Workshop Report - IPCC

Annex III: Programme
IPCC Workshop on Socio-Economic Scenarios
Victor’s Residenz-Hotel, Berlin, Germany
1-3 November 2010
Agenda Background
An important feature for the upcoming 5 th IPCC Assessment Report (AR5) will be improved coherence across the
IPCC Working Groups in assessment of projected climate change, its impacts, the degree to which adaptation
and mitigation policies can reduce climate change and its impacts, and the costs of action and inaction. Meeting
this objective requires successful completion of the process currently under way for developing scenarios
incorporating the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) of GHGs and associated levels of radiative
forcing. A critical element of this process is the development of a coordinated set of qualitative narratives
describing socioeconomic futures and associated quantitative socioeconomic pathways with different
implications for societal and ecological vulnerability, and that can be used in combination with the RCPs to
facilitate coordinated analyses of climate impacts, and of adaptation and mitigation policies. The goal of the
WoSES workshop is to further the development of these socioeconomic pathways and narratives. This document
describes the approach for achieving this goal.
The morning of Day 1 will provide context and framing, including an overview of the goals of the meeting; of the
current scenario development process and its progress; and of past efforts and current approaches for
integrating qualitative and quantitative projections of future socioeconomic development into analysis of climate
impacts, adaptation, and mitigation.
The afternoon of Day 1 will focus on the key features and parameters needed in qualitative narratives and
quantitative socioeconomic pathways. These discussions will build on the progress made in past meetings, with
targeted presentations on key features previously identified and with perspectives from different user
communities. The afternoon will conclude with a set of Breakout Group (BOG) discussions of these key features
organized around user communities.
The morning of Day 2 will begin with a set of presentations proposing approaches for defining and developing a
coordinated set of narratives and pathways that span a range of socio-economic development futures and policy
environments, that can be used in combination with multiple climate futures (RCPs), and that are consistent
across spatial (e.g. global to regional) and temporal (e.g. shorter to longer-term) scales. A new set of BOGs will
build on these proposals and the Day 1 discussions. Two groups will be asked to develop concrete proposals for
the key characteristics of a coordinated set of narratives and pathways, one group focused on shorter and one
group focused on longer-term climate change impacts and policy decisions. A third group will be asked to
propose approaches for linking narratives and pathways across spatial and temporal scales.
The afternoon of Day 2 will commence with presentation and discussion of the BOG proposals, with a goal of
agreement on the definition of a set of narratives and socioeconomic pathways. Four BOGs will be formed to
each further develop one of these narrative/pathway combinations, and its relationship to the climate futures
defined by the RCPs. Day 2 will conclude with presentation of the work of these BOGs.
Day 3 will focus on the presentation of a synthesis of the progress made during Day 2 and a proposal for the
process for developing the agreed set of narratives and pathways. The meeting will conclude with discussion of
this proposal and decisions on next steps.
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