Abstract
Participatory processes in scenario development have received increasing attention throughout the last years. Combining qualitative stakeholder and quantitative expert information (i.e. modelling) offers unique opportunities to mix good data, scientific rigour, imagination and expertise from different perspectives. However, this task is all but easy as it requires a careful balancing of approaches and an acceptance of different levels of knowledge and trust in different methods across disciplinary boundaries. In spite of a growing body of literature we are still in the early stages of learning how to deal effectively with participatory scenario development. In the PRELUDE project of the European Environment Agency a relatively far-reaching participatory approach to scenario development was applied: a group of stakeholders from across Europe was given full responsibility to develop long-term alternative land use scenarios in cooperation with experts and modellers. The scenarios have been used in a formal outreach process with key clients and stakeholders at the European and Member State level afterwards. The aim of this paper is to document the methods used, analyse their strengths and weaknesses and draw some general conclusions regarding participatory processes in scenario development. This paper argues that in future scenario development more attention needs to be paid to strengthen the integration of qualitative and quantitative analysis. A set of compelling and coherent storylines can effectively trigger strategic conversations among policy-makers and key stakeholders about potential future developments and related response strategies. A weak integration with quantitative results can undermine this outcome, which is one of the ultimate objectives of any scenario exercise.
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Notes
The European Environment Agency has been using different participatory approaches in several of its assessments. As a minimum, all published reports undergo a thorough consultation with all the EEA member countries (32 countries). Other assessments extend their consultation to other communities, such as non-governmental organisations, business, and professional associations, depending on the issue and goal of the assessment.
Whereby the term “salience” refers to the ability of the scenario exercise to address the special concerns of users, i.e. convince that the results are relevant to support decision-making processes, whereas the term “legitimacy” refers to the perceived fairness of the exercise, i.e. the users are convinced that their interests have been taken into account in a fair way and that the assessment is not one-sided. “Credibility” is the third attribute of a successful assessment (EEA 2001a).
Stalemates can be caused by unrealistic goals and expectations, confusion about roles and failures to develop a clear road map for the scenario generation process. Participants can expect too much from scenarios and are disappointed if the final results don’t match their expectations (Schoemaker 1998). Developing too many scenarios dilutes the attention and energy of participants. An experienced facilitator can help to define clear goals, clarify roles and concentrate on reviewing few, but key questions in greater depth (Schwartz and Ogilvy 1998).
Several techniques have been developed over the years to create the conditions for effective brainstorming on innovative scenario input. Their applicability depends on the aims and objectives of the scenario exercise. They are, however, not the subject of discussion here (see Slocum 2003; Toth 2001 for extended discussion).
In two interesting papers, Galtung reports results from reviewing assessments made by a panel of experts and panel of non-experts thirty years ago that were exposed to the question of what the next thirty years could like. As it turns out, the assessments of the experts were rather wrong whereas the assessments of the non-experts were rather accurate (Galtung 2003a, b).
In a recent comparison of 25 land use scenarios, Busch (2006) found that none of these scenario projects adopted a similar broad participatory approach.
PELCOM is a 1 km2 pan-European land cover database developed mainly from remotely sensed data for the year 2000. To adjust this database to 2005, statistical data as well as existing scenario work was used (see EEA 2006). The project could not use Corine Land Cover data for the European level analysis, since the work on these data was not finalised in 2004, when the PRELUDE scenarios were quantified. PELCOM was at that time the only land cover data base that provided data for the EU-25.
For the three regional case studies a different modelling approach was used. Simulating land use change at the regional level was conducted for the Netherlands, Estonia and Northern Italy (Tuscany) with the help of the Metromenica modelling shell application (see EEA 2006).
The landscape patterns corresponding to the scenarios can be viewed in detail in the interactive PRELUDE presentation tool at http://www.eea.europa.eu/prelude.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the various contributions from over 50 people, including various experts, stakeholders, modellers and communication and facilitation professionals. Their work has made PRELUDE possible (see EEA 2007 for details).
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This paper does not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Environment Agency or any other institution of the European Communities.
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Volkery, A., Ribeiro, T., Henrichs, T. et al. Your Vision or My Model? Lessons from Participatory Land Use Scenario Development on a European Scale. Syst Pract Action Res 21, 459–477 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11213-008-9104-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11213-008-9104-x