Participatory Scenario Planning Research Articles

“We don’t have a lot of trees, but by God, do we have a lot of fish”: imagining postcolonial futures for the Nunatsiavut fishing industry

Telling stories can be an empowering exercise, providing important insights into the values and priorities of the storytellers. This article shares stories told during a participatory scenario planning process among Inuit, an Indigenous People of northern Canada, Greenland, and Alaska, USA. This research takes place in Nunatsiavut, a land claim area in Labrador, Canada, to explore how visions provide insights into postcolonial futures for the fishing industry. Beginning in 2019, a group of fisheries stakeholders and managers came together to create a visioning process that would help them to develop consensus around priorities for the industry. Facilitated by university researchers, Inuit in the commercial fishing industry participated in an iterative data-collection process that involved interviews and a workshop. This article shares what was found during the scenario-planning process and position stories of the future within the context of Indigenous sovereignty.

Future ecosystem service provision under land-use change scenarios in southwestern Ethiopia

ABSTRACT Continued pressure and transformation of land-use by humans are key drivers of biodiversity and ecosystem services (ES) loss. To determine the sustainability of possible future land-use practices, it is important to anticipate likely future changes to biodiversity and ES. This can help stakeholders and decision-makers to understand and assess the viability of current development policies and design alternative future pathways. Focusing on a biodiversity hotspot in southwestern Ethiopia, we considered four future land-use scenarios (namely: ‘Gain over grain’, ‘Coffee and conservation’, ‘Mining green gold’ and ‘Food first’ scenarios) that were developed in an earlier project via participatory scenario planning. We modelled and mapped the spatial distribution of six ES (erosion control, carbon storage, coffee production, crop production, livestock feed, and woody-plant richness) for the current landscape and the four scenarios. Our results show that potential ES changes differed strongly across the scenarios. Changes were strongest for land-use scenarios involving large-scale agricultural intensification; and changes were not uniformly distributed across the landscape. Smallholder farmers specializing on cash crops (‘Gain over grain’ scenario) would likely cause little change to ES generation, but major losses in ES would result from expanding either food or coffee production (‘Mining green gold’ and ‘Food first’). Finally, the ‘Coffee and conservation’ scenario appears to be the most sustainable scenario because it would secure diverse ES for the long term. Our findings provide valuable input for decision-makers and stakeholders and could help to identify sustainable land-use options.

Participatory scenario planning as a useful method for transforming ocean conflicts: Insights from a small-scale fishing conflict in São Paulo coast, Brazil

There are several initiatives towards the science-policy interface and the co-production of knowledge, but there is still few methodological and empirically grounded guidance helping scientists to design and implement research that actively facilitate transformative changes in ocean conflicts. In this paper, we explore the potential of the participatory scenario planning tool in the transformation of a conflict case on small-scale fishing in Brazil. We highlight the lessons learned, potential, and challenges of the scenario planning approach for conflict transformation. Despite being an approach widely applied to coastal and marine environmental and management issues, the scenarios methodology has not been explicitly applied in conflict situations, with the parties in dispute, as we did. Our methodological approach consisted of a previous research stage, based on documental analysis, direct observation of meetings and semi-structured interviews, followed by a participatory scenario planning workshop. Our results show that the participatory scenario planning was able to find the common desires as well as the uncertainties that generated doubts, mistrust, and in many moments disagreements among different groups of stakeholders that were in conflict. Previous research and the employment of multiple methods to build the history of the conflict contributed to legitimate researchers' positionality, to know the parties involved and the power dynamics. We raised some questions to advance the understanding of how the participatory scenarios planning contribute to transforming ocean conflicts in a more critical and politicized view.

A framework for participatory scenario planning to guide transitions towards sustainability in mountain social-ecological systems: A case study from the Colombian Andes

Pronounced environmental gradients of tropical mountains result in interconnected social-ecological systems of great cultural and biological diversity and high provision of essential ecosystem services. This intrinsic diversity of mountain social-ecological systems (MtSES) entails great complexity which, coupled with remoteness, vulnerability, and lack of fine-scale data, hampers the adequate planning of transitions towards sustainability and affects the livelihoods of their inhabitants. Based on our experience in a tropical MtSES, here we propose a framework for participatory scenario planning (PSP) that supports local stakeholders to create plausible development pathways while harmonizing top-down planning instruments and securing the provision of ecosystem services (ES). Our framework comprises: (1) screening the study area to understand historical land cover changes and development pathways based on current planning instruments and local knowledge, (2) gathering future visions from MtSES inhabitants based on their wishes, perceived drivers of change, and key ecosystems services, (3) creating a land-cover map using satellite imagery, (4) establishing a baseline with on-field data collection, (5) writing narratives that harmonize those visions with planning instruments and translating them into spatially explicit future scenarios, (6) estimating ecosystems services in each scenario, and (7) refining future scenario narratives by facilitating a dialog where farmers, researchers, and stakeholders discuss contrasting scenario results and their perceived potential impacts. Our PSP framework raises awareness among local stakeholders about land cover changes and their impacts, while generating fine-scale data that is usually lacking for MtSES. Both aspects are important for updating planning instruments and policies in a participatory way taking into account the complexity of each particular MtSES as well as people's perceptions about the future. Our study adds to the existing literature on PSP as it provides a case study in a Andean tropical MtSES. Since each MtSES is unique, we hope this practical example can inspire planning policy schemes to include bottom-up approaches.

