TY - JOUR
T1 - Co-designing global target-seeking scenarios
T2 - A cross-scale participatory process for capturing multiple perspectives on pathways to sustainability
AU - Aguiar, Ana Paula D.
AU - Collste, David
AU - Harmáčková, Zuzana V.
AU - Pereira, Laura
AU - Selomane, Odirilwe
AU - Galafassi, Diego
AU - Van Vuuren, Detlef
AU - Van Der Leeuw, Sander
N1 - Funding Information:
Ana Paula D. Aguiar, Zuzana V. Harmáčková and Odirilwe Selomane have been supported by the GRAID programme at Stockholm Resilience Centre, funded by the Swedish International Development Agency ( SIDA ). Zuzana Harmáčková's work was supported by Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. David Collste has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No 675153 (ITN JD AdaptEconII).
Funding Information:
We thank the participants and facilitators of the 2nd African Dialogue on TWI2050: https://swed.bio/reports/the-second-african-dialogue-on-the-world-in-2050/ and the SwedBio team for the support. Ana Paula D. Aguiar, Zuzana V. Harm??kov? and Odirilwe Selomane have been supported by the GRAID programme at Stockholm Resilience Centre, funded by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). Zuzana Harm??kov?'s work was supported by Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. David Collste has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No 675153 (ITN JD AdaptEconII). The 2nd African Dialogue on TWI2050 was funded by the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) through SwedBio. We thank Marcel Kok (PBL) for valuable discussions during the writing process of this manuscript. We would like to sincerely thank our anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors
PY - 2020/11
Y1 - 2020/11
N2 - The United Nations 2030 Agenda catalysed the development of global target-seeking sustainability-oriented scenarios representing alternative pathways to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Implementing the SDGs requires connected actions across local, national, regional, and global levels; thus, target-seeking scenarios need to reflect alternative options and tensions across those scales. We argue that the design of global sustainability-oriented target-seeking scenarios requires a consistent process for capturing multiple and contrasting perspectives on how to reach the goals, including the perspectives from multiple scales (e.g. local, national, regional) and geographic regions (e.g. the Global South). Here we propose a novel approach to co-design global target-seeking scenarios, consisting of (a) capturing global perspectives on pathways to the SDGs through a review of existing global scenarios; (b) a multi-stakeholder process to obtain multiple sub-global perspectives on pathways to sustainability; (c) an analysis of convergences, and crucially, divergences between global and regional perspectives on pathways to reach the SDGs, feeding into the design of new target-seeking scenario narratives. As a case study, we use the results of the 2018 African Dialogue on The World in 2050, discussing the future of agriculture and food systems. The identified divergent themes emerging from our analysis included urbanization, population growth, agricultural practices, and the roles of different actors in the future of agriculture. The results challenge some of the existing underlying assumptions of the current sustainability-oriented global scenarios (e.g. population growth, urbanisation, agricultural practices), indicating the relevance and timeliness of the proposed approach. We suggest that similar approaches can be replicated in other contexts to better inform the process of sustainability-oriented scenario co-design across scales, regions and cultures. In addition, we highlight the implications of the approach for scenario quantification and the evolution of modeling tools.
AB - The United Nations 2030 Agenda catalysed the development of global target-seeking sustainability-oriented scenarios representing alternative pathways to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Implementing the SDGs requires connected actions across local, national, regional, and global levels; thus, target-seeking scenarios need to reflect alternative options and tensions across those scales. We argue that the design of global sustainability-oriented target-seeking scenarios requires a consistent process for capturing multiple and contrasting perspectives on how to reach the goals, including the perspectives from multiple scales (e.g. local, national, regional) and geographic regions (e.g. the Global South). Here we propose a novel approach to co-design global target-seeking scenarios, consisting of (a) capturing global perspectives on pathways to the SDGs through a review of existing global scenarios; (b) a multi-stakeholder process to obtain multiple sub-global perspectives on pathways to sustainability; (c) an analysis of convergences, and crucially, divergences between global and regional perspectives on pathways to reach the SDGs, feeding into the design of new target-seeking scenario narratives. As a case study, we use the results of the 2018 African Dialogue on The World in 2050, discussing the future of agriculture and food systems. The identified divergent themes emerging from our analysis included urbanization, population growth, agricultural practices, and the roles of different actors in the future of agriculture. The results challenge some of the existing underlying assumptions of the current sustainability-oriented global scenarios (e.g. population growth, urbanisation, agricultural practices), indicating the relevance and timeliness of the proposed approach. We suggest that similar approaches can be replicated in other contexts to better inform the process of sustainability-oriented scenario co-design across scales, regions and cultures. In addition, we highlight the implications of the approach for scenario quantification and the evolution of modeling tools.
KW - Cross-scale analysis
KW - Food system transformation
KW - Pathways
KW - Sustainable Development Goals
KW - Target-seeking scenarios
KW - Three Horizons
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85096178741&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102198
DO - 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102198
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85096178741
SN - 0959-3780
VL - 65
JO - Global Environmental Change
JF - Global Environmental Change
M1 - 102198
ER -