Summary
Scenarios are stories that portray plausible futures and are designed to systematically explore, create and test possible and/or desirable future conditions. Scenarios are a useful tool, often employed to help with complex management questions (e.g. environmental management, climate change, urban planning, etc.). Trans-disciplinary and collaborative, scenarios can support community-based management. Their advantages are numerous.
They can:
- Combine qualitative and quantitative information;
- Identify uncertainties and knowledge gaps;
- Organise and interpret our thinking about the future;
- Help understand how to create the conditions in which our desired future can be achieved;
- Support decisions which are more likely to implemented successfully and;
- Generate long term policies, strategies and plans.
Scenario building exercises can help people to process and interpret complex knowledge and information associated with multiple issues. Scenarios are a useful tool to create a range of possible futures by combining different elements in different way. In general many scenarios are developed in parallel (e.g. 3 to 4 narrative stories)
In the context of environmental management, a scenario building process involving stakeholders is a way to:
- Better understand longer-term issues;
- Better understand the links between the ecosystems and human activities;
- Create a “common culture” between stakeholders;
- Develop perspectives together on possible futures (exploratory scenarios);
- Compare these perspectives and choose the best one;
- Develop an action plan (normative scenario) and
- Inform decisions and actions that need to be taken to achieve the desired future.
The aims, and consequently the type of scenarios developed, will be different depending on:
- The management question studied;
- The governance and environmental contexts of the case study sites and
- The legitimacy and skills of the case study team (e.g. implementation of measures).
The scenario building process is divided into 5 complementary phases that occur sequentially.
For additional information
Date: 2012-2015
The work presented here has been developed in six case studies of the VALMER Interreg 4A Channel project (2012-2015).
Coordination by M. Philippe, J. Ballé-Béganton and D. Bailly,
based on written contributions from N. Smith, P. Hoskin, W. Dodds, T. Hooper, L. Friedrich, N. Beaumont and C. Grifths