Environmental risk and collective agency in English climate fiction: A Strategic foresight framework for Saudi sustainability

Abstract

Environmental futures are shaped by decisions about whose vulnerability matters and who possesses the means to respond. This article argues that English climate fiction contributes to strategic foresight by exposing the unequal distribution of collective agency, rather than by predicting environmental events. Combining ecocriticism with narratological analysis, it examines selected passages from Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower, Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future, alongside relevant literary criticism. The comparison distinguishes protective belonging, exclusionary coordination, and institutional representation of distant futures. Its central finding is interpretive: collective action is not inherently sustainable, because coordinated groups can secure their own survival by transferring environmental costs to others. Building on this distinction, the article proposes a framework for Saudi sustainability that connects critical reading, local contextualization, alternative scenario construction, distributive evaluation, and institutional revision. The environmental scope encompasses water, energy, cities, consumption, climate action, and terrestrial ecosystems, aligned with Sustainable Development Goals 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, and 15. The framework is offered for future application in universities and participatory foresight settings; no Saudi reader responses or policy effects are claimed. The contribution lies in treating literary form as a resource for questioning environmental futures while retaining the differences between fictional possibility, scientific evidence, and public decision making.