Co-designing global target-seeking scenarios: A cross-scale participatory process for capturing multiple perspectives on pathways to sustainability

Here we propose a novel approach to co-design global target-seeking scenarios, consisting of (a) capturing global perspectives on pathways to the SDGs through a review of existing global scenarios; (b) a multi-stakeholder process to obtain multiple sub-global perspectives on pathways to sustainability; (c) an analysis of convergences, and crucially, divergences between global and regional perspectives on pathways to reach the SDGs, feeding into the design of new target-seeking scenario narratives.

As a case study, we use the results of the 2018 African Dialogue on The World in 2050, discussing the future of agriculture and food systems. The identified divergent themes emerging from our analysis included urbanization, population growth, agricultural practices, and the roles of different actors in the future of agriculture.

The results challenge some of the existing underlying assumptions of the current sustainability-oriented global scenarios (e.g. population growth, urbanisation, agricultural practices), indicating the relevance and timeliness of the proposed approach. We suggest that similar approaches can be replicated in other contexts to better inform the process of sustainability-oriented scenario co-design across scales, regions and cultures. In addition, we highlight the implications of the approach for scenario quantification and the evolution of modeling tools.