A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF THE BACKCASTING METHOD IN FUTURES STUDIES. The emergence of future consciousness facilitates the anticipations about studying the future. It is driven by survival needs and evolutionary forces and described as the general awareness of time and temporal consciousness of humans' past, present, and future. This could be assumed as the foundational thought behind the art of studying the future. Backcasting method is a futures studies method suitably applicable when conducting research on environmental and sustainability-related issues, most especially when long-term policies are required to be formulated over a given period of related long-term, of about 20-100 years into the future. Welcome to the FUTURE.