164 Chapter 6 ‘global foresight industry’ of mainly Global Northern researchers and consultants who operate in the Global South. Their anticipation processes are predominantly probabilistic and plausiblistic in nature. Such processes seek to engage with future uncertainty; the probable futures category tries to reduce scientific uncertainty to make prioritizations on the likelihood of future events and mitigate associated risks, and the plausible futures category sees futures as more uncertain and therefore withholds from ranking or prioritizing them; its purpose is to be prepared to navigate uncertain future trajectories as they emerge. This engagement with uncertainty is important as it tends to shape anticipatory governance actions (more on this below). A few practitioners and one government (Costa Rica, chapter 5) employ pluralistic futures work to break with incremental futures thinking and open up anticipation to more radically different interpretations of the world. None of the practitioners approached future images critically as performative, by using anticipation to deconstruct frames of the future on their political implications (approach 4). Interestingly, quite a few anticipation processes stated to use approach 4 in their interrogation of the implications of actions that follow from anticipation for the purpose of prioritizing policy actions. However, they do not necessarily scrutinize the politics of negotiating futures in the present and thus do not fully engage with approach 4. Like the two dominant conceptions of the future described above (probabilistic and plausiblistic), the actions that are seen to follow from anticipation also align with approaches 1 and 2: strategic linear planning (1) and capacity building (2). Approach 1 and 2, as are identified in the framework, are however not neatly represented but appear in hybrid form. Returning to the previous examples helps to illustrate this hybridity. AMMA-2050 uses probabilistic anticipation to build its capacities for science-based planning to mitigate future risks; this is mainly approach 1 with some approach 2 action. CCAFS uses plausiblistic anticipation to make policies more robust to changing future conditions but was appreciated for providing expert technical advice to the government it was invited by; this is approach 2 that was appreciated as approach 1. In addition, the ultimate aims of anticipatory governance cover the entire spectrum for anticipation practitioners (chapter 4), whereas in policy contexts the ultimate aims align with approaches 1 and 2 (chapters 3 and 5). Practitioners thus create more hybridity by using approaches 1 and 2 for multiple integrated aims. In doing so, the ‘approach 1 and 2 hybrid’ is seen to realize more transformative outcomes (an approach 3 aim) but scrutinizing the political implications of anticipation (an approach 4 aim) is never an end in itself, but rather partially integrated through stakeholder participation.
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