Evolving practices in environmental scenarios: a new scenario typology

By A. Wilkinson, Esther Eidinow. 2008

200 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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 to be more effectively appreciated and addressed through sustained and collaborative action. On the basis of a comparison of previous approaches to global environmental scenarios and a review of existing scenario typologies, we propose a new scenario typology to help guide scenario-based interventions. This typology makes explicit the types of and/or the approaches to knowledge (‘the epistemologies’) which underpin a scenario approach. Drawing on previous environmental scenario projects, we distinguish and describe two main types in this new typology: ‘problem-focused’ and ‘actor-centric’. This leads in turn to our suggestion for a third type, which we call ‘RIMA’—‘reflexive interventionist or multi-agent based’. This approach to scenarios emphasizes the importance of the involvement of different 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, this approach can create a more effective bridge between longer-term thinking and more immediate actions. Our description is aimed at scenario practitioners in general, as well as those who work with (environmental) scenarios that address global challenges.

Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Management Science and Operations Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e9201b8e2c20a74627a27ba68a6027e759a07ffb

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In Global and Planetary Change

1. Mario Herrero
2. P. Kristjanson
3. P. K. Thornton
4. Kasper Kok
5. P. Ericksen
6. A. Wilkinson

In Management Science and Operations Research

1. Kasper Kok
2. P. Ericksen
3. A. Wilkinson

Citations in the corpus

• Exploring future changes in smallholder farming systems by linking socio-economic scenarios with regional and household models (2014, background): “3 The recognition that socio-economic systems are complex and uncertain and may 4 offer widely diverse challenges to smallholders prompts the need for the involvement of 5 stakeholders with long expertise from different sectors, such as policy or the private 6 sector, in the focus region (Wilkinson ”
• Challenges to scenario-guided adaptive action on food security under climate change (2014, background): “This paper presents an effort to tackle these challenges through the development and use of explorative multi-stakeholder scenarios (Wilkinson and Eidinow, 2008) around agriculture and food systems at the sub-continental level in multiple global regions initiated by the CGIAR, a global agricultural…”