Towards local-parallel scenarios for climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability

Abstract

Scenarios are used in climate change research to explore potential impacts, assess vulnerability, and identify adaptation options. In developing scenarios, however, there is a challenge in moving between global, national, and local scales in a way that connects complex adaptive systems in meaningful ways for stakeholders. Some emulate the global parallel scenario framework of Representative Concentration Pathways, Shared Socio-economic Pathways, and Shared Policy Assumptions, collecting and refining expert data and projections into relatively complex scenarios for specific regions. However, such approaches can be expensive, time-consuming, and privilege expert biophysical knowledge. Others use participatory approaches, working with local people to co-create scenarios based on experiential knowledge, risk perception, and community aspirations. While useful, these highly localized scenarios are often unable to account for linkages and feedbacks between national and international processes. Here we seek to overcome some of these challenges through a combination of elements from the global scenario architecture, and locally specific data that bridge a range of social issues, including political debates, land use, and socio-economic inequalities. We illustrate the approach through a case study of the West Coast, New Zealand, which shows that meaningful climate change scenarios that are credible, legitimate, and relevant can be used to open up material discussions. Our methodology provides a robust process that connects international best practice to local contexts and communicates climate change scenarios through accessible textual and visual boundary objects. The results provide a basis for further process refinement and application elsewhere, highlighting key methodological challenges and opportunities.