CAMELOT: Governing the long term in an age of non-linear climate risk

The project develops a new interdisciplinary theory of long-term governance capacities and tests how different forms of science–policy–society interaction can strengthen them in practice.

At the center of CAMELOT is a provocative idea: Effective long-term governance depends on imagination.

The concept of imagniation

Governing long-term risks requires more than data and models. It requires the ability to engage with futures that are uncertain, complex, and often unprecedented. CAMELOT approaches this challenge through the concept of imagination.

Imagination is the capacity to construct, interpret, and act on possible futures—linking what we know about the world to what we choose to do next.

In practice, this means being able to:

• envision possible future developments, including unlikely but high-impact events
• interpret their significance for societies, economies, and ecosystems
• connect these futures to present-day decisions and strategies
• Without this capacity, long-term risks remain abstract. With it, they become actionable.

Imagination is not a fixed trait—it can be strengthened through specific methods and processes. CAMELOT investigates how different forms of science–policy–society engagement—such as scenarios, storytelling, and interactive simulations—can enhance the ability of individuals and institutions to think and act long-term.

Theory and practice

CAMELOT contributes to scholarly debates across environmental governance, political science, futures studies, and cognitive science. It offers new theoretical tools for understanding how future-oriented thinking emerges—and how it can be studied empirically across scales.

CAMELOT is equally a project about practice. It develops and tests concrete approaches to improve long-term risk assessment, strengthen future-oriented decision-making, and design more effective science–policy engagement.

The goal is to support institutions in navigating deep uncertainty and long-term risks.

While rooted in climate change, the project addresses a broader challenge of the 21st century: how societies govern risks that are complex, uncertain, and unfold across generations—from biodiversity loss to emerging technologies and Earth system instability.

CAMELOT advances an interdisciplinary theory of long-term governance capacities and tests it through comparative experiments and policy-focused interventions. The project examines how different forms of engagement influence how individuals and institutions understand and act on long-term risks.

Rethinking how we study long-term governance

CAMELOT starts from a simple observation: we do not yet have a coherent way to understand how societies can govern risks that unfold across decades or centuries.

Existing research offers important insights—on institutions, decision-making, risk, and futures—but remains fragmented across disciplines. CAMELOT brings these strands together to develop a systematic, empirically grounded theory of long-term governance capacities. Rather than focusing only on policies or institutions, the project examines the capacities that make long-term governance possible—across individuals, organizations, and systems.

A focus on capacities

We define governance capacities as the abilities that enable actors to achieve governance goals. In the context of long-term challenges, three interdependent dimensions are central:

• Learning and meaning-making about complex, long-term change
• Risk assessment and valuation of uncertain futures
• Agency and planning—the ability to act in the present to drive long term trajectories of change

These capacities operate across scales—from individual policymakers to institutions and governance systems—and shape whether and how decisions are made, justified, and implemented.

Imagination as a core mechanism

A central contribution of CAMELOT is to position imagination as a key enabling capacity. Here, imagination is not understood as speculation or creativity alone. It refers to the interdependent cognitive and social processes through which people construct possible futures, interpret their meaning and desirability, and connect those futures to present decisions.

In this sense, imagination underpins learning, risk perception, and agency. It is a precondition for anticipating and governing long-term change.

This perspective opens new possibilities for studying governance empirically, linking cognitive processes with institutional outcomes.

From theory to empirical testing

CAMELOT combines theory development with two complementary empirical strategies.

1. Comparing engagement methods

The project systematically evaluates how different forms of science–policy–society interaction affect long-term governance capacities.

These include, for example:

• Scientific reports and assessments (like this IPCC assessment report)
• News and media content (like this CarbonBrief explainer of AMOC)
• Participatory scenario processes (like CARE practices in this project)
• Storytelling and climate fiction (like any of these wonderful books)

By comparing these approaches under controlled conditions, CAMELOT identifies which methods—and which specific features of these methods—are most effective in fostering long-term thinking and action.

2. Designing and testing new approaches

Building on these insights, the project develops an innovative science–policy engagement exercise tailored to climate governance. This approach combines scientific models and impact narratives, role-play and interactive learning, and future-oriented storytelling.

The exercise is implemented with policymakers across governance levels—from local to international—to study how such interventions shape their understanding of long-term risks and their capacity to act on them.

Climate tipping points as a test case

All empirical work is anchored in the governance of climate tipping points. These phenomena—such as the potential collapse of major ocean circulation systems—represent a particularly demanding case for governance: they are non-linear and deeply uncertain. Their impacts unfold over long time horizons. They challenge existing policy frameworks. This makes them an ideal lens for studying how long-term governance capacities can be developed and applied in practice.

An iterative and interdisciplinary design

CAMELOT is organized in four closely connected work streams:

• Theory development, building the conceptual framework
• Experimental comparison of engagement methods
• Design and implementation of policy-focused interventions
• Analysis of longer-term impacts and feedback into theory

The project is deliberately iterative: theoretical insights guide empirical work, and empirical findings continuously refine the theory.

What this approach makes possible

By integrating theory, experimentation, and real-world engagement, CAMELOT aims to: advance fundamental understanding of long-term governance and identify effective methods for building future-oriented capacities that can inform the design of governance processes and institutions. 

CAMELOT approaches imagination as a core capacity for governing long-term risks under uncertainty. It investigates how individuals and institutions construct, interpret, and act on possible futures—and how these processes can be strengthened in practice.

Why focus on imagination?

Long-term governance depends on how individuals and institutions relate to the future.

