Envisioning an Uncertain Climate Future: Space, Learning, and Resources in a Participatory Scenario Building Activity
Open Access
- Author:
- Dietrich, Kathleen Ann
- Graduate Program:
- Geography
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- October 31, 2012
- Committee Members:
- Petra Tschakert, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Robert George Crane, Committee Member
Brian King, Committee Member
Esther Susana Prins, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Scenario building
climate change adaptation
space
learning
envisioning
Ghana
participatory action research - Abstract:
- Researchers and practitioners are increasingly using envisioning approaches to learn about and propose responses to possible uncertain futures, including under climate change. Participatory scenario building is one envisioning tool that brings together facilitators and participants to merge local experiential knowledge with exogenous knowledge to explore uncertainty. Yet, in practice, we do not sufficiently understand scenario building as a tool for climate change adaptation. This dissertation assesses a participatory scenario building activity for climate change adaptation with rural communities in Ghana. Using participatory observation, textual analysis, and interviews, this assessment tracks the scenario building activity from the development of the method by American and Ghanaian researchers and Ghanaian non-governmental organization facilitators through the implementation of a series of iterative activities in four communities. I organize my analysis using three concepts from scholarship on participatory action research: space, learning, and resources. First, I identify the material and discursive characteristics of spaces in the case study scenario building activity to understand the processes of learning and envisioning. I use the notion of space to explore the characteristics and processes that enable learning and envisioning in the spaces of the case study activity. Second, I describe the cycles of action and reflection that constitute learning during the development and implementation of the scenario building activity. I document the iterative, multi-level learning across the groups of actors involved in the activity and identify what enables learning for climate change adaptation when applying a scenario building approach. Finally, I explore the resources, defined by Kesby (2007) as discourses, knowledge, and practices applied in a participatory research activity, that participants and facilitators used to recognize the uncertainties associated with climate change. This analytical framework reveals the ability of participants to acknowledge uncertainty under climate change, as well the challenges to embracing such uncertainty through scenario building.The three analyses together enabled the identification of the components that facilitate envisioning an uncertain climate future in the case study scenario building activity. This has significance for understanding how envisioning is enacted to address the challenges of climate change and facilitate alternative futures with participating actors as agents of change.