Speculative Political Ecologies: (re)imagining urban futures of climate extremes

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What role can a speculative political ecology play in (re)imaging urban futures of climate extremes? In recent years, narratives of dystopian futures of climate extremes have proliferated in geosciences, and across the media and creative arts. These anxiety-fueled narratives often generate a sense of resignation and unavoidability, which contributes to foreclosing the possibility of radically different political projects. In this article, we argue that these narratives conceal the coproduction of nature and society and treat nature as the problem, thereby locking futures into dystopic configurations. Political ecology scholarship can contribute to generate a politics of possibility by reconceptualizing the relations that constitute urban futures under climate extremes as socionatural. This, we argue, calls for a more experimental political ecology and new forms of theorizing. To this aim, we develop a speculative political ecological approach grounded on a numerical model that examines the potential of transformative change in the aftermath of extreme flood events in a capitalist city. Analytically, this opens a unique possibility of exploring urban futures beyond current trajectories, and how these alternative futures might transform vulnerability and inequality across urban spaces. From a policy perspective, we lay the foundations for a new generation of models that apprehend the role of power and agency in shaping uneven urban futures of climate extremes. Keywords: Speculative political ecologies, climate change, disasters, transformative change, urban futures R\u00E9sum\u00E9 1 Dr. Maria Rusca, Global Development Institute, The University of Manchester, United Kingdom. Email: [email protected]; Dr. Maurizio Mazzoleni, Institute for Environmental Studies, VU Amsterdam, Netherlands. Email: [email protected]; Dr. Alejandro Barcena, Human Settlement Group, International Institute for Environment and Development; Dept. of Geography, King's College London, United Kingdom. Email: [email protected]; Dr. Elisa Savelli, Dept. of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University and Fellow of the Centre of Natural Hazards and Disaster Science, Sweden. Email: [email protected]; Prof. Gabriele Messori, Dept. of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University; Affiliated Researcher, Dept. of Meteorology, Stockholm University; Fellow of the Centre of Natural Hazards and Disaster Science, Sweden; Fellow of the Bolin Centre for Climate Research, Sweden. Email: [email protected]. Acknowledgements: This research was partly supported by the European Union's H2020 research and innovation programme under European Research Council (ERC) projects HydroSocialExtremes: Uncovering the mutual shaping of hydrological extremes and society Grant No. 771678 & CEN\u00C6, Grant No. 948309. We are grateful for the time and effort taken by the referees and editors in reviewing this article and for the valuable suggestions offered. All errors remain ours. In Dylan Harris and Dan Santos (eds.) 2023. \"Speculative and experimental political ecologies\" Special Section of the Journal of Political Ecology, 30.