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Comparing the impacts of future scenarios is essential for developing and guiding the political sustainability agenda. This review-based analysis compares six IPBES scenarios for their impacts on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 20 biodiversity targets (Aichi targets) for the Europe and Central Asia regions. The comparison is based on a review of 143 modeled scenarios synthesized in a plural cost–benefit approach which provides the distances to multiple policy goals. We confirm and substantiate the claim that transformative change is vital but also point out which directions for political transformation are to be preferred. The hopeful message is that large societal losses might still be avoided, and multiple benefits can be generated over the coming decades and centuries. Yet, policies will need to strongly steer away from scenarios based on regional competition, inequality, and economic optimism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complex interactions of drivers represented in scenarios and climate change impacts across scales have led to the development of multiscale scenarios. Since the recent development of global shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs), which have started being downscaled to lower scales, the potential of scenarios to be relevant for decision making and facilitate appreciation and inclusion of different perspectives has been increasing, compared with a single-scale global scenario set. However, in practice, quantitative downscaling of global scenarios results in narratives that are compressed from the global level to fit the local context to enhance consistency between global and local scales. We brought forward the concept of scenario archetypes to analyze multiscale SSP scenario narratives and highlight important diverging assumptions within the same archetype. Our methodology applied scenario archetypes both as typologies, to allocate specific cases of scenarios into existing scenario archetypes, and building blocks, conceptualized with worldviews from cultural theory. Although global SSPs generally match existing archetypes and tend to be well defined, the socially unequal SSPs at subglobal scales are more nuanced, and dominant worldviews are much less straighforward to interpret than in global scenarios. The closest match was the great transition--sustainability (SSP1) archetype, whereas the most divergent was the market forces--fossil fuel development (SSP5) archetype. Overall, our results highlight the need to improve uptake of bottom-up approaches in global scenarios to improve appreciation of different perspectives as sought after in multiscale scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Either meeting the UNFCCC Paris agreement to limit global average warming below the 2-1.5 °C threshold, or going beyond it entails huge challenges in terms of institutional innovation and transformation. This research describes a participatory integrated assessment process aimed at exploring the options, opportunities, necessary capacities and implications for institutional co-operation and innovation in the Iberian Peninsula under High-End Climate Change (HECC). Using in-depth interviews and a novel participatory research approach, different scenario narratives and pathways about the future of Iberia have been identified using Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs). Special attention is given to the knowledge and policy options needed to implement cross-border organizational changes and co-operation mechanisms that would support the Integrated Climate Governance of the Tagus and Guadiana river basins. We show that a wealth of institutional innovation pathways and specific options and solutions exist not only to reduce GHG emissions (mitigation) and the negative impacts of climate change (adaptation), but, above all, to generate new forms of social-ecological system interactions aligned with sustainability (transformation). In particular, and depending on which scenario contexts unfold in the future in Iberia, different kinds of institutional and governance capacities and clusters of solutions may be needed in order to achieve transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the pressure to take action against global warming is growing in urgency, scenarios that incorporate multiple social, economic and environmental drivers become increasingly critical to support governments and other stakeholders in planning climate change mitigation or adaptation actions. This has led to the recent explosion of future scenario analyses at multiple scales, further accelerated since the development of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) research community Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). While RCPs have been widely applied to climate models to produce climate scenarios at multiple scales for investigating climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerabilities (CCIAV), SSPs are only recently being scaled for different geographical and sectoral applications. This is seen in the UK where significant investment has produced the RCP-based UK Climate Projections (UKCP18), but no equivalent UK version of the SSPs exists. We address this need by developing a set of multi-driver qualitative and quantitative UK-SSPs, following a state-of-the-art scenario methodology that integrates national stakeholder knowledge on locally-relevant drivers and indicators with higher level information from European and global SSPs. This was achieved through an intensive participatory process that facilitated the combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches to develop a set of UK-specific SSPs that are locally comprehensive, yet consistent with the global and European SSPs. The resulting scenarios balance the importance of consistency and legitimacy, demonstrating that divergence is not necessarily the result of inconsistency, nor comes as a choice to contextualise narratives at the appropriate scale. Unlabelled Image • Climate change impact and risk assessments need downscaled climate projections and context-relevant socioeconomic scenarios • We co-created UK versions of the SSPs for use by the UK climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability community • Global and European SSPs were integrated with national knowledge to develop scenarios relevant to the UK context • The UK-SSPs balance the importance between consistency and legitimacy • Stakeholder-led national SSPs can be consistent with higher-level SSPs with a well-designed co-production process [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To provide fundamental decision support information for climate risk assessment in Hungary, an urban spatial development model of land cover change and population age structure dynamics was developed and applied to local integrated scenarios of climate change and stakeholder-derived socio-economic change. The four integrated scenarios for Hungary produced contrasting projections for urban patterns to 2100, but peri-urbanisation around Budapest was estimated to occur under all scenarios, together with a decline in working age population in the centres of the capital and major towns. This suggests that future urban planning needs to take into consideration the potential for underutilised urban infrastructure in the centre of the capital and pressures for social service provisioning in its outskirt. The integrated scenarios and model developed can be used in future studies to test the effectiveness of inter-sectoral policy responses in adapting urban planning to multiple climate and socio-economic challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scenarios are a useful tool to explore possible futures of social-ecological systems. The number of scenarios has increased dramatically over recent decades, with a large diversity in temporal and spatial scales, purposes, themes, development methods, and content. Scenario archetypes generically describe future developments and can be useful in meaningfully classifying scenarios, structuring and summarizing the overwhelming amount of information, and enabling scientific outputs to more effectively interface with decision-making frameworks. The Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) faced this challenge and used scenario archetypes in its assessment of future interactions between nature and society. We describe the use of scenario archetypes in the IPBES Regional Assessment of Europe and Central Asia. Six scenario archetypes for the region are described in terms of their driver assumptions and impacts on nature (including biodiversity) and its contributions to people (including ecosystem services): business-as-usual, economic optimism, regional competition, regional sustainability, global sustainable development, and inequality. The analysis shows that trade-offs between nature's contributions to people are projected under different scenario archetypes. However, the means of resolving these trade-offs depend on differing political and societal value judgements within each scenario archetype. Scenarios that include proactive decision making on environmental issues, environmental management approaches that support multifunctionality, and mainstreaming environmental issues across sectors, are generally more successful in mitigating tradeoffs than isolated environmental policies. Furthermore, those scenario archetypes that focus on achieving a balanced supply of nature's contributions to people and that incorporate a diversity of values are estimated to achieve more policy goals and targets, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi targets. The scenario archetypes approach is shown to be helpful in supporting science-policy dialogue for proactive decision making that anticipates change, mitigates undesirable trade-offs, and fosters societal transformation in pursuit of sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]