In May 2023, under the auspices of the Forum on Foresight for Sustainable Finance, OECD and Agence Française de Développement (AFD), 25 finance and foresight professionals from all over the world are taking part in a series of creative foresight workshops, co-facilitated by three designers and Sci Fi writers (Ketty Steward, Nadia Alter, Tim Reutemann), to collectively invent alternative futures of/with climate finance.
“Finance can be a powerful trigger for just and sustainable change, contributing to alignment of short-term interests and actions with longer-term common goals. However, while finance can be part of the solution, it also is part of the problem. Despite encouraging evolutions, today, only a fraction of financial capital and flows can be considered as climate and SDG-compatible.
How could things be different? How would a truly sustainable financial system look like?
This change is not a technical fix. The obstacles are not just around us, but also within us, in our ways of thinking and of doing things. The change we need is systemic, which requires us to also think of how different the world will be in the future. This is precisely what Science Fiction does. Sci Fi encourages us to suspend disbelief about change and make leaps of imagination. Which is what we need to imagine radical, systemic changes.”
Ketty Steward
Born in 1976 in Martinique, Ketty Steward is clinical psychologist and a writer, with more than 40 science-fiction short stories published as well as poetry and stories outside the Sci Fi genre. Ketty Steward also gives conferences and courses, and has coordinated special issues of science-fiction magazines.
Nadia Alter
Swedish-Sudanese-Ethiopian Designer, engineer & entrepreneur. Currently building ClimateGains, a fintech solution for last mile climate climate solutions and their funders. Nadia Co-founded the Science Fiction Economics lab (scifiecon.org) as well as Edgeryders- the collective Intelligence Company (Edgeryders.org). Her work has been featured in Stanford Social Innovation Review, L’echo, La Repubblica, The New Yorker, Wired, Dazed, The Guardian, the Nation…
Tim Reutemann
Dr. Tim Reutemann is a researcher, practitioner and author on the intersection of climate justice and digital governance. He has rotated through various institutional roles in climate finance and carbon markets, leading to his current balancing act between UNDPs Digital Innovation Team and Climate Gains, the fin tech startup he co-founded together with Nadia last year. During a calmer period in his life, Tim published Liquid Reign, a speculative fiction novel set in 2051.
Ketty Steward
Born in 1976 in Martinique, Ketty Steward is clinical psychologist and a writer, with more than 40 science-fiction short stories published as well as poetry and stories outside the Sci Fi genre. Ketty Steward also gives conferences and courses, and has coordinated special issues of science-fiction magazines.
Nadia Alter
Swedish-Sudanese-Ethiopian Designer, engineer & entrepreneur. Currently building ClimateGains, a fintech solution for last mile climate climate solutions and their funders. Nadia Co-founded the Science Fiction Economics lab (scifiecon.org) as well as Edgeryders- the collective Intelligence Company (Edgeryders.org). Her work has been featured in Stanford Social Innovation Review, L’echo, La Repubblica, The New Yorker, Wired, Dazed, The Guardian, the Nation…
Tim Reutemann
Dr. Tim Reutemann is a researcher, practitioner and author on the intersection of climate justice and digital governance. He has rotated through various institutional roles in climate finance and carbon markets, leading to his current balancing act between UNDPs Digital Innovation Team and Climate Gains, the fin tech startup he co-founded together with Nadia last year. During a calmer period in his life, Tim published Liquid Reign, a speculative fiction novel set in 2051.