Scientists, Donors, and the Politics of Anticipating the Future

Anticipating the future has always been central to population-environment knowledge, activism, and policymaking. As Adams, Murphy, and Clarke note, “Anticipation is not just betting on the future; it is a moral economy in which the future sets the conditions of possibility for action in the present, in which the future is inhabited in the present.”¹ Anticipation is a form of affect; it links the tangible present to the possible future by paving the way for actions that can bring any range of futures into being. For population advocates, the linked futures of climate change and population growth are very much