Anticipating Change:
Scenarios as a Tool for Adaptive Forest Management

A Guide

L. Wollenberg with D. Edmunds and L. Buck

No one can ever know the future, but we can often better prepare for it. This manual is about how people can use future scenarios to better prepare for change and uncertainty. In the following pages we introduce scenarios as a tool to plan creatively about the future. We describe several types of future scenario-based methods and provide principles to guide the reader in their use. We show how scenarios can be used as tools to tap the imagination to anticipate the future.

Contents

A. Introduction

• Why Scenarios?
• What are Scenarios
• The Role of Scenarios in Adaptive Management

B. Getting Ready

• Choosing a Purpose
• Choosing a Kind of Scenario
• Selecting Participants, Facilitators, Modes of Communication and Setting

C. The Methods

• Vision Scenarios
• Projection Scenarios
• Pathway Scenarios
• Alternative Scenarios

D. Conclusion

E. References