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GLOBAL ALTERNATIVE FUTURE SCENARIOS
Citation:
White, R D. GLOBAL ALTERNATIVE FUTURE SCENARIOS. Presented at Perspectives on Risk Assessment seminar, Corvallis, OR, May 29, 2003.
Description:
One way to examine possible future outcomes for environmental protection is through the development and analysis of alternative future scenarios. This type of assessment postulates two or more different paths that social and environmental development might take, using correspondingly different sets of assumptions. The scenarios can be developed in several ways and evaluated with models to show the comparative effects on valuable social or environmental endpoints. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has completed and published, in 2002, such a scenario type assessment of the future of the world environment for the next 30 years. The UNEP scenario process involved many contributors from many countries and constructed four scenarios which they called "Markets First", "Policy First", "Security First", and "Sustainability First", where the titles are intended to represent the main priority of the scenarios. Five different modeling groups from different countries then evaluated the scenarios for changes in air quality, land use, water quality and quantity, agriculture, and ecosystems.