Scenarios for climate change adaptation

Climate change has been described as a challenge characterised by ‘diabolical uncertainty’. With many of today’s decision-making tools, techniques and approaches dependent on extrapolating from historical trends to identify ‘likely futures’ climate change presents an almost existential problem – in the future little is certain. Not only are the implications of climate change so varied, interconnected and complex, records are showing that in some areas we cannot even rely on historical trends for guidance. Some of the very environmental patterns on which our decision-makers have relied-on to base design and planning decisions are beginning to change.

Scenario planning is a process designed specifically to assist decision-makers navigate extreme uncertainty and help them identify what is and what is not possible in a set future time frame. It is often cited as a method able to assist with climate change adaptation decision-making.

The Scenarios for Climate Adaptation project aimed to strengthen knowledge about the most effective ways to develop and use scenario based strategies to improve climate change adaptation decision making, drawing on the experience of Victorian climate adaptation policy makers and practitioners.

Scenario based strategies can provide policy makers and practitioners with valuable tools to consider and analyse a diverse range of future trends, contexts, risks and opportunities. Informed by quantitative and/or qualitative evidence, scenarios also have the capacity to illuminate potentially critical ‘unknowns’, to encourage organisations to think ‘outside the square’ and to challenge taken for granted assumptions about the future.

Publications

• Scenarios for climate adaptation – Policy brief – July 2011
• Scenarios for climate adaptation  – Full report – June 2011
• Scenarios for Climate Adaptation – Report: Executive summary
• Scenarios for Climate Adaptation – Report: Appendix A – CASE STUDIES
• Scenarios for Climate Adaptation – Report: Appendix B – LINKS & RESOURCES
• Scenarios for climate adaptation – Guidebook for practitioners