is not to generate new
facts, but to destabilise hegemonic narratives to open up new possibil­
ities and worlds (Stengers, 2018). Similarly, our modelled observations
about the transformative potential of unprecedented climate change in
cities are speculative but “consider plausible future possibilities latent in
current socionatural configurations” (Rusca et al., 2023b, p. 598).
In approaching this experiment, we carefully considered the limita­
tions of system dynamics modelling and how to address them. For
instance, political ecologists have been critical about the depoliticised
knowledge these models generate (Bouleau, 2014; Budds, 2009; Harris,
2022). They have argued that models reproduce, rather than challenge,
existing power structures and injustices. This is largely because models’
assumptions tend to oversimplify social processes and to overlook social
heterogeneity, differential agency and the choreographies of power that
shape water governance processes (Rusca and Mazzoleni, forthcoming).
For instance, in her careful analysis of a hydrogeological model for the
La Lingua valley in Chile, Budds (Rusca et al., 2023a notes how the
model assumptions framed the allocation of additional water rights as a
technical-hydrogeological and administrative challenge, overlooking
power dynamics in the region. As a result, the allocation of water rights
favoured commercial over peasant farmers, and economic growth over
sustainable development.
These concerns have also been raised from within the hydrological
community. As aptly illustrated by Lane (2014, p. 927), “decisions over
how the world is modelled may transform the world”. Models, he argues,
are only as good as the assumptions they make about human behaviour.
Similarly, drawing on STS, Beck and Krueger (2016, p. 639) argued that
hydrological models may reproduce “authoritative representations of
dominant perceptions of the world”. In doing so, the authors note,
models may preconfigure some future possibilities and foreclose others.
Yet, it is precisely on this critical premise that our modelling experiment
is grounded: if models have “moral agency” (Beck & Krueger, 2016, p.
639) and are a world-making practice, then they can also be mobilised to
proliferate rather than to foreclose possibilities for transformative
change. In line with this premise, we developed a system dynamics
model that explores the intersection of future climate risk in the forms of
floods and transformative change in a city governed by pro-growth
logics.
Power relations are threaded through the model in several ways.
First, whilst models tend to assume economic growth as a leverage point
to address poverty, unemployment and urban deterioration (see
Meadows, 1999 for a critique), this model recognises the costs of growth
and the uneven distribution thereof. To this aim, it considers a hypo­
thetical city governed by pro-growth policies and characterised by un­
even development across urban spaces. Second, the model accounts for
heterogeneity in society and recognises the existence of conflicting and
M. Rusca Geoforum xxx (xxxx) xxx

contested developmental visions in the city. As noted by Rusca and
Mazzoleni (forthcoming), whilst system dynamics models have largely
overlooked these dimensions, they are well placed to represent actors
with different characteristics, including power differentials and con­
flicting developmental visions and objectives. In other words, it is not
the method per se but the assumptions on which models are built that
obscure how power relations and differential agency shape socionatural
dynamics. In this model, uneven development and heterogeneity are
represented by the one-thousand neighbourhoods the city is composed
of (Fig. 3, Panel a). The variables of well-being, building quality, (un)
employment and damaged housing, as well as different costs/income
ratios are calculated at neighbourhood rather than city scale. The model
then simulates a series of floods of different intensity (Fig. 3, Panel b).
The socio-economic differences allocated to each neighbourhood
determine uneven impacts of floods across neighbourhoods. Thus, these
are also calculated for each neighbourhood separately. Third, drawing
on urban political ecologies and critical disaster studies perspectives
(Cretney, 2019; Cretney, 2017; Gawronski & Olson, 2013; Pelling & Dill,
2010), the model considers that flood related disasters may shift power
relations in the city and, in turn, generate the conditions for trans­
formative change. Before the floods, the model assumes an equal num­
ber of neighbourhoods supporting (Aligned), contesting (Misaligned)
and neutral to (Non-Aligned) the government’s policies. In the after­
math of a flood event, inequalities, marginalisation, and vulnerability
increase, augmenting the number of misaligned neighbourhoods.
Reduced political alignment with the government will change govern­
ment’s policy priorities from pro-growth to a set of transformative pol­
icies, which we termed Building back better, Social protection,
Affordable housing and Flood infrastructures (Fig. 3, Panel c). Further­
more, the model assumes that these transformative policies exist in
competition with capitalist logics. To reflect this, transformative policies
are always implemented in combination with pro-growth ones. The
degree of misalignment in the city determines whether progressive or
pro-growth policies are prioritized: the greater the misalignment with
the government, the more transformative policies are prioritised.
