Participatory Scenario Planning for Climate Change Adaptation

Participatory scenario planning is a collaborative approach that brings together diverse stakeholders—ranging from local communities and policymakers to scientists and industry representatives—to co-produce narratives and quantitative pathways describing plausible futures under climate change. By integrating local knowledge, expert analysis and iterative workshops, this method reveals uncertainties and trade-offs inherent in adaptation decisions and fosters social learning. It enables the exploration of alternative adaptation strategies across scales, from community-level land management to national infrastructure planning, ensuring that outcomes are contextually relevant and socially robust. Through scenario storylines, decision-makers can test the resilience of policies under contrasting developments in demographics, technology and governance. The process emphasises legitimacy, transparency and creativity, allowing participants to identify feasible interventions—such as shifts in agricultural practices, water-resource allocation or urban design—while building shared understanding and ownership. As climate impacts intensify, participatory scenario planning offers a structured yet flexible framework for anticipating risks, aligning adaptation investments with stakeholder priorities and guiding adaptive governance in a rapidly changing world.

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Participatory Scenario Planning for Climate Change Adaptation publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in participatory scenario planning for climate change adaptation across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Participatory Scenario Planning: Collaborative method that engages stakeholders and experts to co-produce multiple plausible future pathways for decision-making under uncertainty.
Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs): Global framework of narrative and quantitative scenarios describing alternative trajectories of societal development used to assess climate impacts, adaptation and mitigation.
Scenario Storylines: Qualitative narratives that describe coherent sequences of driving forces, uncertainties and outcomes within scenario exercises.
Co-production: Joint generation of knowledge and scenarios by diverse stakeholder groups and researchers to ensure legitimacy, relevance and credibility.

References

1. Aligning agri-environmental-climate public good supply and desire in a sustainable Dutch agricultural sector. Ambio (2024).
2. Co-Producing Qualitative Storylines for Resilient Renewable Energy Scenarios Amid Climate Uncertainty. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (2023).
3. Linking regional stakeholder scenarios and shared socioeconomic pathways: Quantified West African food and climate futures in a global context. Global Environmental Change (2017).