what folk are
SAYING
about us
Possible Futures seems to be a revolutionary platform that is asking the right questions of all of us.
POSSIBLE FUTURES is a collective of folks based in the Global South who are providing support, coursework and guidance around what it really looks like to break out of these colonial patterns, these broken narratives that serve the current sustainable development world, that serve the current mainstream business and industry model - step out of those and see what it looks like to end the harmful models, the extractive, oppressive, One World narrative that is a big part of what is causing the systems to bleed the way they are.
What does it look like to see those, to genuinely understand our shared histories, and then to reorient our way forward?
This is not light-hearted work. There can be mischief, and fun, and play, for sure, and there's room for art and story. What I think POSSIBLE FUTURES is doing is next level. They're saying, yeah, we need all those things, it's great stuff. But unless we also truly address the structural norms that are perpetuating the harm, all the nice little case studies in the world will get crushed by the boot of reality over and over and over. So what does it look like to really step out of that?
I am in awe of what POSSIBLE FUTURES is doing, and I'm very grateful for their dogged determination. Even when it's abrasive and difficult to allow in, I think it is some of the most hopeful, promising and necessary work out there.
I have increasingly spotted cultural patterns within me and my Global North peers and family that are contributing factors to ongoing oppression and systemic inequity. This awareness has allowed me to get comfortable with asking more uncomfortable questions of myself, my wife and friends, something I would have avoided previously engaging with POSSIBLE FUTURES. I have become increasingly comfortable with being uncomfortable in these explorations within myself and within my sector.
The POSSIBLE FUTURES collective makes the connection between colonization and corporate sustainability and once the connection is made it's hard to unsee it.
Devon Artis-White
Vermont, United States of America
Mutualism economy, bio-based manufacturing, climate and racial justice in the built environment
Growing up in Africa, I have a sense of how it feels to watch neocolonial hegemonic abuses of power under the pretty guise of "sustainability". I entered the field of sustainability 10 years ago hoping to change the system from within, but was instead harassed and ejected, ending up feeling hopeless and in despair, that change would never come. Platforms like POSSIBLE FUTURES re-energise me to face my own discomfort and unearth the calling I buried away many years ago.
Katrien Rennemeier
Belgium
Sustainability consultant and advisor,
A Little Better
As a young lad wanting to be a "corporate sustainability strategist" not so long ago, I had zero awareness of the intersection between colonialism and ecology. With [POSSIBLE FUTURES' help], I'm able to see (finally) how the downplaying and outright ignoring of such an intersection is considered useful to the people in power.
Chris Musei-Sequeira
New York, United States of America
Transport expert, environmental and climate justice specialist, CJSC
As the impacts of climate change compound, and calls for justice cry out louder, I am left thinking: whose vision of the world gets fulfilled, and who gets sacrificed in the meantime?
POSSIBLE FUTURES calls for a vision of true liberation and regeneration: resistance to imperialism and colonisation (as critiqued in the IPCC report), the right to self-determination for our peoples to rely on their localised wisdom, and the realisation that multiple knowledges and multiple truths must coexist for an eventful future.
Pok Wei Heng
New Zealand
Climate change consultant, EY
Impact Officer, World Economic Forum
Wake people up out of the Business Model Selfie indulgent world.