Towards a climate-resilient future together. A toolbox with participatory foresight methods, tools and examples from climate and food governance

Abstract

Human settlements, both urban and rural, face numerous challenges at once: adapting to the impacts of climate change, improving sustainability and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, soil subsidence, urbanisation and renewal, increasing housing demand and goals, unemployment and other economic challenges, and a need for more social cohesion. While governments have knowhow and budgets, and are now developing plans and scenarios for a climate resilience and sustainable settlements, it is the local citizens who will be living in these settlements. Consequently, they should be involved in designing, planning, and building their future environment. However, while many governments are experimenting with citizen participation, it can be difficult to set up meaningful and engaging collaboration between policymakers, citizens, and other local and regional actors. It may be particularly challenging for ‘foresight’ or ‘futures’ processes, which focus on designing future visions and scenarios. Much has been written on the technical aspects of scenario methods, but there is little practical guidance on what might make it engaging to citizens. For citizens, it may feel too technical or distant. Rather than recruiting citizens into what feels like a technical process, it should be an actual collaboration. This toolkit offers practical guidance, tools, and tips on how to set up such collaborations in thinking about and jointly developing the future. The toolkit collects and showcases some of the lessons learned from several international research programs on citizen engagement in the form of a practical exercises and advice on how to apply them. These programs include CoCliServ (Co-development of place-based climate services for Action; funded by EU JPI Climate/ERA4CS), CCAFS (Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security; funded by CGIAR global research partnership), and Utrecht University’s Water, Climate and Future Deltas program. The latter funded the development of this toolkit. In addition to playing a role in the training modules being developed by these, we envision that it may provide inspiration and guidance for other policymakers, consultants and researchers involved in collaboratively tackling local and regional future challenges.