Many UN-led scientific assessments are produced each year. To support these reports, modelling and scenarios help communicate possible futures, which help policymakers understand the potential implications of their decisions. To illustrate these possible futures, experts who participate in these UNEP, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), or International Resource Panel-led assessments typically review the modelling and scenarios literature. Much of this modelling and scenarios work is data-driven and/or narrative-based and based on similar socioeconomic and environmental assumptions, which means synergies across these different efforts might be possible.
The Adhoc Global Assessment Dialogue (AGAD) allows discussions across modelling and scenarios teams. This might enable collaboration by building new partnerships and leveraging the variety of inputs and outputs that this work may generate. The AGAD may also wish to discuss whether guiding the scientific community on the type of modelling and scenario work would be helpful and whether there are better ways to communicate the results of this work to non-technical policymakers.
Types of Modelling / Scenarios Practices
To discover such areas of possible collaboration across assessments, an understanding of each of the modelling and scenarios practices used in different assessment processes is needed. Information could be gathered on:
- The assumptions in baseline scenario(s) and their timeframes,
- types of data inputs and outputs, and at what temporal and geographic scale,
- The types of policy questions that the scenario analysis looks to answer,
- How linkages across environmental, social and economic domains are managed in the modelling or scenarios work and
- current approaches used to communicate results to policymakers and how successful these have been.
It is important to understand how each effort is conducted when engaging in dialogue about modelling and scenario practices.