Visualizing stakeholders’ willingness for collective action in participatory scenario planning

Participatory scenario planning is a powerful approach to guide diverse stakeholders in creating and reflecting on visions of plausible and desired futures. However, this process requires tools to guide collective action to implement such visions within management agendas. This study develops, applies, and analyzes a novel visual tool within a virtual participatory scenario planning process about the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park (Madrid, Spain). Building on the identification of stakeholders who might engage in scenario strategies, the visual tool guided them in defining tasks to be developed and envisioning their willingness to collaborate in their implementation. We qualitatively analyzed data from recordings, online field observations, a post-survey from the scenario planning process, and a successive policy workshop. Our findings show that the visual tool fosters dialogue between stakeholders to redistribute tasks for working together on needed strategies in the protected area while promoting reflection on their willingness to collaborate as a group to implement them. The visual tool provided graphic outcomes for nine strategies corresponding to pictures of who may or may not be willing to engage in implementing such strategies. We argue that the visual tool is a robust method that can complement participatory scenario planning processes by providing a useful starting point for creating action networks to incorporate the resulting scenario strategies into management agendas. We deliberate on the nature of the visual tool as a boundary object and discuss its role as a decision-support tool. In particular, we reflect on the potential contributions and limitations of the visual tool to four dimensions of participatory conservation governance during participatory scenario planning processes: inclusivity, integration, adaptation, and pluralism. Our study provides a practical orientation to adapt the tool to other contexts and knowledge co-creation processes.

Participatory scenario planning: Participatory research methods for sustainability ‐ toolkit #3

Achieving sustainable and equitable futures requires a sense of what those futures might look like, and how to get there. Participatory scenario planning (PSP) explores diverse future scenarios in a stakeholder-engaged process of knowledge co-production. PSP makes use of different methods to identify relevant stakeholders, create a set of scenarios, and explore ways to connect those future visions to the present.

Governing Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) in a Changing Climate: A Participatory Scenario Planning Approach Applied to Sweden in 2050.

BackgroundAntimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a growing global crisis with long-term and unpredictable health, social and economic impacts, with which climate change is likely to interact. Understanding how to govern AMR amidst evolving climatic changes is critical. Scenario planning offers a suitable approach. By envisioning alternative futures, stakeholders more effectively can identify consequences, anticipate problems, and better determine how to intervene. This study explored future worlds and actions that may successfully address AMR in a changing climate in a high-income country, using Sweden as the case.MethodsWe conducted online scenario-building workshops and interviews with eight experts who explored: (1) how promising interventions (taxation of antimicrobials at point of sale, and infection prevention measures) could each combat AMR in 2050 in Sweden given our changing climate; and (2) actions to take starting in 2030 to ensure success in 2050. Transcripts were thematically analyzed to produce a narrative of participant validated alternative futures.ResultsRecognizing AMR to be a global problem requiring global solutions, participants looked beyond Sweden to construct three alternative futures: (1) “Tax Burn Out” revealed taxation of antimicrobials as a low-impact intervention that creates inequities and thus would fail to address AMR without other interventions, such as infection prevention measures. (2) “Addressing the Basics” identified infection prevention measures as highly impactful at containing AMR in 2050 because they would contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which would be essential to tackling inequities underpinning AMR and climate change, and help to stabilize climate-induced mass migration and conflicts; and (3) ”Siloed Nations” described a movement toward nationalism and protectionism that would derail the “Addressing the Basics” scenario, threatening health and wellbeing of all. Several urgent actions were identified to combat AMR long-term regardless which future un-folds, such as global collaboration, and a holistic approach where AMR and climate change are addressed as interlinked issues.ConclusionOur participatory scenario planning approach enabled participants from different sectors to create shared future visions and identify urgent actions to take that hinge on global collaboration, addressing AMR and climate change together, and achieving the SDGs to combat AMR under a changing climate.

