Advancing a toolkit of diverse futures approaches for global environmental assessments

Pereira, Laura; Kuiper, Jan J.; Selomane, Odirilwe; Aguiar, Ana Paula Dutra; Asrar, Ghassem; Bennett, Elena M.; Biggs, Reinette; Calvin, Katherine; Hedden, Steve; Hsu, Angel; Jabbour, Jason; King, Nicholas; Köberle, Alexandre C.; Lucas, Paul L.; Nel, Jeanne; Norström, Albert V.; Peterson, Garry D.; Sitas, Nadia; Trisos, Christopher H.; Vuuren, Detlef P. van; Vervoort, Joost; Ward, James

doi:10.1080/26395916.2021.1901783

Cited by 38 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 108 publications

(112 reference statements)

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“…To address this, much research has emphasized the downscaling of global scenarios for use at local levels (Zurek and Henrichs 2007;Mason-D'Croz et al 2016;Palazzo et al 2017). By contrast, relatively little research has been done on methods that upscale local scenarios, practices and perspectives for use in pathways, syntheses and scenarios at the global level (Pereira et al 2021). This is mainly because tremendous diversity exists across different localities and regions (Aguiar et al 2020, Chen et al 2020, and the pace and extent of change at these scales can be highly unpredictable.…”

Section: Integrating Bottom-up Scenarios Into Global Environmental Assessmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Participatory, local approaches can use local narratives and perspectives to offer complementary insights to the GEA process. They can help imagine how local actors might behave in the future; they can consider disruptive change, and they can develop future pathways that are contextualized and practical (Pereira et al 2021). Additionally, pathways based in local knowledge and practices can be based on existing and potentially transformative initiatives as a starting point (Pereira et al 2018).…”

Section: Integrating Bottom-up Scenarios Into Global Environmental Assessmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Grounding global environmental assessments through bottom-up futures based on local practices and perspectives

et al. 2021

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Future scenarios and pathways of potential development trajectories are powerful tools to assist with decision-making to address many sustainability challenges. Such scenarios play a major role in global environmental assessments (GEAs). Currently, however, scenarios in GEAs are mostly developed at the global level by experts and researchers, and locally imagined, bottom-up scenarios do not play a role in such assessments. In this paper, we argue that addressing future sustainability challenges for achieving more equitable development in GEAs requires a more explicit role for bottom-up inspired futures. To this end, this paper employs an innovative global assessment framework for exploring alternative futures that are grounded in local realities and existing practical actions, and that can be appropriately scaled to the required decision-making level. This framework was applied in the context of the UN’s Global Environment Outlook 6, a major example of a GEA. We developed novel methods for synthesizing insights from a wide range of local practices and perspectives into global futures. We collected information from crowdsourcing platforms, outcomes of participatory workshops in different regions of the world, and an assessment of reported regional outlooks. We analysed these according to a framework also used by an integrated assessment model in the same GEA. We conclude that bottom-up approaches to identify and assess transformative solutions that envision future pathways towards greater sustainability significantly strengthen current GEA scenario-development approaches. They provide decision makers with required actionable information based on tangible synergistic solutions that have been tested on the ground. This work has revealed that there are significant opportunities for the integration of bottom-up knowledge and insights into GEAs, to make such assessments more salient and valuable to decision makers.

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Section: Integrating Bottom-up Scenarios Into Global Environmental Assessmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Integrating Bottom-up Scenarios Into Global Environmental Assessmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Grounding global environmental assessments through bottom-up futures based on local practices and perspectives

et al. 2021

Self Cite

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“…They are a strategic planning method developed to make flexible and robust long-term plans in response to complex and uncertain futures. Scenarios were initially developed by mid-nineteenth century European military intelligence specialists, but since the 1960s they have been used in a variety of contexts and scales, including business and trade (Berkhout et al, 2002), conservation and development (Peterson et al, 2003;Daconto and Sherpa, 2010;Pereira et al, 2021), community development (Rawluk and Godber, 2011), and adaptive infrastructure management (Hamilton et al, 2013). Due to the uncertainties surrounding the magnitude and effects of climate change, natural variability, and the extent to which human societies will adopt mitigation and adaptation, scenarios are used extensively to explore the effects of certain decisions on climate change.…”

