Global Environmental Change and Food Systems Scenarios Research up to date

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Global Environmental Change and Food
SystemsScenarios Researchup to date

• Monika Zurek
• FAO
• April 2005

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GECAFS research focus

1. Classifying and characterizing the major food
   systems existing today for GEC studies,
2. Investigating the vulnerability of existing food
   systems to GEC and its consequences for different
   parts of society,
3. Sketching plausible future changes in
   environmental and socioeconomic conditions that
   will affect food systems,
4. Based on the analysis of plausible futures,
   devising decision support systems for the
   formulation of diverse policy-instruments to
   adapt global food system to GEC.

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What are scenarios?

• Scenarios
• Plausible alternative futures, each an example of
  what
• might happen under particular assumptions, told
  as
• stories and backed up by quantification and
  modeling
• Different from
• Projections are heavily dependent on assumptions
  about drivers and boundary conditions.
  Projections lead to "if this, then that"
  statements.
• Predictions are seen by the public and decision
  makers as things that will happen no matter what
  they do.
• Forecast is the best estimate from a particular
  method, model, or individual.

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Anatomy of Scenarios

• Critical Uncertainties
• Resolution alters course of events

Source P. Raskin 2002
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Good Scenarios

• Good scenarios should
• be plausible (or not implausible)
• be internally consistent and coherent
• be constructed with rigour, detail creativity
• meet the goals of scenario exercise
• Source T. Henrichs 2003

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A conceptual framework for the GECAFS scenario
exercise
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Another framework
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And an analytical framework
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Linking scenarios across scales

• Start from basic questions that project wants to
  be answered key uncertainties differ
• The storylines developed at one scale can be
  played out at another scale.
• The scenarios developed at a higher scale can be
  used as boundary conditions for lower scale
  scenarios, which then develop their own
  storyline.
• The underlying assumptions and world views played
  out in the scenarios developed at one level, can
  be applied to developing scenarios at another
  level.
• (Use no global scenarios at all no links and
  map back)
• -gt leave flexibility!!!
• The scenarios developed at a higher scale can be
  used to create scenarios about policy and
  management options currently discussed at a lower
  scale.

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Possible building blocks for the GECAFS scenarios
(1)

• Driving forces changing food systems, GEC and
  their interactions
• Demographics
• Economic development
• Science and technology
• Socio-political developments
• Cultural drivers
• Bio-physical drivers
• Indicators of food security, food systems
• Thresholds, irreversible trends in GEC and
  ecological feed back loops

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Possible building blocks for the GECAFS scenarios
(2)

• Existing scenario exercises
• Global scenarios that describe a wide range of
  plausible futures
• Global scenarios that focus on changes in GEC
• Regional scenarios carried out in the GECAFS areas

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Results of the 1st GECAFS scenarios workshop

• Define a set of generic, qualitative global
  scenarios based on existing scenario exercises
  and modeling efforts
• Build more detailed qualitative-quantitative
  regional scenarios, based on the GECAFS global
  scenarios, for the GECAFS project regions which
  focus on issues important to the region and
• Design an iterative process on how both scenario
  processes can inform and update each other.

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Objectives for 2nd GECAFS scenarios workshop

• Identify which global drivers included in
  existing global scenarios are most relevant to
  food systems
• Determine which elements of existing scenario
  storylines are most important for GECAFS scenario
  building efforts
• Establish four global scenarios for GECAFS
  analyses
• Develop and decide on options for linking
  scenario exercises across scales and/or develop
  multi-scale scenarios for GECAFS

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Options for GECAFS process

• Scenarios of possible alternative baselines,
  build on different paradigms about the future,
  REGIONAL food system related policy void
• Handed down to regions
• Feedback to global scenarios
• Describe coping strategies at regional level,
  unless they are really changing
• Scenarios already show different outcomes of
  interactions between GEC and food policy
  responses -gt interplay between actions and
  outcomes
• More complete picture
• Evaluation of different options