Scenario Planning: a Tool for Conservation in an Uncertain World

By Garry D. Peterson, Graeme Cumming, Stephen R. Carpenter. Conservation Biology, 2003

1,450 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract: Conservation decisions about how, when, and where to act are typically based on our expectations for the future. When the world is highly unpredictable and we are working from a limited range of expectations, however, our expectations will frequently be proved wrong. Scenario planning offers a framework for developing more resilient conservation policies when faced with uncontrollable, irreducible uncertainty. A scenario in this context is an account of a plausible future. Scenario planning consists of using a few contrasting scenarios to explore the uncertainty surrounding the future consequences of a decision. Ideally, scenarios should be constructed by a diverse group of people for a single, stated purpose. Scenario planning can incorporate a variety of quantitative and qualitative information in the decision‐making process. Often, consideration of this diverse information in a systemic way leads to better decisions. Furthermore, the participation of a diverse group of people in a systemic process of collecting, discussing, and analyzing scenarios builds shared understanding. The robustness provided by the consideration of multiple possible futures has served several groups well; we present examples from business, government, and conservation planning that illustrate the value of scenario planning. For conservation, major benefits of using scenario planning are ( 1 ) increased understanding of key uncertainties, ( 2 ) incorporation of alternative perspectives into conservation planning, and ( 3 ) greater resilience of decisions to surprise.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fba4470e8a75325aec3aa8abfdfd16b0687e1952

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Citations in the corpus

Coupled Human and Natural Systems (2007, background): “Scenario building provides a strategy to explicitly consider plausible futures when irreducible uncertainties are present (113).”
Exploring and Evaluating Scenarios for a River Catchment in Northern Australia Using Scenario Development, Multi-criteria Analysis and a Deliberative Process as a Tool for Water Planning (2011, methodology): “Our approach to scenario development was based on the idea of scenarios as “accounts of plausible futures” ( Peterson et al. 2003, p. 358 ).”
Guidelines for the application of IUCN Red List of Ecosystems categories and criteria (2015, background): “Often, the relative likelihood of each future scenario will not be known (Peterson et al., 2003), so the final likelihood of collapse may be expressed as a range of values rather than a single estimate.”
Potential Effects of Climate Change on Treeline Position in the Swedish Mountains (2004, background): “Natural resource managers need to discuss how to adapt to these changes; scenario maps (Peterson et al. 2003) provide a good starting point.”
Companion Modelling: A Participatory Approach to Support Sustainable Development (2010, background): “), which envisage the trajectories towards possible futures of a socio-ecological system (Peterson et al. 2003; Evans et al. 2006).”
Young Scholars Dialogue, part of a Special Feature on Scenarios of global ecosystem services Linking Futures across Scales: a Dialog on Multiscale Scenarios (2007, methodology): “In these cases, theatrical or other creative visual representations are often used to both develop and communicate scenarios across diverse groups, for example, in the Southern African MA scenarios (Biggs et al. 2004) and the Wisconsin northern lakes scenarios (Peterson et al. 2003a).”
Marine seismic surveys and ocean noise: time for coordinated and prudent planning (2015, methodology): “Scenario planning has been used extensively in the commercial sector, is a well-developed tool in business planning (Schoemaker 1995), and is emerging as an essential element in studies of the environment (Peterson et al. 2003a, b) and global change (Bennett et al. 2003).”
Participatory Scenario Planning for Protected Areas Management under the Ecosystem Services Framework: the Doñana Social-Ecological System in Southwestern Spain (2011, background): “…al. 2006), desertification and land degradation (Kok et al. 2004), land-use changes and their impacts (Jessel and Jacobs 2005), regional planning (Peterson et al. 2003a), coastal planning under climate change (Tompkins et al. 2008), conservation-development projects (Sandker et al. 2007),…”
RESILIENCE: THE EMERGENCE OF A PERSPECTIVE FOR SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS ANALYSES (2006, background): “It implies that uncertainty and surprise is part of the game and you need to be prepared for it and learn to live with it (Carpenter and Gunderson, 2001; Berkes et al., 2003; Peterson et al., 2003a; Kinzig et al., 2003).”
The potential of Fuzzy Cognitive Maps for semi-quantitative scenario development, with an example from Brazil (2009, background): “Scenarios are intended to be used predominantly in situations where factors shaping the future are highly uncertain and largely uncontrollable (Peterson et al., 2003).”
The future value of ecosystem services: global scenarios and national implications (2017, background): “Unlike forecasting, projections, and predictions, exploratory scenarios explore plausible rather than probable futures (Peterson et al., 2003).”
Navigating the Back Loop: Fostering Social Innovation and Transformation in Ecosystem Management (2010, methodology): “Although it was not employed in the case studies we examined, we also note that scenario planning may be a particularly productive and nonthreatening means by which dialog processes can be realized (van der Heijden 1996, Peterson et al. 2003, Kahane 2004, Scearce et al. 2004).”
A review of scenario planning (2013, neutral): “[135] X X”