Creating alternative future trajectories for carbon farming through a relational lens: pathways towards transformative social-ecological change in the European Union

This paper investigates how futures thinking and relational thinking may expand practices and strategies in agriculture that aim for sustainability. Using carbon farming as a case where relational thinking is brought into conversation with futures thinking, we explore how imaginaries of sustainability transformations can be further expanded to include ways of knowing, being, and doing that imagine more radical, relational, and ethical futures. Based on the analysis of a diverse empirical material including European Union reports, focus group discussions, and workshops with carbon farming stakeholders in Sweden using the futures method Causal Layered Analysis, this paper offers a critical relational lens for approaching and evaluating strategies and practices that aim for sustainability transformations in agricultural systems.