Lab · Foresight: climate, geopolitics, democracy
The Impossible Futures Lab is where young people imagine the world of 2050 and debate it: climate, geopolitics, democracy, crises, everyday life. Workshops, stories and scenarios give everyone the means to think about the future, discuss it and choose the one we want to build.
2050
Four big questions the lab’s young members explore and debate: future geopolitics, the future of democracy, crises that feed each other and everyday life in 2050.
Powers, resources, alliances and routes of the 2050 world: the weight of Africa, Asia and the youth of the Global South.
Citizens’ assemblies, digital tools, disinformation: the institutions that will let us decide together thirty years from now.
Climate, health, food, finance: crises that follow one another, and societies that learn to get through them.
Housing, work, food, learning: the everyday life of a young person in 2050, imagined and told by young people.
In 2023, global CO₂ emissions were 39,023.9 MtCO₂e, a staggering increase from 36,154.3 MtCO₂e in 2020. In the same year, climate catastrophes caused $380 billion worth of economic losses worldwide
Climate change is a transcontinental phenomenon caused by anthropogenic activity, which operates as an augmenting agent for existing disparities within societies and between nations. The impacts of climate change are unequally distributed.
Digital products shape almost every daily choice: from what we buy to how we move, learn and work. Yet, these same technologies contribute to growing energy demand and waste.
The future is decided today, and young people will live in it the longest. The Impossible Futures Lab gives them a space to think about it and talk about it: imagining bold futures, testing them against other viewpoints, debating them across continents and generations.
The Impossible Futures Lab works on four fronts: imagining freely, putting every future up for debate, grounding it in solid sources and turning it into concrete choices for today.
Every hypothesis we keep, even the boldest, rests on data and an explicit method.
Every scenario is first discussed among young people, then with people who find it unrealistic: the debate enriches it and makes it stronger.
A useful future says what needs deciding now to get there.
A future imagined from a single place in the world reproduces the very blind spots it claims to overcome.
Move from occasional output to a reliable annual milestone.
Precisely document how a scenario gets built, so the method can be reproduced by others.
Make sure these bodies read and discuss our scenarios.
Widen the geographic base of every scenario, so it accounts for the widest possible range of realities.
Recruitment
Volunteer roles open until 15 January 2027, remote, for at least one year. Our roles are open to young people: experience can come from a course, an internship or a personal project.
Every output of The Impossible Futures Lab fits into one of YouthShare’s five forms of action.
Research, advocacy, mentorship, international dialogue, foresight: see how The Impossible Futures Lab combines several of these forms of action, alongside the four other labs.
See What we doA scenario to propose, an interest in contributing to the next publication, or simply a wish to join the lab? Write to us.
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