The equations link the variables in the model and, ultimately,
generate data on the socionatural dynamics of the city over a period of
two-hundred years. At any given time, the value of a variable (e.g., well-
being, unemployment) is the outcome of the modelled dynamics dis­
cussed above. Thus, the model allows to speculate about different policy
scenarios and development pathways, generating insights on their im­
plications for vulnerability and distribution of flood risk over time. To
illustrate, the model results show that the most effective policy in
reducing inequality and increasing well-being is Affordable housing,
because of its direct influence on the income/costs ratio. Concurrently,
results suggest that none of the policies significantly addresses unem­
ployment levels, which showed negligible variation across the policies
tested.
At the same time, exploring these complex dynamics required a de­
gree of simplification of urban socionatures and of the social relations
represented in the model. Some aspects that political ecology critique
would consider as distinct and central elements of analysis are concealed
in or conflated with other variables. For instance, race is not explicitly
represented, as it overlaps with other socio-economic variables included
in the model. This raises questions about the ability of the model to
account for racialised dimensions of uneven development and adapta­
tion to climate change. Drawing on McKittrick’s Dear Science (2020),
Harris (2022) has warned that by flattening complex processes and
human dynamics, models may end up concealing and reproducing racial
capitalism and injustices. Indeed, modelling as a method requires a
simplification of the system through the elimination of any equations
that might duplicate information generated by other socio-economic
variables. However, this does not prevent from drawing conclusions
on aspects – such as race – that are not explicitly included as variables. I
argue that the model results must be understood as one element of a
wider effort to generate knowledge about climate changed futures. In
other words, the model results should not be interpreted as the final
output of the knowledge production process. These can be qualitatively
interpreted and integrated through political ecology analyses of how
and why vulnerability across neighbourhoods falls asymmetrically along

Fig. 3. Simple Schematic of the Model Narrative. The model takes a city governed by pro-growth logics and characterised by uneven development across the city as
the starting point. Thus, the model assumes that each neighbourhood has different socio-economic characteristics and different levels of vulnerability to floods (Panel
a). The model then assumes that flood events (Panel b) will increase misalignment (i.e., opposition to the government) at neighbourhood level. This leads to greater
political contestation at city level and, in turn, to transformative policies (Panel c). The dotted lines indicate that after long periods without floods or following a
period in which transformative policies significantly reduce inequalities, misalignment (i.e., opposition to the government) decreases at neighbourhood level. In this
phase, pro-growth policies return to be more prominent.

7
M. Rusca
racial, economic, and gendered lines. Thus, thinking “more expansively
about how the human is modeled” (Harris, 2022) also encompasses
engaging with questions on the role and place of models in the knowl­
edge production process. I argue that political ecology perspectives
should be mobilised to inform all phases of the modelling process, from
data collection to the definition of the model assumptions, from vali­
dation to data analysis. This also allows to redistribute power between
modelers and other researchers involved in the modelling process, and
to situate the results generated by the model.
To conclude, the model makes two significant contributions to a
critical understanding of climate changed urban futures. First, it pro­
vides an impact focused analysis of plausible urban futures of climate
change and serves as a methodological tool to decentre capitalism and
speculate about alternative socionatural configurations in the city. The
model shows how, over time, socio-political transformations can
contribute to reduce inequalities and, in turn, vulnerability to floods. In
doing so, it challenges discourses of the unavoidability of capitalism and
lays the foundation of a political ecology of possibility. However, the
model failed to generate a vision of a post-capitalist future. Indeed,
whilst providing a strong statement of the possibilities of transformative
change in response to floods, the model does not achieve the aim of
moving beyond capitalist urban worlds. By tracing the model’s results
backwards, we identified the dynamics that prevented it from reima­
gining urban futures of climate change. In the model, futures deviating
from pro-growth logics are vulnerable to a return to a capitalist system
following a period of reduced floods and/or transformative policies that
reduce inequalities (Fig. 3, dotted lines). In other words, the dynamics
that opened the possibility of transformative change also prevented the
system to move beyond its current configuration. We found that one of
the main constraints of the model is that neighbourhoods are limited to
supporting (Aligned), contesting (Misaligned) and being neutral to
(Non-Aligned) the government’s policies. Yet, as argued by Gibson-
Graham (2006), bringing about post-capitalistic (urban) worlds also
requires developing and sustaining alternative socio-economic projects.
Thus, further developments of this model should account for the
discursive production of post-capitalist visions. This might also entail
engaging with speculative literature - Afrofuturism and other science
fictions (Butler, 2002; Haraway, 2016; Medak-Saltzman, 2017; Stengers,
2018; Thomas, 2014) - that could help shape the contours of a post-
capitalist future.
