Towards extended shared socioeconomic pathways: A combined participatory bottom-up and top-down methodology with results from the Barents region

A major challenge in planning for adaptation to climate change is to assess future development not only in relation to climate but also in relation to social, economic and political changes that affect the capacity for adaptation or otherwise play a role in decision making. One approach is to use scenario methods. This article presents a methodology that combines top-down scenarios and bottom-up approaches to scenario building, with the aim of articulating local so-called extended socio-economic pathways. Specifically, we used the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) of the global scenario framework as developed by the climate research community to present boundary conditions about potential global change in workshop discussion with local and regional actors in the Barents region. We relate the results from these workshops to the different elements of the global SSPs and discuss potential and limitations of the method in relation to use in decision making processes.