Making local futures tangible—Synthesizing, downscaling, and visualizing climate change scenarios for participatory capacity building

Shaw, Alison; Sheppard, Stephen R.J.; Burch, Sarah; Flanders, David; Wiek, Arnim; Carmichael, Jeff; Robinson, John; Cohen, Stewart

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2009.04.002

Cited by 254 publications

(181 citation statements)

References 35 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

178

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The project was developed in response to the need for practice-relevant research to build capacity in local governments to understand and address climate vulnerability at the local scale, in this case in Sydney Australia Shaw et al 2009;Moser 2010). The project involved three components.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adapting to climate change through local municipal planning: barriers and challenges

Measham

Preston

Smith

et al. 2011

Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change

596

481

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Municipal planning represents a key avenue for local adaptation, but is subject to recognised constraints. To date, these constraints have focused on simplistic factors such as limited resources and lack of information. In this paper we argue that this focus has obscured a wider set of constraints which need to be acknowledged and addressed if adaptation is likely to advance through municipal planning. Although these recognised constraints are relevant, we argue that what underpins these issues are more fundamental challenges affecting local, placed-based planning by drawing on the related field of community-based environmental planning (CBEP). In considering a wider set of constraints to practical attempts towards adaptation, the paper considers planning based on a case study of three municipalities in Sydney, Australia in 2008. The results demonstrate that climate adaptation was widely accepted as an important issue for planning conducted by local governments. However, it was yet to be embedded in planning practice which retained a strong mitigation bias in relation to climate change. In considering the case study, we draw attention to factors thus far under-acknowledged in the climate adaptation literature. These include leadership, institutional context and competing planning agendas. These factors can serve as constraints or enabling mechanisms for achieving climate adaptation depending upon how they are exploited in any given situation. The paper concludes that, through Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change (2011) 16:889-909

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adapting to climate change through local municipal planning: barriers and challenges

Measham

Preston

Smith

et al. 2011

Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change

596

481

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…With scenario planning, alternative futures are presented to stakeholders based on the policy actions available to them. This has been tried at regional (Spies et al 2007;Shaw 2009;Foster et al 2010) and global (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005;Periera et al 2010) scales. In my opinion, the regional efforts have been successful at conveying policy impacts on environmental services.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

What are the roles of species distribution models in conservation planning?

McShea¹

2014

Envir. Conserv.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The development of species distribution models (SDMs) has benefited biodiversity conservation through their linkage of science to policy and decision processes. These models have evolved to provide scenarios of future landscapes based on known and projected environmental parameters. Whereas there are many caveats to their use, the persuasive power of the models for conveying the consequences of environmental change to the non-science community is immense. Scientists are obliged to convey the uncertainty of the futures depicted in their models, but also to involve the stakeholders who will shape those future conditions. Stakeholders can identify the natural resources they want to sustain, voice their priorities in environmental policy, and articulate the range of solutions they are willing to accept. The creation of alternative futures is an academic exercise if not linked to real viable decisions concerning important resources. SDMs only reach their full potential when they bring together scientists, public stakeholders and policy makers, and are used as an adaptive management tool to understand complex landscapes that are undergoing short- and long-term change.

show abstract

“…The ability of individuals and groups to envision possible, likely, and desirable futures that can guide decisionmaking and direct social change in collectively determined directions is an essential capacity for securing social well-being and prosperity in times of rapid and often unpredictable global change (Shaw et al, 2009;Sheppard et al, 2011;Wiek et al, 2006). W. Patrick McCray argues that managing these transformational shifts requires "creating visions of the future and the technologies that might help shape it."…”

Section: Imagining Transformational Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Imaginary politics: Climate change and making the future

Milkoreit

2017

Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Climate change places major transformational demands on modern societies. Transformations require the capacity to collectively envision and meaningfully debate realistic and desirable futures. Without such a collective imagination capacity and active deliberation processes, societies lack both the motivation for change and guidance for decision-making in a certain direction of change. Recent arguments that science fiction can play a role in societal transformation processes is not yet supported by theory or empirical evidence. Advancing the argument that fiction can support sustainability transformations, this paper makes four contributions. First, building on the imaginary concept, I introduce and define the idea of socio-climatic imaginaries. Second, I develop a theory of imagination as linked cognitive-social processes that enable the creation of collectively shared visions of future states of the world. This theory addresses the dynamics that bridge imagination processes in the individual mind and collective imagining that informs social and political decision-making. Third, emphasizing the political nature of creating and contesting imaginaries in a society, I introduce the role of power and agency in this theory of collective imagination. I argue that both ideational and structural power concepts are relevant for understanding the potential societal influence of climate fiction. Finally, the paper illuminates these different forms of transformational power and agency with two brief case studies: two climate fiction novels. I contrast a dystopian and utopian science fiction novel -Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife (2015) and Kim Stanley Robinson's Green Earth (2015). The two books are very similar in their power/agency profile, but the comparison provides initial insights into the different roles of optimistic and pessimistic future visions.

show abstract

Making local futures tangible—Synthesizing, downscaling, and visualizing climate change scenarios for participatory capacity building

Cited by 254 publications

References 35 publications

Adapting to climate change through local municipal planning: barriers and challenges

Adapting to climate change through local municipal planning: barriers and challenges

What are the roles of species distribution models in conservation planning?

Imaginary politics: Climate change and making the future

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About