Ecological Speculations-Narratives for Shifting Landscapes

Abstract

In the face of planetary crisis and shifting ecological realities, new narrative forms are needed to reframe how we imagine, relate to, and co-inhabit more-than-human worlds. This paper introduces Ecological Speculation—a discursive and practice-based methodology that integrates ecological thinking with speculative design to explore futures from a planetary, more-than-human perspective. Taking inspiration from Alexander von Humboldt’s idea of Weltbeschreibung—the idea to represent the universe as a coherent whole—the paper asks what new narrative formats we need to describe the ecological futures we are entangled in. Building on deep ecology and relational ontology, it proposes a narrative turn: from recounting the world “around us” to imagining ourselves “within” it. This shift is articulated through the concept of the Anthropogenic Paradox—the contradictory position of humanity as both a driver of ecological change and a subject to its consequences. Grounded in the author’s own design practice, the article reflects on two projects, First Encounters (2021) and Turning the Ecological Gears (2022), as case studies for an emerging methodology that connects speculative design with anticipatory ecology. Central to this is the Cascade of Ecological Momentum, a narrative framework that transposes the logic of ecological interdependencies into a storytelling structure. The paper contributes to the discourse of Environmental Futures by advancing a methodology that positions Ecological Speculations as a tool of imagining futures beyond linear prediction. Positioned within posthuman and postnatural thought, it responds to the “crisis of imagination” and proposes speculation as a tool for navigating uncertainty and fostering coexistence in a world of shifting ecologies. In practice, it contributes by advancing immersive exhibitions as ways of engaging with climate complexity through embodied forms of knowledge production.