Section: Nesting the Local In The Globalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The global-scale parallel scenario framework, however, is unable to model the localized effects of climate change (Ebi et al, 2014;O'Neill et al, 2014). Precipitation, timing, and intensity of weather events, the role of local geography, or the specific socio-economic factors that affect local decisions on adaptation and mitigation in regions and communities therefore need to be elaborated on and bounded in other ways (O'Neill et al, 2020;Pereira et al, 2021). At the regional or local level climate scenarios have tended to fall into two broad categories.…”

Section: Nesting the Local In The Globalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, development of these scenarios assumes seamless ways to coordinate and apply the frameworks from the global through the regional and national to the local while accommodating new directions. However, as O'Neill et al (2020, p. 1,079) highlight, "At present, there is no commonly agreed practice regarding methods for downscaling the SSPs" and more detailed Integrated Assessment Models are needed (Pereira et al, 2021;Rosen, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Advancing Relevance, Credibility, Legitimacy, and Effectiveness as a Heuristic for Local-Parallel Scenarios

Cradock-Henry¹,

Frame²

2021

Front. Clim.

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The parallel scenario process provides a framework for developing plausible scenarios of future conditions. Combining greenhouse gas emissions, social and economic trends, and policy responses, it enables researchers and policy makers to consider global-scale interactions, impacts and implications of climate change. Increasingly, researchers are developing extended scenarios, based on this framework, and incorporating them into adaptation planning and decision-making processes at the local level. To enable the identification of possible impacts and assess vulnerability, these local-parallel scenarios must successfully accommodate diverse knowledge systems, multiple values, and competing priorities including both “top down” modeling and “bottom-up” participatory processes. They must link across scales, to account for the ways in which global changes affect and influence decision-making in local places. Due to the growing use of scenarios, there is value in assessing these developments using criteria or, more specifically, heuristics that may be implicitly acknowledged rather than formally monitored and evaluated. In this Perspective, we reflect on various contributions regarding the value of heuristics and propose the adoption of current definitions for Relevance, Credibility, and Legitimacy for guiding local scenario development as the most useful as well as using Effectiveness for evaluation purposes. We summarize the internal trade-offs (personal time, clarity-complexity, speed-quality, push-pull) and the external stressors (equity and the role of science in society) that influence the extent to which heuristics are used as “rules of thumb,” rather than formal assessment. These heuristics may help refine the process of extending the parallel scenario framework to the local and enable cross-case comparisons.

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Using a futures orientation to enable adaptation of protected areas under climate change

Múnera‐Roldán,

Colloff,

van Kerkhoff

et al. 2023

People and Nature

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Protected areas are central for long‐term conservation of biodiversity and can potentially support climate change mitigation. But protected areas are also affected by climate change. Managers and scientists are increasingly facing the difficult task of making decisions under rapid change. Understanding individual and institutional futures considerations for adaptation is fundamental to evaluate whether protected area governance is adequate to anticipate, prepare and respond to climate change. Using mixed qualitative methods, we analysed adaptation narratives extracted from 51 semi‐structured interviews with conservation practitioners and scientists involved in protected area management in Australia, Colombia and South Africa. We applied a multidimensional model to examine how people make sense of the concept of adaptation. The model allowed us to evaluate how different actors perceive and conceptualise the future and their level of awareness of climate change impacts on values of protected areas, as reflected in the expectations and motivations behind adaptation actions. The results show a plurality of adaptation concepts and approaches. The narratives are framed under different governance approaches (top‐down, bottom‐up, participatory) influencing the sense of agency, the rationale for adaptation (adaptation of what and for whom) and the level of acceptance of change. Action time is associated with preferences and actions in response to ecological change, with more proactive action linked with systemic approaches. We propose that examining world views underpinning how individuals and institutions make sense of the concept of adaptation can support future‐oriented conservation practices despite the inherent uncertainty of climate change. The narratives presented here may provide a basis to facilitate deliberations about current practices and identify potential contradictions between individual and collective aspirations for adaptation to create pathways for collective action towards desired futures. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

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Advancing a toolkit of diverse futures approaches for global environmental assessments

Cited by 38 publications

References 108 publications

Grounding global environmental assessments through bottom-up futures based on local practices and perspectives

Grounding global environmental assessments through bottom-up futures based on local practices and perspectives

Advancing Relevance, Credibility, Legitimacy, and Effectiveness as a Heuristic for Local-Parallel Scenarios

Using a futures orientation to enable adaptation of protected areas under climate change

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