Constructing futures, enhancing solutions: Stakeholder-driven scenario development and system modeling for climate-change challenges

Abstract

Finding effective and practical solutions to climate change challenges in food-energy-water systems requires the integration of experts in local/regional social and biophysical systems, and these are commonly local community members. In the Magic Valley, Idaho we investigated the tensions between water used for energy and to irrigate cropland for food production, as well as, strategies for protecting water quantity and quality. Incorporating stakeholders with long-standing expertise allows the development of solutions to these challenges that are locally and regionally practical and consistent with the values of the social system into which they are incorporated. We describe a stakeholder-driven process used in a case study in the Magic Valley that incorporated local experts to develop plausible future scenarios, identify drivers of change, vet impact and hydrological modeling and map areas of change. The process described allowed stakeholders to envision alternative futures in their region, leading to development of enhanced context and place-based solutions and an anticipated time line for adoption of those solutions. The solutions developed by the stakeholders have been applied across many geographic areas. The described process can also be applied across a broad range of geographic levels. Most importantly, stakeholders should be involved in anticipating solutions and solution timing to the differing challenges posed by each scenario.

Building trust, building futures: Knowledge co-production as relationship, design, and process in transdisciplinary science

“…At that workshop, the timing of each solution in each scenario was fine-tuned (Figure 4). In general, the SAG agreed that stricter water quality regulations would be imposed, that best management practices (structural interventions and policies) would be implemented in crop and dairy farming as well as industrial, municipal and residential land use (Williams et al, 2023). The SAG felt that increased composting of animal wastes would occur quickly.…”

“…In our project, the research team learned much about the FEWS system in the Magic Valley region from stakeholders. The in-depth understanding of the SAG regarding interactions among food, energy and water systems and social system constraints (laws, policies, attitudes and values for example) as well as the solutions most likely to be adopted and the timing of adoption (Williams et al, 2023) enabled the research team to better align the impact models with stakeholder knowledge of the system and develop a set of scenarios to guide decision-making for the future of the Magic Valley.…”

“…The multi-method and iterative engagement approach (Figure 2; Table 2) speaks to the collaborative nature of all involved, it underlies the importance of having stakeholders who are willing to challenge the scientists, and these examples can be viewed as a "qualitative scientific method" where the researchers state a hypothesis (what they believe about the system), the "data" (assessments) from the SAG rejected the hypothesis, and the researchers changed their conceptual model in response, and then re-presented the updated model to the SAG for updated "data" as further input. This was particularly evident in the iterative co-production of scenarios (Cronan et al, 2022) and of solutions (Williams et al, 2023) to FEWS challenges with the SAG.…”

“…For example, the derivation of scenarios by the SAG members over 15 months via 6 workshops (Table 2) develops a sense of ownership in the scenarios. The sense of ownership by the SAG is demonstrated by the stakeholder-driven solutions that were generated by the group (Williams et al, 2023) although it is premature to determine the extent of implementation of the integrated solutions set. Anecdotally, two of the SAG members commented to the authors that following the summer of 2021 in Magic Valley, during which residents witnessed historic low winter snowpack, low seasonal rainfall, and record low river levels insufficient to fully support irrigation, that the conditions of the Megadrought scenario seemed apparent and that several of the co-generated solutions (e.g., fallowing some agricultural land, converting some feed crop pastures to more drought resistant crops) were being considered.…”