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Developing Socioeconomic Scenarios for Use in Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessments
Summary:
Developing Socioeconomic Scenarios for Use in Vulnerability and Adaptation Assessments
Malone, Elizabeth L., Joel B. Smith, Antoinette L. Brenkert, Brian Hurd, Richard H. Moss, and Daniel Bouille
UNDP, New York, US, 48pp
April 2004
Overview
This handbook provides a framework for developing integrated socio-economic scenarios that can function at the local, national, and regional and/or global levels. The handbook aims to improve the construction of socio-economic scenarios in two ways. First, it broadens the scope of factors to be included. Second, the handbook focuses on the local sectors that are most relevant for policy, agriculture and water resources.
Summary
Developing socioeconomic scenarios of the future is important because socioeconomic changes may substantially increase or decrease vulnerability to climate change. For example, as populations grow, human activities that pollute may increase and habitats may be fragmented. Together, these changes may increase the vulnerability of some aspects of human welfare. If the economy grows and technologies can be developed, vulnerability may be reduced in some sectors but possibly increased in others. These interactive changes can be explored (although not predicted) through the development of alternative socioeconomic scenarios of the future.
The purpose of this handbook is to assist countries in developing socioeconomic scenarios, in conjunction with the Adaptation Policy Framework (UNDP, 2004), for analyses of vulnerability and adaptation as part of their national communications under the UNFCCC. This handbook is organized to provide guidance in a systematic unifying framework that functions at differing spatial scales: locally at the sectoral level, with or without integration of the sectors; nationally, with integration of the sectors; multinationally (regionally) and/or globally, taking account of cross-border impacts.
