Normative Scenario Backcasting

Normative scenario backcasting inverts the usual direction of futures work: instead of projecting forward from the present to ask what is likely, it starts from an explicit image of a desired future and works backward to construct the path of milestones, conditions, and actions that would lead there. John Robinson introduced the approach in 1990 as a method for people who 'hate to predict,' arguing that when the goal is to assess whether and how a normatively preferred future could be reached, forecasting the probable is the wrong tool. Backcasting instead asks what would have to happen, in what order, for the desired endpoint to come about. Distinct from generic policy backcasting, the normative scenario variant centres on first articulating a rich, value-laden scenario image of the endpoint and then deriving the pathway from it. As Bishop, Hines and Collins note in their survey of scenario techniques, this goal-driven logic makes backcasting a natural partner to scenario methods wherever the aim is not to anticipate the future but to deliberately work toward a chosen one.