TY - JOUR

T1 - Bridging scenario planning and backcasting

T2 - A Q-analysis of divergent stakeholder priorities for future landscapes

AU - Jiren, Tolera Senbeto

AU - Abson, David James

AU - Schultner, Jannik

AU - Riechers, Maraja

AU - Fischer, Jörn

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors. People and Nature published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.

PY - 2023/4

Y1 - 2023/4

N2 - Many landscapes in sub-Saharan Africa have undergone rapid changes, often with negative social and ecological impacts. Avoiding (or reversing) such negative impacts requires proactive landscape planning. Scenario planning, a participatory approach that generates narratives of plausible landscape change trajectories in the future, has been widely used to support landscape planning and decisions. However, not least because of challenges arising from group dynamics, few examples exist where backcasting—the collective envisioning of a desirable future landscape and the identification of pathways to reach that future—has been applied in landscape planning. In this study, building on past scenario planning work in southwestern Ethiopia, we begin to fill this empirical and methodological gap. Specifically, we used the Q-methodology to elucidate stakeholders' divergent landscape aspirations in a case study in southwestern Ethiopia. Our results show that many stakeholders share a similar vision of building a future landscape that supports smallholder-based development. However, details in the envisaged pathways differ between stakeholders. Three distinct pathways were prioritized by different stakeholders: (1) Agroecological production, (2) Coffee investment and (3) Intensive food crop production. Accounting for these divergent aspirations is important when taking further steps in landscape planning. We show how using the Q-methodology as a subjective assessment of stakeholders' landscape priorities can facilitate the integration of backcasting within the normative process of landscape planning. Our approach thus helps navigate conflicting stakeholders' preferences and based on that, carefully plan collective action towards a shared landscape vision. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

AB - Many landscapes in sub-Saharan Africa have undergone rapid changes, often with negative social and ecological impacts. Avoiding (or reversing) such negative impacts requires proactive landscape planning. Scenario planning, a participatory approach that generates narratives of plausible landscape change trajectories in the future, has been widely used to support landscape planning and decisions. However, not least because of challenges arising from group dynamics, few examples exist where backcasting—the collective envisioning of a desirable future landscape and the identification of pathways to reach that future—has been applied in landscape planning. In this study, building on past scenario planning work in southwestern Ethiopia, we begin to fill this empirical and methodological gap. Specifically, we used the Q-methodology to elucidate stakeholders' divergent landscape aspirations in a case study in southwestern Ethiopia. Our results show that many stakeholders share a similar vision of building a future landscape that supports smallholder-based development. However, details in the envisaged pathways differ between stakeholders. Three distinct pathways were prioritized by different stakeholders: (1) Agroecological production, (2) Coffee investment and (3) Intensive food crop production. Accounting for these divergent aspirations is important when taking further steps in landscape planning. We show how using the Q-methodology as a subjective assessment of stakeholders' landscape priorities can facilitate the integration of backcasting within the normative process of landscape planning. Our approach thus helps navigate conflicting stakeholders' preferences and based on that, carefully plan collective action towards a shared landscape vision. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

KW - backcasting

KW - landscape

KW - Q-methodology

KW - scenario

KW - stakeholder

KW - visioning

KW - Environmental planning

KW - Environmental Governance

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85147293827&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/713cb270-7031-3854-91ed-296f25c83cb8/

U2 - 10.1002/pan3.10441

DO - 10.1002/pan3.10441

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85147293827

VL - 5

SP - 572

EP - 590

JO - People and Nature

JF - People and Nature

SN - 2575-8314

IS - 2

ER -