Multiple visions of the future and major environmental scenarios

Abstract

Scientific programming in environmental science often relies on short-term (3 to 5 years) trend-based projections for contextual elements like the demography or the economy to construct or justify its choice of priorities. However, this approach does not take into account numerous factors of change or disruption over a longer term (10 to 20, or even 50 years), although a decade or two are needed to effectively deal with the stakes of research. These stakes become more acute over the long term, as consequences of predicted changes (e. g. climate) or other factors such as pollution, biodiversity erosion, reduction of ecosystemic services.... This complex question justifies turning to a foresight approach. Because it enables tipping points to be envisaged for some key variables of the system studied (in this case, the environment), the scenario method seems well adapted to proposing several contrasting visions of the future.. The research question is: how a large screening of international studies on environmental scenarios can help framing the reflection on research priorities about environment? To help take its strategic reflection forward, in June 2015 the French national research alliance for the environment (AllEnvi) commissioned its transversal foresight group to identify the major families of scenarios described in foresight studies dealing with the environment since 2000. The summary of the 307 scenarios produced by analyzing 99 international studies highlighted 11 possible societal and environmental pathways. Analyzing these families of scenarios thus makes it easier to clarify the multiple roles that science can play, according to contrasting dynamics. Consequently, this study shows how a systematic review of foresight studies and their related visions of the future of environment can stimulate and enlighten the reflection on the ways societies can (re)define their future, by combining environmental, governance and social sciences. Highlights ► A French foresighters team had been asked to cluster the main environmental scenarios described in international studies. ► The synthesis of the 307 scenarios described in 99 studies highlighted 11 societal and environmental pathways. ► Those 11 pathways can be clustered in 3 groups: Decline, No priority to environment, With priority to environment. ► Governance, economy and societies, in that order, showed to be the main drivers of the scenarios. ► Ocean, coastal areas and forest are rarely cited as driving factors for environmental scenarios.

Global Energy Scenarios: A Geopolitical Reality Check

“…A burgeoning literature has started to compare and critically assess such energy and climate future exercises (Ansari et al, 2019;Hausfather and Peters, 2018;Lacroix et al, 2021;Peng et al, 2021;Pielke and Ritchie, 2021;Rosen, 2021;Skea et al, 2021). Modellers are criticised for failing to acknowledge the impact of the learning curves of clean energy technologies and their rapidly falling costs (Bond, 2021;Ives et al, 2021).…”

Conceptualising technology, its development and future: The six genres of technology

“…(2017) combine expert opinion with creative thinking in their scenario-driven road mapping approach. Moreover, even within a specific approach there is diversity, as revealed in the review of scenarios by Lacroix et al. (2019) .…”

La mer monte : impacts et stratégies

“…L'analyse morphologique, donne finalement huit scénarios que l'on peut ranger en trois « familles » dont la ligne de partage tient avant tout à la position de la gouvernance, première variable motrice en matière d'environnement (Lacroix et al, 2019). L'élaboration des scénarios a tenu compte de deux éléments déterminants : d'abord, le choix de la priorité de la gouvernance, qui va du soutien massif aux mesures d'atténuation du changement climatique, à des politiques d'adaptation du littoral sans efforts de réduction du changement climatique, avec des positions intermédiaires entre ces deux extrêmes ; ensuite, la possibilité d'une inflexion de trajectoire à des échéances diverses.…”