Building consensus and increasing self-efficacy: participatory scenarios as a tool for developing food security solutions in West Africa

Food security in West Africa is threatened by climate change, as well as demographic shifts and land constraints. Communities and policy-makers in the region need to plan for long term sustainability and food security when many conditions are highly uncertain. Participatory scenario planning has been proposed as a tool for building strategic action in the face of uncertainty. Proponents have made claims that this process can generate consensus and self-efficacy for action, but these claims have not been tested empirically. We used two parallel scenario processes in Ghana and Mali, designed with the goal of prioritizing strategic actions for food security, to gather data from participants on their views of the top challenges to food security in their region, the causes of those challenges, and actors who should be implementing solutions. The data indicate that the scenario process did promote consensus among participants on these topics, as well as self- and collective-efficacy to take action, and that these characteristics persisted past the duration of the scenario process. Agreement among local and regional actors around what actions to take to promote food security and belief that they are capable of implementing those actions are key prerequisites for planning under conditions of high uncertainty. Participatory scenario exercises are therefore a useful tool.

Understanding Complex Relationships between Human Well-Being and Land Use Change in Mozambique Using a Multi-Scale Participatory Scenario Planning Process

The path for bringing millions of people out of poverty in Africa is likely to coincide with important changes in land use and land cover (LULC). Envisioning the different possible pathways for agricultural, economic and social development, and their implications for changes in LULC, ecosystem services and society well-being, will improve policy-making. This paper presents a case that uses a multi-scale participatory scenario planning method to facilitate the understanding of the complex interactions between LULC change and the wellbeing of the rural population and their possible future evolution in Mozambique up to 2035. Key drivers of change were identified: the empowerment of civil society, the effective application of legislation and changes in rural technologies (e.g., information and communications technologies and renewable energy sources). Three scenarios were constructed: one characterized by the government promoting large investments; a second scenario characterized by the increase in local community power and public policies to promote small and medium enterprises; and a third, intermediate scenario. All three scenarios highlight qualitative large LULC changes, either driven by large companies or by small and medium scale farmers. The scenarios have different impact in wellbeing and equity, the first one implying a higher rural to urban area migration. The results also show that the effective application of the law can produce different results, from assuring large international investments to assuring the improvement of social services like education, health care and extension services. Successful application of these policies, both for biodiversity and ecosystem services protection, and for the social services needed to improve the well-being of the Mozambican rural population, will have to overcome significant barriers.

Toward Inclusive Landscape Governance in Contested Landscapes: Exploring the Contribution of Participatory Tools in the Upper Suriname River Basin

Nowadays, tropical forest landscapes are commonly characterized by a multitude of interacting institutions and actors with competing land-use interests. In these settings, indigenous and tribal communities are often marginalized in landscape-level decision making. Inclusive landscape governance inherently integrates diverse knowledge systems, including those of indigenous and tribal communities. Increasingly, geo-information tools are recognized as appropriate tools to integrate diverse interests and legitimize the voices, values, and knowledge of indigenous and tribal communities in landscape governance. In this paper, we present the contribution of the integrated application of three participatory geo-information tools to inclusive landscape governance in the Upper Suriname River Basin in Suriname: (i) Participatory 3-Dimensional Modelling, (ii) the Trade-off! game, and (iii) participatory scenario planning. The participatory 3-dimensional modelling enabled easy participation of community members, documentation of traditional, tacit knowledge and social learning. The Trade-off! game stimulated capacity building and understanding of land-use trade-offs. The participatory scenario planning exercise helped landscape actors to reflect on their own and others’ desired futures while building consensus. Our results emphasize the importance of systematically considering tool attributes and key factors, such as facilitation, for participatory geo-information tools to be optimally used and fit with local contexts. The results also show how combining the tools helped to build momentum and led to diverse yet complementary insights, thereby demonstrating the benefits of integrating multiple tools to address inclusive landscape governance issues.

Defining Pathways towards African Ecological Futures

Africa has experienced unprecedented growth across a range of development indices for decades. However, this growth is often at the expense of Africa’s biodiversity and ecosystems, jeopardizing the livelihoods of millions of people depending on the goods and services provided by nature, with broader consequences for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Encouragingly, Africa can still take a more sustainable path. Here, we synthesize the key learnings from the African Ecological Futures project. We report results from a participatory scenario planning process around four collectively-owned scenarios and narratives for the evolution of Africa’s ecological resource base over the next 50 years. These scenarios provided a lens to review pressures on the natural environment, through the drivers, pressures, state, impacts, and responses (DPSIR) framework. Based on the outcomes from each of these steps, we discuss opportunities to reorient Africa’s development trajectories towards a sustainable path. These opportunities fall under the broad categories of “effective natural resource governance”, “strategic planning capabilities”, “investment safeguards and frameworks”, and “new partnership models”. Underpinning all these opportunities are “data, management information, and decision support frameworks”. This work can help inform collaborative action by a broad set of actors with an interest in ensuring a sustainable ecological future for Africa.

