From Loss to Transformation? Towards Pluralistic and Politicised Agrarian‐Climate Futures

Understanding how actors perceive and anticipate future states of the world is gaining traction in climate change governance scholarship and related calls for sustainability transformations. However, smallholder farmers, indigenous groups, and local communities, who are expected to bear disproportionate burdens of loss and damage from climate change, remain underrepresented in future‐oriented research. In this paper, we outline key barriers to integrating bottom‐up perspectives on visions of the future in sustainability transformation research and develop a framework to support transdisciplinary research to more productively engage with diverse perspectives on agrarian‐climate futures. The framework is derived from (a) literature on climate change, loss and damage, anticipatory climate governance, and critical agrarian studies; (b) interviews, focus group discussions, and a stakeholder workshop in Ratanakiri province, Cambodia; and (c) an analysis of Cambodian climate change policies. It consists of five dimensions: (i) desirability; (ii) viability; (iii) agency; (iv) heuristics; and (v) responsibility. The framework aims to support researchers in better accounting for complex rural‐agrarian realities and reorienting future framingsfield from loss towards nurturing a “brighter” side of transformation. Integrating diverse rural‐agrarian perspectives on climate futures is critical for fostering and co‐creating more just and locally contingent pathways.