Projects

Islands

Insight Scenarios: Learning About Nature and Development Strategies

Full title of the project:

Developing participatory procedures for strategic integrated assessment: learning how to characterize and negotiate scenarios of Sustainability and Quality Tourism on small islands.

Summary

The project has the goal of tailoring an innovative procedure of Participatory Integrated Assessment of Scenarios (PIAS) to the specific challenge of producing useful analysis of development strategies based on tourism in small islands. The activity of the project will include 5 different and relevant islands, or archipelagos, of the world: (1) Galapagos (Ecuador), (2) El Hierro (Canary Islands, Spain), (3) Açores (Portugal), (4) Fernando de Noronha (Brazil), and (5) Nicobar (India).

1. The analytical tool kit suggested by the consortium

The innovative procedure is based on an analytical approach called Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis (MSIA), which has the following features:

(1) the ability of characterizing selected scenarios using an integrated package of indicators of performance (integrated analysis – economic, social, ecological, technical) which refer to different scales of analysis (multi-scale – addressing the various domains of action of relevant agents).  This implies the ability of reflecting in the resulting analysis different typologies of pros and cons as perceived on different levels - household, village, regional, national, global – and referring to different goals – max of profit, equity, reduced environmental stress, education, material standard of living, fostering existing cultural values.

(2) the ability of performing a quality check on the set of selected scenarios in terms of feasibility and viability across scales.  This check is based on a set of innovative concepts derived from Complex Systems Thinking (mosaic effects across scales, impredicative loop analysis, useful narratives to surf in complex time). An integrated use of these concept makes it possible to generate a holographic analysis of selected scenarios (combining and comparing across levels assessments of monetary, matter and energy flows against the given amount of available human time and land). Benchmark values obtained in this way, can be associated to typologies of elements (household types, hotel types, tourist types, landscape types, economy types, ecosystem types). This step is crucial, since it makes possible to: (a) compare the performance of individual elements against expected trajectories of transition; (b) verify the compatibility of the characteristics of individual elements in relation to the characteristics of the others (parts and wholes).

(3) the ability of organizing quantitative information (within a MSIA) in a problem structuring which is perfectly compatible with a simultaneous process of Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation (the development of a decision support system).  Questions to be continuously answered are: Is current problem structuring (= the definition of relevant attributes and optimizing goals in the MSIA adopted by scientists to gather quantitative information) reflecting the concerns and aspirations of local social actors?  Are the assumptions used in the models and the data used in the calculations considered credible by local social actors?  How transparent and fair has been the process of MSIA?

2. The use of such a tool kit within a procedure of participatory integrated analysis of scenarios

A Participatory Strategic Integrated Assessment (PSIA) of scenarios of development strategies based on Sustainable Quality Tourism requires the integrated use of 2 different tools: (1) Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis (MSIA) which helps to better structure the problem in scientific terms [by filtering out sloppy assumptions, unfeasible scenarios and by characterising in a useful and relevant way future options in terms of an integrated set of indicators]; and (2) Social Multi-Criteria Evaluation (SMCE) which helps to structure the decision process and guarantees a quality control on the information generated in the MSIA.  The quality of the process of interfacing of MSIA and SMCE can be boosted by the adoption of innovative methodologies such as the NUSAP approach [aimed at “quality assurance for the scientific input”] and the NAIADE framework [a software developed to deal with conflict analysis and multi-criteria evaluation].  The crucial point to be made here is that the final outcome of a process of PSIA is related to its ability of establishing a sound interface between MSIA and SMCE.   For social actors the learning of how to perceive, represent and negotiate about future development scenarios (rather than the individuation of a particular choice at a given point in space and time) should be considered as the most valuable result.

Summer School on Integrated and Participatory Analyses of Scenarios

Within the activities of Liphe4 we succesfully organise this annual summer school on Participatory Strategic Integrated Analysis of Sustainability.

The first edition, the Summer Workshop on Participatory Integrated assessment of Sustainability, was held in August 20-27, 2004, in Deutschlandsberg, Austria.

The 2nd edition, the Summer School on Developing Toolkits on Integrated and Participatory Analyses of Sustainability is going to be hold in July 17th-23rd, 2005, at the CEMACAM, in Sangonera la Verde, Murcia, Spain.

The main goal of the school is to integrate methodologies that analyse and characterise systems and their evolution, with those methodologies that help to structure the decision process in a social context.

The organization of a summer school has the aim to generate a reference point for young researchers and students in Europe who want to know the state of the art in the field of sustainable development studies.  In particular, the school wants to present a complete picture, in theory and practice, of recently developed analytic approaches toward sustainable development. For this purpose, both lectures and hands-on case-studies will form an integral part of the summer school.