FAQ
What is the desired impact of this project?
Who are the targeted users of SHAPE’s work?
What are the reasons to use the SHAPE scenarios – the SDPs?
Can you provide an overview of what the SDP scenarios entail?
How is SHAPE handling issues that IAMs don’t capture well?
Which models do you use in SHAPE to run the new SDP scenarios?
Can you provide an overview of how the new SDP scenarios were co-created so far?
Who are the stakeholders involved in the process so far?
Why contribute to the creation of Sustainable Development Pathway (SDP) scenarios?
What did the first stakeholder workshop in autumn entail?
What will the second stakeholder workshop in April 2022 entail?
Did you conduct any stakeholder activities in between the two workshops?
What is the desired impact of this project?
SHAPE is investigating interactions between options to mitigate climate change and the broader agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The project team intends to develop and disseminate in-depth analysis of Sustainable Development Pathways (SDPs) that achieve the long-term objectives of the Paris Agreement and the SDGs.
By showing concretely how climate action shapes and is shaped by progress on other SDGs, SHAPE wants to support more informed decision-making by the broad range of governmental and non-state actors involved in implementing the 2030 Agenda. “Breaking the silos” is not just a cliché – it is an ongoing challenge for applied integrative assessments involving efforts towards better models, better combinations of quantitative / modelling approaches, and better connections to qualitative social science research. At these academic frontiers, SHAPE is integrating industrial ecology and nexus research, and is deepening links with governance and social-ecological resilience scholarship to deal better with the assumptions and simplifications of integrated assessment modelling (IAM).
The SHAPE team also sees opportunities for linking scholarly work and societal impact through ongoing stakeholder engagement: the team’s policy and business-engaged research centres are tackling the persistent challenge of linking global-level integrated analysis with context-situated knowledge co-development approaches.
Can you provide a short overview of the co-developing approach and the content of the Sustainable Development Pathway (SDP) scenarios?
Please take a look at the short videos on the approach taken in SHAPE and three exemplary SDP scenarios.
Who are the targeted users of SHAPE’s work?
We expect the scenarios of the Sustainable Development Pathways (SDPs) to be used by actors from governmental and non-governmental sectors alike, using the insights of the SDPs for their action on climate and sustainability. This can for instance be in climate negotiations or at forums such as the High Level Political Forum (HLPF) for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda’s SDGs, and also as inputs to IPCC and IPBES analyses. For instance, future Global Sustainable Development Reports could apply a coherent set of scenarios covering the 2030 Agenda, rather than the selection of scenarios with partial coverage that they have had to rely on so far.
We also target research users of SHAPE’s outputs beyond the SDPs themselves, including our new methodologies for integrative research – for instance, in our focal areas on sustainable consumption and production, and cross-scale / Earth system governance.
What are the reasons to use the SHAPE scenarios – the SDPs?
Existing scenarios tend to be designed around sectors or specific policy issues (e.g., climate, energy, biodiversity). SHAPE has been funded with the explicit objective of dealing with the multidimensional challenges of action for the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement.
SHAPE’s scenarios will offer a broader view than previous scenario approaches on how multiple SDGs of the 2030 Agenda can be achieved simultaneously.
Can you provide an overview of what the SDP scenarios entail?
Please take a look at the short video! In the video, we present three exemplary SDP scenarios that are currently explored in more detail.
Why are you using target-seeking scenarios? How are they different from the classic definition of exploratory scenarios?
One type of scenario explores projections of what could happen. These scenarios involve envisioning futures, and often focus on scoping the range of possibilities as widely as possible, including dystopian futures.
Target-seeking scenarios are a second type. They are not just visions of alternative possible futures, rather they help identify pathways from the present to specific future outcomes. In the case of SHAPE these specific outcomes are the internationally agreed upon Paris climate targets and the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda. Target-seeking scenarios seek to narrow down a focus onto embedded strategies.
Target-seeking scenarios are not new, but they present particular challenges for quantitative modeling. Not least, the targets themselves must be precisely and unambiguously formulated. Target-seeking scenarios have been explored in the context of the 2°C and 1.5°C climate scenarios for the IPCC, for instance, and also in the utopian (normative) scenarios in various environmental and sustainability contexts.
The two types of scenarios do not contradict each other. In SHAPE we have both in mind. The project’s focus is to acknowledge that there are multiple ways of achieving the SDGs, and this is done by developing a set of 3-5 different Sustainable Development Pathways (SDPs). But we will not only calculate sustainable development pathways as we also want to compare scenarios which achieve the SDGs to those that do not.
How is SHAPE handling issues that IAMs don’t capture well?
The SHAPE team brings several research teams together in a new consortium precisely to handle some key areas that are missing or weakly captured in current integrated assessment models (IAMs). Notably: insights from governance research about how society steers itself and what constitutes sustainability transformations; analysis of material flows in the economy (complementing macroeconomic flows); and nexus approaches dealing with land and water as well as climate and energy systems.
Dialogue approaches, embodying SHAPE’s co-development ethos, are an important way to handle the non-quantifiable aspects of integrative assessment for the SDGs.
How well will the SDP scenarios reflect as well as relate to the variety of contextual conditions in different countries across the world?