Scenario archetypes reveal risks and opportunities for global mountain futures

Mountain social-ecological systems (MtSES) are transforming rapidly due to changes in multiple environmental and socioeconomic drivers. However, the complexity and diversity of MtSES present challenges for local communities, researchers and decision makers seeking to anticipate change and promote action towards sustainable MtSES. Participatory scenario planning can reveal potential futures and their interacting dynamics, while archetype analysis aggregates insights from site-based scenarios. We combined a systematic review of the global MtSES participatory scenarios literature and archetype analysis to identify emergent MtSES archetypal configurations. An initial sample of 1983 rendered 42 articles that contained 142 scenarios within which were 852 ‘futures states’. From these future states within the scenarios, we identified 59 desirable and undesirable futures that were common across studies. These ‘common futures’ were grouped into four clusters that correlated significantly with three social-ecological factors (GDP per capita, income inequality, and mean annual temperature). Using these clusters and their associated significant factors, we derived four MtSES scenario archetypal configurations characterized by similar key adaptation strategies, assumptions, risks, and uncertainties. We called these archetypes: (1) “revitalization through effective institutions and tourism”; (2) “local innovations in smallholder farming and forestry”; (3) “upland depopulation and increased risk of hazards”; and (4) “regulated economic and ecological prosperity”. Results indicate risks to be mitigated, including biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, cultural heritage change, loss of connection to the land, weak leadership, market collapse, upland depopulation, increased landslides, avalanches, mudflows and rock falls, as well as climate variability and change. Transformative opportunities lie in adaptive biodiversity conservation, income diversification, adaptation to market fluxes, improving transport and irrigation infrastructure, high quality tourism and preserving traditional knowledge. Despite the uncertainties arising from global environmental changes, these archetypes support better targeting of evidence-informed actions across scales and sectors in MtSES.

Participatory scenario planning to facilitate human-wildlife coexistence.

Fostering human-wildlife coexistence requires transdisciplinary approaches that integrate multiple sectors, account for complexity and uncertainty, and ensure stakeholder participation. One such approach is participatory scenario planning, but to date, this approach has not been used in human-wildlife contexts. We devised a template for how participatory scenario planning can be applied to identify potential avenues for improving human-wildlife coexistence. We drew on 3 conceptual building blocks, namely the SEEDS framework, the notion of critical uncertainties, and the three-horizons technique. To illustrate the application of the proposed template, we conducted a case study in the Zambezi region of Namibia. We held 5 multistakeholder workshops that involved local people as well as numerous nongovernment and government stakeholders. We identified 14 important wildlife species that generated multiple services and disservices. The subsequent benefits and burdens, in turn, were inequitably distributed among stakeholders. Government actors played particularly influential roles in shaping social-ecological outcomes. We identified 2 critical uncertainties for the future: the nature of governance (fragmented vs. collaborative) and the type of wildlife economy (hunting vs. photography based). Considering these uncertainties resulted in 4 plausible scenarios describing future human-wildlife coexistence. Stakeholders did not agree on a single preferred scenario, but nevertheless agreed on several high-priority strategies. Bridging the remaining gaps among actors will require ongoing deliberation among stakeholders. Navigating the complex challenges posed by living with wildlife requires moving beyond disciplinary approaches. To that end, our template could prove useful in many landscapes around the world.

Applying pedagogical theories to understand learning in participatory scenario planning

Participatory scenario planning (PSP) is widely used by researchers and practitioners working towards social-ecological resilience, with the expectation that it can encourage learning. However, thus far there is a lack of theoretically informed analysis regarding how PSP may support learning in this context. In this paper we present a novel conceptual framework, which highlights how learning can arise through interactions between people with different fields of expertise, based on the ‘Zone of Proximal Development’ together with the concepts of ‘boundary objects,’ and ‘scaffolding.’ We applied this framework to an empirical study of learning in PSP processes that focus on social-ecological resilience. We found that PSP purposively brings different participants into dialogue with each other, and through the process of developing and analysing narratives of possible futures, encourages their exposure to different knowledges. If carefully designed and facilitated, PSP can also stimulate structured, creative thinking about possible futures. This can be usefully understood as enabling participants to ‘enter’ their Zone of Proximal Development and to explore ideas and ways of thinking in which they would not normally engage. Our conceptual framework can guide design and evaluation of other processes that aim to encorage learning. Our study also highlights the importance of studying interactions between different participants in PSP, and of actively facilitating the process of imagining and exploring scenarios.

