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Synthesizing plausible futures for biodiversity and ecosystem services in europe and central asia using scenario archetypes
2019, Harrison, Paula A., Harmáčková, Zuzana V., Karabulut, Armağan Aloe, Brotons, Lluis, Cantele, Matthew, Claudet, Joachim, Dunford, Robert W., Guisan, Antoine, Holman, Ian P., Jacobs, Sander, Kok, Kasper, Lobanova, Anastasia, Morán-Ordóñez, Alejandra, Pedde, Simona, Rixen, Christian, Santos-Martín, Fernando, Schlaepfer, Martin A., Solidoro, Cosimo, Sonrel, Anthony, Hauck, Jennifer
Scenarios are a useful tool to explore possible futures of social-ecological systems. The number of scenarios has increased dramatically over recent decades, with a large diversity in temporal and spatial scales, purposes, themes, development methods, and content. Scenario archetypes generically describe future developments and can be useful in meaningfully classifying scenarios, structuring and summarizing the overwhelming amount of information, and enabling scientific outputs to more effectively interface with decision-making frameworks. The Intergovernmental Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) faced this challenge and used scenario archetypes in its assessment of future interactions between nature and society. We describe the use of scenario archetypes in the IPBES Regional Assessment of Europe and Central Asia. Six scenario archetypes for the region are described in terms of their driver assumptions and impacts on nature (including biodiversity) and its contributions to people (including ecosystem services): Business-as-usual, economic optimism, regional competition, regional sustainability, global sustainable development, and inequality. The analysis shows that trade-offs between nature’s contributions to people are projected under different scenario archetypes. However, the means of resolving these trade-offs depend on differing political and societal value judgements within each scenario archetype. Scenarios that include proactive decision making on environmental issues, environmental management approaches that support multifunctionality, and mainstreaming environmental issues across sectors, are generally more successful in mitigating tradeoffs than isolated environmental policies. Furthermore, those scenario archetypes that focus on achieving a balanced supply of nature’s contributions to people and that incorporate a diversity of values are estimated to achieve more policy goals and targets, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi targets. The scenario archetypes approach is shown to be helpful in supporting science-policy dialogue for proactive decision making that anticipates change, mitigates undesirable trade-offs, and fosters societal transformation in pursuit of sustainable development. © 2019 by the author(s).
Pre- And post-adoption beliefs about the diffusion and continuation of biogas-based cooking fuel technology in Pakistan
2019, Yasmin, N., Grundmann, P.
A high level of acceptance and adoption is necessary to facilitate the widespread utilization of renewable energy technologies for cooking, as such utilization is essential for displacing the population's massive dependence on fossil fuels and solid biomass. Economic and demographic aspects have been the focus of recent literature in exploring the adoption phenomenon of biogas technology. However, literature to date has given little attention to the behavioral factors and the perceptions of the end-users. Our study does not only include behavioral factors, but it employs a hybrid model to explore the continued attentions of users based on their post-adoption beliefs and performance expectations. Using a survey conducted in Pakistan in 2017, the study conducts a multivariate analysis through structural equation modeling to measure the effect of pre- and post-adoption beliefs and expectation on adoption and the continuing intention of households towards biogas technology. Results show that the acceptance of the households towards biogas technology is highly influenced by their perceptions on the benefits, as well as their trust in the technology. The perceived cost and risk attached to the technology are found to be negatively correlated with the acceptance. Households' intentions to continue the use of biogas technology is highly influenced by the satisfaction level of the users of biogas technology. With the integrated model of adoption and continuation, the study illustrates the dynamic process in obtaining a deeper understanding of a user's behavior to better formulate the policies for increasing the rate of technology adoption.