The main outputs of SHAPE will focus on global insights about the SDPs. At the same time, the models will generate results for different regions of the world, allowing us to gain some insight into different contexts for each of the developed scenarios.
Our scenarios were co-developed with social scientists and we highlighted the different governance conditions among countries. We also considered how these conditions (e.g. historical experience, postcolonial settings) can be reflected in the scenarios. In case you are interested, you can find a publicly available SHAPE paper on this topic here.
Which models do you use in SHAPE to run the new SDP scenarios?
Specifically in SHAPE, we work with three large IAMs (Integrated Assessment Models). These are the IMAGE model, the REMIND-MAgPIE model and the MESSAGEix-GLOBIOM model. Additional modeling input comes from the industrial ecology model EXIOfuture+ODYM-RECC. However, it is important to note that the newly developed SDP scenarios are meant to be used widely and by different modeling teams also beyond the scope of the SHAPE project.
- IMAGE: Model on global environmental change
- MESSAGEix-GLOBIOM: Energy and land use model
- REMIND-MAgPIE: Energy-economy model and land use
- EXIOfuture+ODYM-RECC: Input-output scenario and material flow models
You can find more detailed information on the IAMs, following these links:
IMAGE: www.pbl.nl/image
MESSAGE: https://iiasa.ac.at/web/home/research/researchPrograms/Energy/MESSAGE.en.html
REMIND-MAgPIE: https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/institute/departments/transformation-pathways/models/remind
Are there any precedents that can say something about the impact SHAPE could have in the global debate?
SHAPE partners have been involved in many scenario development processes, including the SSP/RCP framework for studies of both mitigation pathways and climate impacts, as well as the “Bending the Curve” approach for biodiversity. Their applications of model-based scenario studies have already had impact via intergovernmental processes on climate, biodiversity, energy, etc., which is how we know the need to take more integrative steps in SHAPE’s priority areas of the climate-land-water-energy nexus, sustainable consumption and production, inequality and governance.
SHAPE team members have also been actively involved in the strategic scientific development of The World In 2050, which has the potential to amplify the experience of this one project across the growing TWI2050 network of actors at a key sustainability science-policy-society interface.
Can you provide an overview of how the new SDP scenarios were co-created so far?
Please take a look at our short video about the approach taken in SHAPE to co-create the new scenarios.
Who are the stakeholders involved in the process so far?
Our stakeholder panel includes:
- Actors from government, business and civil society involved in international debates and developments for SDG strategy and implementation
- Experts broadly covering the “5Ps” of the 2030 Agenda (people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership) especially from intergovernmental organizations with a global perspective
- Participants in science-policy-society interfaces in other regions of the world, extending from SHAPE’s mainly European network - especially where there may be opportunities for international synergies with SHAPE’s national / EU research funding
- Other academics and practitioners involved in scenario creation and use, especially from contexts where method innovations are happening to increase diversity and participation (e.g., the IPBES processes)
Why contribute to the creation of Sustainable Development Pathway (SDP) scenarios?
Participating in our scenario process gives stakeholders the opportunity to shape a new generation of global sustainable development pathways with an unprecedented coverage of SDG targets and interactions. As we want to represent different possible pathways towards the SDGs, we explicitly seek feedback from a diverse stakeholder community. Embedding diversity of perspectives gives a better representation of complex reality, helping ensure that the project’s eventual outputs and pathways can be more useful and more grounded in real-world application contexts. The process of participation in SHAPE’s research itself helps strengthen international science-policy-society interfaces, by developing more supportive processes and structures for handling plurality of objectives and viewpoints in the “toolkit” of key global assessments.
What did the first stakeholder workshop in autumn 2020 entail?
The first SHAPE stakeholder workshop aimed at delving into themes and topics to be addressed in the narratives underlying the new SDP scenarios. An important basis for the content of the workshop was a preceding questionnaire. The main workshop discussions and activities ran on three afternoons (2:00-5:30pm) 20-22 October 2020, in the Zoom environment. Please find detailed documentation of the first stakeholder workshop in our Workshop Report and here.
What will the second stakeholder workshop in April 2022 entail?
In the second SHAPE stakeholder workshop, we will discuss a first round of modeling results and implications of strategies embedded in the modeled sustainable development pathways (SDP scenarios). By discussing and reviewing the modeling results together with our stakeholder group, we aim at fostering discussions around nexus issues (climate, land, energy, water, nature), and inequality and human well-being. Feedback will be given to our modelers who are then going to refine SHAPE’s modeling work in progress.
The second stakeholder workshop is scheduled for the week 4-8 April 2022 in the Zoom environment. We envisage a mix of different kinds of sessions, including optional activities, so everyone can contribute actively all the time that we are virtually together. More details will be provided closer to the event.
If you are interested in participating in our SHAPE multi-stakeholder workshop, please get in touch with merle.remy@iass-potsdam.de or sofia.cortes@su.se.
Did you conduct any stakeholder activities in between the two workshops?
We conducted two online information sessions together with our stakeholders, one took place in May 2021 and the other in December 2021. For more information about these events, please have a look at the respective reports.