Environmental Futures

by Alcamo

• ISBN13: 9780444532930
• ISBN10: 0444532935
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-10-10
• Publisher: Elsevier Science

Summary

As scientists and policymakers try to come to grips with problems such as climate change and risks to biodiversity, they turn more and more frequently to the method of scenario analysis to better understand the future of these problems. Over the last few years scenario analysis has become one of the key tools for bridging environmental science and policy. This is the first book to sum up the current practice of environmental scenario analysis and to propose directions for improving its quality and effectiveness. Chapters are written by an international group of distinguished scenario experts and provide an excellent starting basis for first-time scenario practitioners, as well as a collection of new ideas on improving scenario practice for experienced scenario analysts.

Table of Contents

About the Authors	p. v
Preface	p. vii
Introduction: the Case for Scenarios of the Environment	p. 1
Prologue: Environmental Scenarios and the Scientific Method	p. 1
Why Build Scenarios of the Environment?	p. 3
The Two Threads of Environmental Scenario Analysis	p. 5
Inquiry-driven Scenario Analysis	p. 5
Strategy-driven Scenario Analysis	p. 7
Do Scenarios Have a Future?	p. 8
References	p. 10
Towards Guidelines for Environmental Scenario Analysis	p. 13
Introduction	p. 13
Concepts and Definitions: What is Environmental Scenario Analysis?	p. 13
What are the key elements of environmental scenario analysis?	p. 16
What are the goals of environmental scenario analysis?	p. 17
What are the different types of environmental scenarios?	p. 19
Methods and Approaches	p. 22
Methods for developing and analysing environmental scenarios	p. 22
How many scenarios should be developed and analysed?	p. 26
How can the participation of stakeholders and experts be increased?	p. 26
How can surprises be included in environmental scenario analysis?	p. 29
How can scenarios cover different scales?	p. 31
How can environmental scenarios be evaluated?	p. 33
Acknowledgements	p. 35
A Survey of Environmental Scenarios	p. 37
Introduction	p. 37
Environmental and Environmentally-relevant Scenarios	p. 38
Defining scenarios	p. 38
Defining environmental scenarios	p. 40
Characterizing Scenarios	p. 41
Scenario logic - purpose, process, & substance	p. 41
Dimensions - driving forces and key uncertainties	p. 42
Archetypes - end states	p. 45
Existing Surveys	p. 49
Overview of Environmental Scenarios	p. 51
Topical scenarios	p. 51
Integrative scenarios	p. 54
Closing Remarks	p. 58
References	p. 58
Searching for the Future of Land: Scenarios from the Local to Global Scale	p. 67
Introduction	p. 67
Scenario Analysis: A Method for Anticipating the Future of Land	p. 68
Qualitative scenarios	p. 68
Quantitative scenarios	p. 69
Global and Continental Scenarios	p. 71
Methodological issues	p. 71
Global scenario results	p. 72
African scenario results	p. 76
European scenario results	p. 78
Regional and Local Scenarios	p. 82
Methodological issues	p. 82
Results from regional and local scenarios	p. 85
Results from urban scenarios	p. 88
Results from multi-scale scenarios	p. 89
Main Findings of Scenarios	p. 91
Towards Better Land Scenarios	p. 94
Closing Remarks	p. 99
Acknowledgements	p. 99
References	p. 100
Participation in Building Environmental Scenarios	p. 105
Introduction	p. 105
Polycentric Governance and Participation in Environmental Policy	p. 107
Designing a Participatory Process	p. 109
Why is the scenario building process being carried out?	p. 109
For whom are the scenarios produced for?	p. 110
Who should participate and when should they be included?	p. 110
What is the expected outcome of the participatory process?	p. 112
How should the scenario exercise be carried out?	p. 113
Exploration of different methods for participation	p. 114
Group Model Building in Participatory Scenario Planning	p. 117
Conclusions	p. 120
Acknowledgement	p. 120
References	p. 121
The SAS Approach: Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Knowledge in Environmental Scenarios	p. 123
Introduction	p. 123
Features of Qualitative and Quantitative Scenarios	p. 124
The World Water Vision Scenarios - The World Water Situation in 2025	p. 127
The SRES Scenarios of the IPCC - Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions up to 2100	p. 129
The Scenarios of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment - The State of World Ecosystems up to 2050	p. 131
The GEO-4 Scenarios - The Global Environment up to 2050	p. 135
The SAS (Story and Simulation) Approach to Scenario Development	p. 137
Advantages of SAS	p. 140
Drawbacks of SAS and a Way Forward..	p. 141
The reproducibility problem	p. 141
The conversion problem	p. 143
Summing up	p. 148
Acknowledgements	p. 148
References	p. 148
Scale Issues in Environmental Scenario Development	p. 151
Introduction	p. 151
Spatial Scales	p. 153
Quantitative downscaling of global scenarios	p. 154
Derivation of scenarios which are consistent with coarser-scale scenarios	p. 156
Multi-scale scenarios	p. 159
Local scenarios - global pictures?	p. 161
Temporal Scales	p. 162
Institutional Scales	p. 163
Methodological Challenges and Ways to Tackle Them	p. 164
Conclusions	p. 166
References	p. 166
Dealing with Surprises in Environmental Scenarios	p. 169
Introduction	p. 170
Concepts and Typologies of Surprises	p. 171
Defining Basic Terms and Concepts	p. 174
Surprises in the Society-environment Interactions	p. 178
Surprises for Environmental Scenarios	p. 181
Scientific assessments	p. 182
Exploration	p. 182
Forecasting	p. 182
Policymaking	p. 183
Planning	p. 183
Opinion elicitation	p. 183
Collective inquiry	p. 184
Crosscheck	p. 184
Education	p. 184
Moralizing	p. 184
Curiosity/speculation	p. 185
Generating Surprises for Environmental Scenarios	p. 185
Model-based scanning	p. 186
Cross-impact method	p. 187
Environmental scanning	p. 187
Participatory methods	p. 187
Delphi	p. 188
The futures wheel	p. 188
Intuition and visioning	p. 189
Summary and Conclusions	p. 190
Acknowledgements	p. 191
References	p. 191
Index	p. 195
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