Workshop October 2020

October 2020 – Over the course of three days from 20-22 October 2020, 40 stakeholders from the economic, governance and civil society sectors as well as academic experts participated in the first SHAPE multi-stakeholder workshop.

The workshop was the main event of the first phase of the SHAPE multi-stakeholder dialogue which started in June 2020. It provided an opportunity for in-depth discussion of the underlying narratives for a new set of target-seeking scenarios, the Sustainable Development Pathways (SDPs) that are being developed and analysed in the course of the SHAPE project. 

In multiple thematic sessions and break-out groups our workshop participants discussed sustainable futures for different “dimensions” of the narratives (sectors such as energy and land, governance, or the future of work). They further discussed the dimensions’ interrelations, and how to combine them into multidimensional narratives for SDPs. The workshop more specifically aimed at developing a joint understanding among SHAPE’s stakeholders about core branching points (or pathway bifurcations) for each dimension. The branching point approach** is thereby part of the SHAPE methodology to integrate different options for pathways towards sustainable development into the SDP narratives. Prior to the workshop, focal topics for the discussions were derived from a questionnaire that was sent to the stakeholder group beforehand. 

  
The SHAPE multi-stakeholder dialogue is an ongoing process which started with an online information seminar in June 2020, followed by a questionnaire circulated from July to September, and the workshop in October.  For more information on the workshop procedure, please refer to the agenda below. A detailed report is available here. 

We thank all our stakeholders and their organisations very much for their invaluable contributions and their time dedicated to the SHAPE project during this first phase of the dialogue. The SHAPE multi-stakeholder dialogue will continue throughout 2021.

Agenda

 **developed by Aguiar at al., Co-designing global target-seeking scenarios: A cross-scale participatory process for capturing multiple perspectives on pathways to sustainability, Global Environmental Change, Volume 65, 2020, 102198, ISSN 0959-3780, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102198.