Climate Foresight 2025

requires climate foresight, anticipatory governance, moving from silos to systems innovations, and rethinking incentive structures (Spitz and Zuin 2021). Specifically, anticipatory governance involves practices that seek to analyze and address uncertainties and their broader implications ex ante by adopting a systems-thinking approach. Establishing proactive governance systems (including through policies and regulations) can in turn drive long-term tra nsforma tional change, not short-term, isolated point solutions (see Spitz and Zuin 2021; Kahane 2018). Inertia and path dependence can cause organizations to avoid taking responsibility for problems or developing solutions. Conflicting short-term interests can frame challenges and responses incompeting fashions, leading to inaction and parochial understandings of complex issues -exacerbating short-termism (Roberts 2000; McHugh et al. 2021; Feduzi et al. 20 22). Be cause of the rapidly changing landscape of climate change and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) oversight, traditional short-termist risk management must be disrupted to enable long-term systems thinking that is conducive with sustainability outcomes (Slaughter 2020). This requires stronger climate foresight in organizations and individuals, especially in the context of complex issues (see Snowden and Boone 2007). Something is complex when i t h as unknown unknowns, multi-source causality, and co-dependent variables (Page 2009). Complexsystems generate emergent properties unexpected at the outset. The whole is not merely different from the sum of its parts - the whole lacks a clear relationship to the parts’ sum (Page 2009; Snowden and Boone 2007). The Role of Voluntary Carbon Markets in the Energy Transition Voluntary Carbon Markets (VCMs) are a growing market-based mechanism to achieve decarbonization by c reating carbon credits via offset methods (SBTi 2024a;SBTi 2024b). VCMs are markets where firms can abate carbon emissions to generate carbon credits for purchase - often by large institutional actors. Purchasers of carbon credits often use them as a form of carbon offset, which supports the net zero agenda of many modern companies (Berg et al. 2021). We consider VCMs to be a complex solution to the energy transition due to their dynamicinterplay between environmenta l, e conomic, social, and cultural dimensions. This interplay makes them subject to scrutiny and mismanagement (Kim et al. 2024). For VCMs to operate with integrity, and to minimize adverse outcomes, correct incentive structures and transparency Climate Foresight: Transforming the Voluntary Carbon Markets, by Roger Spitz & James Balzer 8 © Disruptive Futures Institute, March 2025