Exploring the usefulness of scenario archetypes in science-policy processes: experience across IPBES assessments

Abstract

Scenario analyses have been used in multiple science-policy assessments to better understand complex plausible futures. Scenario archetype approaches are based on the fact that many future scenarios have similar underlying storylines, assumptions, and trends in drivers of change, which allows for grouping of scenarios into typologies, or archetypes, facilitating comparisons between a large range of studies. The use of scenario archetypes in environmental assessments foregrounds important policy questions and can be used to codesign interventions tackling future sustainability issues. Recently, scenario archetypes were used in four regional assessments and one ongoing global assessment within the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The aim of these assessments was to provide decision makers with policy-relevant knowledge about the state of biodiversity, ecosystems, and the contributions they provide to people. This paper reflects on the usefulness of the scenario archetype approach within science-policy processes, drawing on the experience from the IPBES assessments. Using a thematic analysis of (a) survey data collected from experts involved in the archetype analyses across IPBES assessments, (b) notes from IPBES workshops, and (c) regional assessment chapter texts, we synthesize the benefits, challenges, and frontiers of applying the scenario archetype approach in a science-policy process. Scenario archetypes were perceived to allow syntheses of large amounts of information for scientific, practice-, and policy-related purposes, streamline key messages from multiple scenario studies, and facilitate communication of them to end users. In terms of challenges, they were perceived as subjective in their interpretation, oversimplifying information, having a limited applicability across scales, and concealing contextual information and novel narratives. Finally, our results highlight what methodologies, applications, and frontiers in archetype-based research should be explored in the future. These advances can assist the design of future large-scale sustainability-related assessment processes, aiming to better support decisions and interventions for equitable and sustainable futures.

The voices of youth in envisioning positive futures for nature and people

“…The food will be shared within the community and there will be no food wastage. were analysed for commonalities and differences and then compared to existing scenarios archetypes that were used in the IPBES regional assessments (See Sitas et al 2019). We used keywords or phrases as indicators to identify themes or points in common between the four groups and also discussed how the visions contribute to ongoing debates about pathways towards more desirable futures by referencing where they speak to existing recommendations (Table 3).…”

“…We contextualized the four visions within the scenario archetypes used in the IPBES regional assessment process to synthesise and harmonise the analysis of existing regional and global scenarios (See Sitas et al 2019). As this was such an important organising principle for IPBES scenarios work, it is important to see what additional contributions this visioning process based on the Nature Futures Framework can make for future assessments.…”

Sustainability Science: Toward a Synthesis

“…An early example is the work of the Global Scenarios Group and its successor, the Great Transition Initiative (229). More recent work is reflected in the creative use of imagination-driven scenarios in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and its successor, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) (230).…”

Avenues of archetype analysis: roots, achievements, and next steps in sustainability research

“…Other papers identify whole suites of archetypes through meta-studies of secondary sources (Gotgelf et al 2020, Horcea-Milcu et al 2020, Tribaldos et al 2020. A further set of papers use archetypes in a deductive way to design or analyze scenarios (Harrison et al 2019, Sitas et al 2019. Neudert et al (2019) start from a suite of archetypes identified in earlier studies in order to refine them, to diagnose patterns in a new set of cases, and to dig deeper into selected archetypes.…”

“…Fourth, scenario archetypes have supported science-policy dialogues such as in the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in multiple fruitful ways. The studies suggest that a next generation of scenario archetypes might be more inductive and consider linkages of scenarios across scales in a more detailed way (Harrison et al 2019, Sitas et al 2019.…”