Page - 15 - in options, Volume winter 2016/2017

15winter 2016/2017 + optionswww.iiasa.ac.at T his frightening vision is not a story from the latest dystopian science fiction literature. In fact, this description— and  a more extensive version that comes with a wealth of quantitative data—is the result of a long scientific process involving dozens of scientists worldwide. It  is the summary narrative of SSP3, one of the five Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). The SSPs are a set of descriptive and quantitative pathways designed for climate change research that span a wide range of feasible future developments in areas such as population, the economy, and agriculture. While SSP3 is a scary, conflict‑driven world, the other SSPs describe a variety of other potential future worlds that, for example, shift  more rapidly towards sustainability (SSP1), suffer from increasing inequality (SSP4), see rapid growth in the economy as well as fossil fuel use (SSP5), or follow a middle‑of‑the‑road scenario (SSP2) which takes elements from the other four. In addition to the narratives, the  SSPs contain quantitative data for socioeconomic factors such as population growth, land‑use change, and economic development. The SSPs are now fully operational and the data are available freely on the IIASA website. The development process resulted in two journal special issues. One, published in the journal Climatic  Change in 2015, described the conceptual framework. A  second, published in Global  Environmental Change, provides the quantitative framework for the scenarios.  “A resurgent nationalism, concerns about competitiveness and security, and regional conflicts push countries to increasingly focus on domestic or, at  most, regional issues. Policies shift over time to become increasingly oriented toward national and regional security issues. Countries focus on achieving energy and food security goals within their own regions at the expense of broader‑based development. Investments in education and technological development decline. Economic development is slow, consumption is material‑intensive, and inequalities persist or worsen over time. Population growth is low  in  industrialized and high in developing countries. A  low  international priority for addressing environmental concerns leads to strong environmental  degradation in some regions.” numberoffutures