19 Introduction 1 which anticipation processes shape our understanding of the future and implications for actions in the present (Pulver & VanDeveer, 2009; Vervoort & Gupta, 2018). This research makes an important contribution to understanding how the growing number of anticipation processes in different sustainability contexts embed diverse approaches to steering (research questions 1 and 2) and their implications for realizing sustainability transformations (research question 3) and for the opening up or closing down of future possibilities (research question 4). 1.4.3. Governing sustainability transformations Anticipatory governance in the environmental domain is primarily concerned with realizing sustainability transformations (Burch et al., 2019) and connects to a wide array of environmental governance scholarship. Governance research analyzes the ways in which society is or can be steered through people and institutions in new directions to solve societal challenges (Kooiman, 2003; Pierre & Peters, 2000), with environmental governance particularly focusing on environmental problems that require new forms of governing through collective action (Evans, 2012). Environmental governance is thus inherently future-oriented and transformative, in the sense that it focuses on deliberate interventions that help realize a more sustainable future (Driessen et al., 2012). However, anticipatory governance makes the future-orientation in environmental governance scholarship explicit by analyzing the growing role of anticipation in steering environmental futures (Vervoort & Gupta, 2018; Granjou et al., 2017). As such, it is closely linked to literatures on governance for transformations and governance of transformation (Burch et al., 2019; Patterson et al., 2017) and this thesis explains how different ideas of anticipation and transformation connect (chapter 4). Adding a governance lens to anticipation opens up questions about what it means to stretch the time horizons of key governance interventions: the incentives, knowledge, institutions, decision-making and behavior underlying them (Lemos & Agrawal, 2006). Some scholars see anticipation as a strategic tool for decision-making about long-term future uncertainties by developing flexible mechanisms for changing conditions (Quay, 2010, 2015); others point to questions of power in informing decisions about the future (Sova et al., 2015). These debates connect anticipatory governance with environmental politics, particularly issues of the power in visions of the future that challenge the assumption of the neutrality of visions, e.g., future equity (Flegal & Gupta, 2018) and intergenerational justice (Okereke, 2018). Research has also pointed to the role of knowledge and language in constructing the object of governance (Hajer & Versteeg, 2005), such as authoritative assessments that de facto govern environmental futures (Gupta & Möller, 2018). However, the ways in which anticipation steers efforts to realize sustainability transformations have not been comprehensively analyzed. Through the
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