223 Summary S sectors such as agriculture, tourism and water) in four regions of the global South: West Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central America. The research is based on document analysis, focus groups, and interviews. In these four regions, the co-authors and I find that the majority of the anticipation processes aim to initiate an open dialogue about the scientific uncertainty of climate change and, to a large extent, also focus on the plurality of visions of the future. At the same time, the outcomes of almost all anticipation processes are used to formulate strategic and linearly designed actions in the present that (build capacity to) reduce future risks. It is important here that capacity building is not so much about navigating different possible futures (in line with the plausibility approach), but a capacity for making risk estimates (in line with the probability approach). Such formulation closes down the space for more pluralistic and critical approaches, such as jointly creating a more radically transformative future and questioning power relations in future images. This is partly done for strategic reasons, for example, to adapt the recommendations to existing policy frameworks. Existing policy frameworks are often leading for imagining the future, while it should be the other way around: the knowledge from anticipation processes should shape the policy frameworks. Partly, the closing down of possibilities occurs unconsciously, due to a lack of recognition of these closing-down dynamics, for example in the design of participatory processes. For instance, participants are often asked to imagine their (pluriform) visions of the future and to contribute ideas about the policy consequences, but their input is adapted to policy frameworks without putting such frameworks into question. As such, it seems that anticipation processes are opening up dialogue about the future, but in fact they remain closed. It creates false expectations and does not lead to transforming policies. Furthermore, the co-authors and I observe that in Central America there has been an exceptionally greater effort to approach futures openly and also to question policy frameworks, in particular by formulating ambitions that are more transformative in nature (as in their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions), and to emphasize the need for pluralistic visions of the future. The chapter, therefore, ends with a plea for a revision of the dominant approach to anticipatory governance because this reduces future developments to a technical interpretation and may close down culturally, socially and politically diverse and regionally relevant future worldviews. In the concluding chapter, chapter 6, I answer the research question and reflect on the empirical and conceptual contribution of the research to the literature on anticipatory governance and related fields. The chapter summarizes that the thesis first outlines different approaches to anticipatory governance based on the literature, then empirically examines the dominant dynamics in practice through a large number of anticipation processes in global sustainability contexts, and questions their implications for realizing sustainability transformations. The case studies show that at the four ‘ideal-type’
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