The second contribution of the model concerns the reconfiguration of
knowledge within the research team. As noted by Landström et al. (2011
p. 1617) computer models open up possibilities of “redistributing
expertise” by unravelling “prevailing alignments of expertise”, reas­
sembling knowledge and developing new connections. For political
ecologists, this modelling experiment opened up a new way of engaging
with possible urban futures, allowing for the emergence of potentialities
latent in critique. For climatologists and modellers, this collaborative
experiment provided an opportunity to bring critical knowledge into
models, thereby changing the focus, language, and world that the model
represents and envisions. By focusing on neighbourhoods most affected
by floods, the model brings to the fore subjects that are often overlooked
and that embody possibilities and desire of reconfiguring the future.
Models that do not acknowledge these subjects are bound to reproduce
the future as linear and unavoidable, entrenching responses to climate
extremes into profit seeking enterprises and urban trajectories into
capitalist and pro-growth logics.
6. Conclusions
In a world of unprecedented climate extremes, political ecologists
are confronted with the challenge of theorising cities in the context of
greater uncertainty and rapid transformations. The theoretical task
brought about by this critical juncture carries significant conceptual,
methodological, and axiological implications. First, it raises questions
about the extent and ways that past socionatures can work as a baseline
8
Geoforum xxx (xxxx) xxx
to examine and apprehend this emerging unprecedented. Second, it
urges a critical reflection on what forms of knowledge are produced and
to what extent these are adequate and sufficient to meet the field’s
normative aspirations. In this paper I have argued that a critique of past
and present socionatures alone is not sufficient to apprehend unprece­
dented urban transformations and to develop a politics of possibility.
Thus, this paper aimed to develop a future-oriented urban political
ecology that approaches geographies of climate change more experi­
mentally and speculatively. I explored the analytical potential of two (of
many possible) approaches, grounded on conceptual-methodological
experimentation and interdisciplinary collaborations with hydrologists
and climatologists. Whilst the first approach aimed to ‘anticipate ca­
tastrophes’ through a scenario-based approach, the second aspired to
bring speculatively about a ‘better world’ through system dynamics
modelling. In the first experiment, the unprecedented is represented by
intensifying extreme weather events, which in turn deepen urban in­
equalities and vulnerabilities rooted in racial capitalism, environmental
injustices, and colonial legacies. In the second experiment, the aim was
to break from the existing socionatural configurations and explore
alternative urban futures. Here the unprecedented is represented by
transformative socio-political changes, ensued by climate change.
By leveraging the field’s “ability to adapt and evolve” whilst keeping
true to its critical and normative foundations (Robbins, 2015, p. 89),
these experiments have animated potentialities latent in critique. I note
three significant contributions, which combine theoretical, methodo­
logical and policy aspects. First, these experiments explore how political
ecology critique can be mobilised for future-oriented and speculative
research and add to our understandings of rapidly changing cities under
anthropogenic climate change. Future-oriented research on global
environmental change firmly remains the domain of climatologist, hy­
drologists, and other subfields within the natural sciences. However,
research solely relying on the physical dimensions of climate change
cannot explain the radically uneven outcomes of unprecedented urban
futures emerged from our scenario-based approach, nor can it conceive
alternative urban futures as developed through our system dynamics
model. Our experiments do not generate high confidence forecasts but
contribute to anticipate major criticalities from a social justice and
sustainability perspective, as well as to reimagine urban futures of
climate change. In relation to this first point, the second contribution of
these experiments is to open up new directions for the field. These ex­
periments are the first building block of a new interdisciplinary field of
research in critical scenario and model-based approaches. Whilst dis­
cussing competing ideas of the future, both experiments resist in­
terpretations of unprecedented climate extremes that frame nature as
the problem and perpetuate technocratic solutions, which foreclose
possibilities of systemic change and alternative urban futures. Last, these
experiments are tactical as much as they are analytical. The conceptual-
methodological innovations presented in this paper bridge the physical
and the critical; genealogies of the present, climate projections and
imaginaries of the future; the local and the global; and qualitative and
quantitative data. In this way, they can contribute to bridge the theo­
retical and the political project in political ecology scholarship.
To conclude, many aspects of the future will always be uncertain and
unpredictable, no matter how many scenarios, models or projections are
developed. However, a future-oriented political ecology can contribute
to the development of emancipatory theory by recasting urban futures as
plural, dialogic and contested. It is only by re-politicising the unprece­
dented futures before us that future policy options can be reconfigured,
and the city can be re-imagined and transformed.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
M. Rusca
Data availability
No data was used for the research described in the article.
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