Many of the most consequential risks we face today—such as climate tipping points—cannot be directly observed or predicted with certainty. They must be anticipated, interpreted, and made meaningful. This makes imagination a central, but often overlooked, component of governance.

Beyond creativity: a working definition

In CAMELOT, imagination is understood as a set of interdependent cognitive and social processes that enable people to construct possible future states of the world and interpret their implications (based on knowledge and other inputs), evaluate their desirability and risks (based on values), connect them to present-day decisions (fostering agency). This builds on earlier work defining imagination as “interdependent cognitive and social processes that generate shared understandings of the present and visions of possible future states of the world.” (in Milkoreit 2017, open access).

This perspective treats imagination as a core component of decision-making under uncertainty, rather than as a purely creative or speculative activity.

From individual cognition to collective futures

Imagination operates across scales. At the individual level, it involves the ability to generate mental representations of futures that are not yet real. At the collective level, it shapes shared visions that guide political processes and social change. CAMELOT builds on a theory of imagination as linked cognitive and social processes, connecting individual thinking with collective future-making.

This perspective highlights that (i) imagination is shaped by social context, institutions, and knowledge systems, (ii) shared visions of the future are contested and influenced by power, and (iii) governance depends on how such visions are formed, communicated, and acted upon.

Imagination, learning, risk, and agency

Imagination plays a critical role in three core dimensions of governance: understanding complex, long-term change, perceiving and evaluating risks, acting in the present with future consequences in mind. It is not only about envisioning futures, but about enabling action. As research on imagination and transformation shows, the ability to identify and pursue alternative futures is “an essential component” of responding to major societal challenges (Moore and Milkoreit 2020, open access).

Without such capacities, societies are more likely to experience change as reactive or imposed, rather than shaped deliberately.

Expanding the space of possible futures

A key function of imagination is to expand what is considered possible. However, imagination is also constrained. It tends to draw on existing experiences, institutions, and dominant ways of thinking—making it difficult to envision fundamentally different futures.

This is particularly visible in climate governance, where many proposed solutions remain within existing system logics. Tools such as storytelling, scenarios, and simulation can help address these limits by introducing new perspectives and experiences, making abstract futures more concrete and relatable and enabling emotional and ethical engagement with long-term change. For example, work on climate fiction suggests that narratives can "help people “see themselves… in future, imagined conditions,” making climate change more meaningful and actionable" (Milkoreit 2016).

Implications for governance and policy

Current governance systems often struggle not only because of missing information—but because of limited ways of imagining the future.

Understanding imagination as a governance capacity opens new possibilities for policy and practice. It suggests that effective long-term governance requires not only better data, but also processes that support future-oriented thinking, methods that engage both analytical and experiential forms of understanding and institutional environments that allow alternative futures to be explored.

CAMELOT investigates how different forms of science–policy–society engagement can strengthen these capacities in practice.

CAMELOT works with policymakers and practitioners to strengthen the capacity to anticipate and respond to long-term climate risks. It develops and tests approaches that support future-oriented decision-making in real-world governance contexts.

Governing the long term is becoming unavoidable

Public institutions are increasingly confronted with risks that do not fit existing decision-making frameworks. Climate change is one example—but not the only one. Many of today’s challenges share common features: impacts unfold over decades or longer, uncertainty is high and often irreducible, and decisions made today shape outcomes for future generations. At the same time, policy processes remain under pressure to deliver short-term results. This creates a growing gap between what governance systems are designed to do and what they need to do.

What CAMELOT offers

CAMELOT focuses on strengthening the capacities that enable institutions and decision-makers to engage with long-term risks more effectively. The project develops and tests approaches that can support:

• Anticipating long-term and non-linear risks
• Assessing uncertain futures in a structured way
• Linking long-term considerations to present-day decisions and actions

Rather than producing another set of recommendations, CAMELOT investigates how these capacities can actually be developed in practice.

An innovative engagement approach

The project works with policymakers across governance levels, including national governments, European institutions, and city-level governance. Through targeted engagement processes, participants are invited to explore complex future scenarios and decision challenges related to climate risks. These are not abstract exercises—they are designed to reflect real-world constraints, trade-offs, and uncertainties.

A central element of CAMELOT is the development of a new type of science–policy engagement process. This approach combines state-of-the-art scientific insights on climate risks with interactive and participatory formats, and structured reflections on long-term consequences The aim is to create an environment where participants can engage deeply with complex risk information, test different decision strategies, and reflect on how long-term considerations enter policy processes.

What participants gain

Participation in CAMELOT activities offers:

• new ways of working with long-term risk and uncertainty
• structured tools for future-oriented decision-making
• opportunities to reflect on institutional constraints and opportunities
• exchange with peers across governance levels and contexts

The focus is not on prescribing solutions, but on strengthening the ability to navigate complex futures.

Why climate tipping points?

CAMELOT uses climate tipping points as a focal issue. These risks are particularly relevant for policy because they involve potentially abrupt and irreversible change, challenge standard risk assessment approaches, and require decisions under deep uncertainty. Working on this issue allows participants to engage with the limits of current governance approaches and explore alternative ways of thinking and acting.

While rooted in climate governance, the approaches developed in CAMELOT are relevant to a wider set of policy domains, including biodiversity and ecosystem management, emerging technologies, social security, especially pension systems, infrastructure planning, societal resilience and transformation.

Engagement and collaboration

CAMELOT is designed as a platform for exchange between research and practice. If you are interested in participating in project activities or exploring collaboration, please get in touch.