Evolving practices in environmental scenarios: a new scenario typology

Abstract

A new approach to scenarios focused on environmental concerns, changes and challenges,i.e. so-called ‘environmental scenarios’, is necessary if global environmental changes are tobe more effectively appreciated and addressed through sustained and collaborative action.On the basis of a comparison of previous approaches to global environmental scenarios anda review of existing scenario typologies, we propose a new scenario typology to help guidescenario-based interventions. This typology makes explicit the types of and/or theapproaches to knowledge (‘the epistemologies’) which underpin a scenario approach.Drawing on previous environmental scenario projects, we distinguish and describe two maintypes in this new typology: ‘problem-focused’ and ‘actor-centric’. This leads in turn to oursuggestion for a third type, which we call ‘RIMA’—‘reflexive interventionist or multi-agentbased’. This approach to scenarios emphasizes the importance of the involvement ofdifferent epistemologies in a scenario-based process of action learning in the public interest.We suggest that, by combining the epistemologies apparent in the previous two types, thisapproach can create a more effective bridge between longer-term thinking and moreimmediate actions. Our description is aimed at scenario practitioners in general, as well asthose who work with (environmental) scenarios that address global challenges.