Dale S. Rothman

An updated scenario typology

Scenario analysis has evolved notably in its 50-year history and today there is a large diversity in the scenarios that are developed. Establishing an overview of this diversity would be useful for the further development of scenario method. However, such an overview cannot be generated without the use of a shared understanding of the typical features of scenario development and of the relevant terminology. A broadly shared scenario typology can provide this common understanding but existing typologies do not capture the diversity of scenario types. To this end we propose an updated typology, the presentation of which is the focus of this paper. We also explain how the typology was tested for its robustness in a comparative analysis of recent scenario projects.

Climate Change and Sustainable Development: Towards Dialogue

Abstract The consequences of climate change and sustainable development remaining as separate discourses are explored, both in general and in the Canadian context. One of these consequences is the difference in emission and economic development scenarios generated by the two groups. A second is that strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are designed and assessed in a narrow technical context, divorced from the economic and social forces that underlie them. We identify the need for climate change and sustainable development to be represented in a more explicit manner in each other’s research agendas, and for integrated assessment of climate change to incorporate alternative methodologies that complement global scale integrated assessment models. These methodologies should include greater involvement of stakeholders as partners with researchers in a shared learning experience.

Visions for a sustainable Europe

Abstract In this paper, we argue that one way to address the concept of a sustainable Europe is through the use of scenarios. To that end, we discuss the current state-of-the-art in scenario development, both from a methodological point of view, as well as in terms of a review of existing scenarios that address the notion of sustainable development in a European context. We identify a number of deficiencies in current scenario studies, both in general and for European scenarios in particular. We then discuss the VISIONS project, which aims to develop visions for a sustainable Europe, taking the challenges into account that are derived from the identified weaknesses. Finally, the draft scenarios for Europe as they have been developed in the first year of the VISIONS project are presented.

Searching for the Future of Land : Scenarios from the Local to Global Scale

Much of the scientific research concerned with land-use and land-cover issues is motivated by questions related to global environmental change. For example, will deforestation continue, and if yes, where, and at what rate? How will demographic changes affect future land use and cover? How will economic growth influence future land use and cover? What will be the magnitude of emissions of greenhouse gases related to land use and cover? A common characteristic of these and other issues related to global environmental change is that they stimulate questions not only about past and present changes in land use and cover but also about their future changes (Brouwer and McCarl 2006). The main objective of this chapter is to summarize the state of understanding about the future of land. What are the range and predominant views of this future? What are the views on the global, continental, regional and local levels? We review what (we think) we know and don’t know about the future of land by reviewing published scenarios from the global to local scale. Our aim is to identify the main messages of these scenarios especially relevant to global change issues, and to recommend how scenarios can be improved to better address the outstanding questions about global change and land use/cover.

Enhancing the Relevance of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways for Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability Research

This paper discusses the role and relevance of the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) and the new scenarios that combine SSPs with representative concentration pathways (RCPs) for climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability (IAV) research. It first provides an overview of uses of social–environmental scenarios in IAV studies and identifies the main shortcomings of earlier such scenarios. Second, the paper elaborates on two aspects of the SSPs and new scenarios that would improve their usefulness for IAV studies compared to earlier scenario sets: (i) enhancing their applicability while retaining coherence across spatial scales, and (ii) adding indicators of importance for projecting vulnerability. The paper therefore presents an agenda for future research, recommending that SSPs incorporate not only the standard variables of population and gross domestic product, but also indicators such as income distribution, spatial population, human health and governance.

Scenarios for vulnerability: opportunities and constraints in the context of climate change and disaster risk

Most scientific assessments for climate change adaptation and risk reduction are based on scenarios for climatic change. Scenarios for socio-economic development, particularly in terms of vulnerability and adaptive capacity, are largely lacking. This paper focuses on the utility of socio-economic scenarios for vulnerability, risk and adaptation research. The paper introduces the goals and functions of scenarios in general and reflects on the current global debate around shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs). It examines the options and constraints of scenario methods for risk and vulnerability assessments in the context of climate change and natural hazards. Two case studies are used to contrast the opportunities and current constraints in scenario methods at different scales: the global WorldRiskIndex, based on quantitative data and indicators; and a local participatory scenario development process in Jakarta, showing a qualitative approach. The juxtaposition of a quantitative approach with global data and a qualitative-participatory local approach provides new insights on how different methods and scenario techniques can be applied in vulnerability and risk research.