Participatory scenario planning and framing of social-ecological systems: an analysis of policy formulation processes in Rwanda and Tanzania

Participatory scenario planning and framing of social-ecological systems: an analysis of policy formulation processes in Rwanda and Tanzania

Scenario Planning for Climate Adaptation in Agricultural Systems

Effective climate adaptation in sub-Saharan African agriculture will require coordination across multiple scales of governance. Decision-makers from local to national scales will be tasked with planning under conditions of high uncertainty, often with minimal data. Participatory scenario planning is a method for devising adaptation strategies under high uncertainty, and we hypothesized that it could also be used for identifying systemic, inclusive, and transformative adaptation options at the community scale, and for highlighting opportunities for cross-scalar collaboration. We conducted scenario exercises with two communities in southeastern Nigeria that have experienced increasing flooding and other challenges linked to climate variability. Both communities identified drivers of change that intersect with climate, as well as community-scale actions that would improve adaptation to a range of future scenarios. We found evidence that scenario exercises can stimulate communities to develop transformative approaches to climate adaptation that seek to reduce climate risk by creating new systems and processes. We also found that community-identified priorities for strategic action highlight how larger-scale interventions could coordinate with communities to adapt more effectively. Participatory scenario planning is therefore a potentially important tool for adaptation planning in regions in which future conditions are highly uncertain.

A systematic review of participatory scenario planning to envision mountain social-ecological systems futures

Thorn, J. P. R., J. A. Klein, C. Steger, K. A. Hopping, C. Capitani, C. M. Tucker, A. W. Nolin, R. S. Reid, R. Seidl, V. S. Chitale, and R. Marchant. 2020. A systematic review of participatory scenario planning to envision mountain social-ecological systems futures. Ecology and Society 25(3):6. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-11608-250306

Reconciling food security and biodiversity conservation: participatory scenario planning in southwestern Ethiopia

Reconciling food security and biodiversity conservation: participatory scenario planning in southwestern Ethiopia

The Weatherman

This article explores weather forecasting as an emergent technology of governmentality through a detailed ethnography of the ways in which the relationships between weather and crops are rendered knowable in a two-day “participatory scenario planning” (PSP) workshop in Naromoru in the Central Highlands of Kenya. Farmers were “made into meteorologists” and developed their preparedness for hazards, impacts, opportunities, strategies, and responsibilities within the context of facing El Niño. The ethnography targets seemingly novel ways of preparing farmers for El Niño. I argue that the PSP served two principal functions: (1) to redistribute responsibilities of the farmers themselves by making them into “meteorologists”; and (2) to integrate “scientific expertise” with “local knowledge” to generate public trust in the metrological institutions of the postcolonial predictive state.

Adapting scenarios for climate adaptation: Practitioners’ perspectives on a popular planning method

Scenario planning is a popular decision-support method that is increasingly being applied to climate change adaptation. However, evaluation of scenario planning for adaptation is lacking. In this paper we summarise a science-policy session held at the European Climate Change Adaptation Conference in May 2019, where practitioners explored the strengths and weaknesses of scenario planning for climate adaptation and identified modifications to enhance the method’s utility. Eight case studies spanning three scenario planning types (problem-focused, actor-focused and reflexive-interventionist) from varied socio-cultural contexts were presented by the authors, followed by discussion amongst the 40 participants. Strengths focussed on opportunities provided by scenario planning for stakeholder participation, and raising their awareness about future risks, vulnerability and uncertainty. Participatory scenario planning was most useful for building stakeholder consensus at the local scale (e.g. communities, neighbourhoods) over shorter timeframes (e.g. 20 years). Weaknesses centred on the inability of scenarios to generate quantitative predictions and concrete adaptation solutions. This was partly attributed to practitioners’ limited understanding of stakeholder politics and power dynamics, and the resulting lack of integration of scenario exercises within decision-making processes. Scenarios were also limited by being static, and participatory processes were resource-intensive. Suggested modifications were to develop iterative scenario planning embedded within decision-making cycles. Such ‘transient scenarios’ could absorb system feedbacks and updated information to prioritise adaptation responses, thus actively contributing to ongoing adaptation pathways. Applying monitoring, evaluating and learning would enable reflexive refinement of the method, adapting it to become an agile approach applicable to varied socio-cultural and political contexts.