5. Future narratives
5.5 Summary and discussion
All countries in the Barents area have well-developed climate change scenarios for their northern areas. A major challenge is to understand how climate change scenarios are used by decision-makers in diff erent contexts at any level. Many of the nationally developed scenarios do not involve much local knowledge (Pilli-Sihvola et al., 2015), but it is becoming more common to include practitioners and users in scenario building, especially at the local level and in relation to specifi c sectors.
Participatory workshops that combine scenarios and local narratives provide a method for engaging local and regional actors in the process of producing knowledge relevant for future planning. Th e new global scenario framework that has been developed – the global SSPs in particular – provides a useful context for co-constructing local and regional narratives that link to both global development and local contexts.
While the approach of producing narratives based on input from local workshops is similar to methods used in NORADAPT, the work on producing extended SSPs for this chapter provides a more systematic link to global development paths. Lessons learned from projects with strong user involvement suggest that in addition to involving multiple disciplines, the most important aspect is fi nding methods that ensure engagement in the process (see, for example, Dannevig et al., 2012; Jönsson and Gerger Swartling, 2014). To develop tools that are useful for adaptation action, it is thus relevant to evaluate how diff erent scenario approaches manage to engage practitioners in diff erent contexts and so help construct shared worldviews.
An overarching conclusion from the four scenario exercises is that local adaptation challenges are closely linked to global
developments, not only regarding climate change but also in relation to resource markets, international security, values and norms, and technology development. For several of these issues, the future is highly uncertain, creating a range of potential global futures with a corresponding range of potential local and regional futures. Some of these issues may also be linked to climate change outside the region, highlighting the need to include attention to indirect impacts of climate change. Th e space of uncertainty created by the potential for very diff erent global trajectories of social, economic and political developments at the global level needs to be integrated into current decision-making processes relating to adaptation and into strategic planning.
5.5.1
Knowledge gaps and ways forward
Th e strong focus on the role of values and ‘soft ’ qualities in the local narratives about the future highlights a need for better knowledge of social trends that are diffi cult to quantify.
Other factors identifi ed as relevant for future challenges lend themselves to further studies with quantitative methods. Th is might be especially relevant for demographic dynamics.
There is also a need for methods to integrate qualitative assessment of social trends within frameworks that focus on quantitative analysis. An important component of such development is to fi nd ways to systematically review the quality of the information available. For the global scenarios, there is a vision to develop integrated assessment models. While this may be more challenging at the local level, due to the resources needed for such work, a focus for future research could be to develop methods that better integrate narrative and quantitative scenario approaches at the regional scale. An additional line of further research is to link the future-oriented scenarios
Carl-Johan Utsi
with studies of the history of the region. This could become a powerful way to better understand path dependencies and trigger points for change in development direction.
The work on which this chapter is based provides a few snapshots of how actors in the region see future possibilities and challenges. The future looks different depending on where you are and who you are. There is thus a need for organizing workshops in a broader range of settings and involving a more diverse set of actors. Especially relevant is to engage with young people who have a direct stake in how the future develops. A possible future activity would be to conduct similar workshops aimed at teenagers in schools at the junior high and high school level. Another potential group is families with young children. Further attention also needs to be placed on gender perspectives and on capturing the knowledge and thoughts of people that have come to the region very recently, including people from other parts of the world. These are just some examples to highlight the need to think about diversity issues when undertaking this type of exercise.
While scenarios are used extensively for analyzing potential impacts of climate change and adaptation challenges, there appears to be a lack of explicit reflection on their advantages and disadvantages, as well as on joint method development across different communities of practice. A priority follow-up activity could thus be to create networks that facilitate cross-study comparisons of scenario methodologies and approaches. Such networks may focus on the Barents area but also be circumpolar and/or closely linked to the global scenario research community.
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the substantial contribution made to this chapter by participants at the scenario workshops in Pajala, Kirovsk and Bodø, and at Gávnnadeapmi 2015. Work on this chapter by Annika E Nilsson and Lize-Marié van der Watt was funded by the research program Mistra Arctic Sustainable Development – New Governance, which also funded the Pajala workshop. Additional funding for Nilsson and for Henrik Carlsen’s participation was provided by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. Ingrid Bay-Larsen, Bob van Oort and Maiken Bjørkan were funded by the Norwegian Research Council, which also supported the Bodø and Kirovsk workshops.
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