Projections of global health outcomes from 2005 to 2060 using the International Futures integrated forecasting model

OBJECTIVE To develop an integrated health forecasting model as part of the International Futures (IFs) modelling system. METHODS The IFs model begins with the historical relationships between economic and social development and cause-specific mortality used by the Global Burden of Disease project but builds forecasts from endogenous projections of these drivers by incorporating forward linkages from health outcomes back to inputs like population and economic growth. The hybrid IFs system adds alternative structural formulations for causes not well served by regression models and accounts for changes in proximate health risk factors. Forecasts are made to 2100 but findings are reported to 2060. FINDINGS The base model projects that deaths from communicable diseases (CDs) will decline by 50%, whereas deaths from both non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and injuries will more than double. Considerable cross-national convergence in life expectancy will occur. Climate-induced fluctuations in agricultural yield will cause little excess childhood mortality from CDs, although other climate-health pathways were not explored. An optimistic scenario will produce 39 million fewer deaths in 2060 than a pessimistic one. Our forward linkage model suggests that an optimistic scenario would result in a 20% per cent increase in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, despite one billion additional people. Southern Asia would experience the greatest relative mortality reduction and the largest resulting benefit in per capita GDP. CONCLUSION Long-term, integrated health forecasting helps us understand the links between health and other markers of human progress and offers powerful insight into key points of leverage for future improvements.

Scenario Innovation: Experiences from a European Experimental Garden

The Experimental Garden The Global Context The VISIONS Approach Regional and European Scenarios Integrated Visions

Challenges to adaptation: a fundamental concept for the shared socio-economic pathways and beyond

The framework for the new scenarios being developed for climate research calls for the development of a set of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), which are meant to differ in terms of their challenges to mitigation and challenges to adaptation. In order for the scenario process to fulfill its goals, the research and policy communities need to develop a shared understanding of these concepts. This paper focuses on challenges to adaptation. We begin by situating this new concept in the context of the rich literatures related to inter alia adaptation, vulnerability, and resilience. We argue that a proper characterization of challenges to adaptation requires a rich, exploration of the concept, which goes beyond mere description. This has a number of implications for the operationalization of the concept in the basic and extended versions of the SSPs. First, the elements comprising challenges to adaptation must include a wide range of socioeconomic and even some (non-climatic) biophysical factors. Second, careful consideration must be given to differences in these factors across scales, as well as cross-scale interactions. Third, any representation of the concept will require both quantitative and qualitative elements. The scenario framework offers the opportunity for the SSPs and full scenarios to be of greater value than has been the case in past exercises to both Integrated Assessment Modeling (IAM) and Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (IAV) researchers, but this will require a renegotiation of the traditional, primarily unidirectional relationship between the two communities.

Temperature and population density determine reservoir regions of seasonal persistence in highland malaria

A better understanding of malaria persistence in highly seasonal environments such as highlands and desert fringes requires identifying the factors behind the spatial reservoir of the pathogen in the low season. In these ‘unstable’ malaria regions, such reservoirs play a critical role by allowing persistence during the low transmission season and therefore, between seasonal outbreaks. In the highlands of East Africa, the most populated epidemic regions in Africa, temperature is expected to be intimately connected to where in space the disease is able to persist because of pronounced altitudinal gradients. Here, we explore other environmental and demographic factors that may contribute to malarias highland reservoir. We use an extensive spatio-temporal dataset of confirmed monthly Plasmodium falciparum cases from 1995 to 2005 that finely resolves space in an Ethiopian highland. With a Bayesian approach for parameter estimation and a generalized linear mixed model that includes a spatially structured random effect, we demonstrate that population density is important to disease persistence during the low transmission season. This population effect is not accounted for in typical models for the transmission dynamics of the disease, but is consistent in part with a more complex functional form of the force of infection proposed by theory for vector-borne infections, only during the low season as we discuss. As malaria risk usually decreases in more urban environments with increased human densities, the opposite counterintuitive finding identifies novel control targets during the low transmission season in African highlands.