Combining theory and wisdom in pragmatic, scenario-based decision support for sustainable development

Abstract

Researchers have increasingly acknowledged the relative strength of ‘hybrid’ approaches to scenario analysis for exploring the futures of coupled human-nature systems. In this paper, we explain, demonstrate, and provisionally evaluate the usefulness of a simple analytical framework, based on five categories of capital assets, as part of a protocol for overcoming the conversion problem in hybrid scenario analysis. Based on a preliminary application of the framework to a case study in South Africa, we suggest that the five capitals framework has the potential to improve expedience and counter the bias against ‘soft’ drivers in hybrid approaches to scenario analysis. However, in light of the methodological trade-off between rigour and expedience, we suggest that future research needs to compare the available protocols for hybrid scenario analysis by weighing up the relative gain in scenario quality versus the relative cost of scenario construction.

Keywords:

• scenario analysis
• sustainable development
• decision support
• five capitals
• story-and-simulation

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the South African Maize Trust for providing financial support to this research project, as well as the workshop panellists for their participation and insight. This study also benefited greatly from the valuable comments and suggestions provided by R.M. Hassan. The views expressed and all errors in this paper remain the sole responsibility of the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Building on the careful work of Kosow (2015), we similarly adopt Hinkel's (2008, 44) sense of the terms ‘methodology’ and ‘methodological approach’ as the “specific configuration of methods, data and people involved in solving a problem”.

2. Following Ostrom and Ahn (2009, 8), we include under the rubric of social capital the “cultural, social and institutional aspects of communities of various sizes [which] jointly affect their capacity of dealing with collective-action problems”. Therefore, we aggregate categories which are elsewhere referred to as ‘cultural’, ‘knowledge’ (in the sense of socially-held knowledge or knowledge technology; i.e. distinct from knowledge that constitutes human capital) and ‘institutional’ capital (e.g. Dasgupta 2015). Using an aggregated version of social capital is in keeping with the aggregate characteristic of other capital asset classes (such as exhaustible, replenishable and renewable natural resources falling under the class of natural capital, for instance).

3. Given that categories of capitals are being used here as a type of conceptual filing system, they are applicable regardless of the GDP/ level of development of a region or country.

4. In particular, social capital can be thought of as an enabling asset working as part of total factor productivity, just as in the case of technology (Dasgupta 2009, 2015).

5. Key uncertainties discussed also included disruptive changes, including, among others, climate change impacts on mining and agriculture, game-changing technology breakthroughs, and regional and global political trade relations (see appendices of BFAP 2015). However, these disruptive factors were deemed by the scenario panel to be less important than governance and prices, especially during the 2035 timeframe.

6. To quantitatively depict the effect of different plausible futures on the South African agricultural sector, BFAP's ‘sector model’ was used to model the impacts of scenarios on agricultural production, consumption, prices and trade. Additionally, BFAP's ‘healthy food baskets model’ was used to illustrate the potential impact of scenarios on food affordability. Further information regarding these models can be found in BFAP (2015, 2016).

7. Although, the transparency of the conversion process would have been further improved if the conversion process had included panellists in a participatory approach, accompanied by comprehensive documentation of the panellists' discussions regarding the underlying reasoning for the states of capital assets and the semi-quantification of key indicators (see Discussion in Section 5.2).