70 Chapter 3 uncertain and complex, but anticipation processes can assess probable and improbable future risks to inform strategic policy trajectories to reduce future risks. 2. Approach 2: Plausible futures, building capacity, navigating uncertainty Approach 2 draws on perspectives in responsible research and innovation literature and strands of climate policy and governance. The future is conceived to contain irreducible uncertainties that cannot be ranked in any way. Anticipation processes are used to explore diverse plausible future trajectories in a participatory. This allows for building adaptive capacities and preparedness in the present to diagnose and navigate diverse, uncertain futures as their trajectories unfold. 3. Approach 3: Pluralistic futures, mobilization, co-creating new futures Approach 3 is primarily identified in futures studies literature and sustainability sciences. It conceives future as embedding multiple future worlds, that are shaped by interaction and diverse interpretations of the world. Anticipation processes can imagine these plural worlds by mobilizing diverse societal actors to collectively develop pluralistic, actionable pathways to generate a new and (more radically) transformed future. 4. Approach 4: Performative futures, interrogation, political Implications Approach 4 builds on perspectives in science and technology studies, sociology of the future, and critical (global) environmental governance. It envisions futures as imaginaries that are speculative. Anticipation processes can interrogate futures on their performative power, by examining how futures privilege actors, interests and framings to identify their political and material consequences in the present. As a second step are a set of methods and tools of anticipation mapped onto the framework and this shows that some processes align with given approaches, while other methods and tools cross-fertilize with multiple approaches (see figure 3.1, Muiderman et al., 2020). For example, cost-benefit analysis aligns predominantly with approach 1, while simulation modeling can be used as probabilistic assessment (approach 1) and plausibilistic exploration (approach 2). In this paper, I argue that anticipation processes contain often-implicit assumptions about the future that steer actions in the present. Therefore, these processes need to be examined for their political implications. I use the four approaches outlined above as heuristics to understand, describe and explain the conceptions of the future embedded in anticipation processes, their implications for actions to be taken in the present and the ultimate aims intended to be realized. In this framing, methods and tools as infrastructures or spaces of connectivity that facilitate the exchange of ideas (Barry,
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