Dynamic generation of socio-economic scenarios for climate change adaptation: methods, building blocks and examples

Authors:

  • Henrik Carlsen
  • Karl Henrik Dreborg

Publish date: 2008-05-22

Report number: FOI-R--2512--SE

Pages: 125

Written in: Swedish

Keywords:

  • climate change
  • adaptation
  • societal planning
  • uncertainty
  • socio-economic scenarios

Abstract

This is a need for socio-economic scenarios in climate change adaptation work in oder to help planners cope with uncertainty, of the long term development of society. The United Nations´Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) has developed climate scenarios with substantially different climate characteristics in a hundred years´perspective. However, in a 25-30 years´perspective, which is very long term in societal planning, the difference between the scenarios is small, while society may develop in different directions. Since measures of adaptations to a changing climate may have different impacts depending on future socio-economic conditions, there is a need for scenarios that describe different possible developments. With a time frame of 25 years scenarios are more useful than projections of single factors such as GDP or demography, because scenarios can capture structural changes of society. This report presents results from a first step of the development of a scenario tool for climate adaption work in municipalities, regions and sectors of society in Sweden. The tool is to be further developed in regional case sstudies with the aim to make it adaptable to the specific focus of interest of various planning agencies. Therefore, we primarily concentrate on developing external factors and different possible futures states for these, and a methodology for combining them into scenarios. The report presents the main steps of the scenario methodology and building blocks for the scenario construction consisting of socio-economic factors of special importance for climate adaption work. The 13 socio-economic factors RE: Demography International mitigation policy International climate change adaptation policy Swedish economy Ideology and social cohesion Climate change perception Swedish governance Environmental policy Global energy paradigm Swedish energy paradigm Land use Built environment Transportation For each factor different possible future states are suggested. It is a leading idea that a specific set of Swedish socio-economic scenarios should be tailored for each specific planning situation: The national leved will be described from the point of view of the actual focal issue. The report also entails three examples of socio-economic scenarios. However, these have been designed on the bases of the general question of what impacts the conditions for climate change for Sweden at large. Socio-economic scenarios can support adaptation work in several ways. They can reveal challenges, both opportunities and threats, related to different directions of development for society. Scenarios may also elicit ideas of adaptation measures by widening the perceptions of what may happen in the future. Furthermore, they may be used for assessing measures or combinations of measures as regards the impact they will have in the different scenarios. Such an assessment may facilitate the development of a strategy that works reasonably well under several plausible future conditions.