Editing IPCC:AR6/WGII/Chapter-1 (section)

=== 1.2.2 Narratives, Storylines, Scenarios and Pathways ===

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The concepts of narratives, storylines, scenarios and pathways play an important role in this report. While distinct concepts, they are inter-related and sometimes confused.

A '''narrative''' is a story with a chronological order or, when cast in the form of an argument, with premises and conclusions ( [[#Roe--1991|Roe, 1991]] ; [[#Adger--2001|Adger et al., 2001]] ). Narratives enable people to envision what various potential futures may mean for environments and livelihoods, and in this way facilitate the development of scenarios for the future ( [[#Miller--2015|Miller et al., 2015]] ). Narratives can also play a key role in enabling collective action (Section 1.5) by helping disparate groups co-create a common vision of a desirable future and achieve a common understanding of actions needed to move towards that future ( [[#Linnér--2019|Linnér and Wibeck, 2019]] ; [[#Muiderman--2020|Muiderman et al., 2020]] ).

A narrative contains a storyline in addition to a set of actors ( [[#Elliott--2005|Elliott, 2005]] ). A '''storyline''' is a series of events including their causal connections within a narrative. The IPCC and climate change literature more broadly often use the terms storylines and narratives interchangeably ( [[#O’Neill--2017|]] [[#O’Neill--2017|O’Neill et al., 2017]] ; see also WGI Cross-Chapter Box 6 in Chapter 1; Sections 1.4.4; 10.5.3). A '''scenario storyline''' refers to a narrative description of a scenario including its main characteristics, relationships between driving forces and how these factors evolve (AR6 WGI Section 1.4.4.2, [[#Chen--2021|Chen et al., 2021]] ). Storylines are used to assess risks related to low-likelihood, but high-impact events ( [[#Sutton--2018|Sutton, 2018]] ). In this use of the terms, narratives and storylines do not include specific actors. There is also a critical literature on the use of narratives and storylines based on projected scenarios, which points out the conservative character of these concepts whose performative effect tends to preserve the status quo and the current socioeconomic relationships. ( [[#Malm--2014|Malm and Hornborg, 2014]] ; [[#Chollet--2015|Chollet and Felli, 2015]] ; [[#Lövbrand--2015|Lövbrand et al., 2015]] ; [[#Demortain--2019|Demortain, 2019]] ; [[#Theys--2019|Theys and Cornu, 2019]] ).

Standard research communication may fail to engage policymakers, media and the public at large (WGI AR6 Section 1.2.4, [[#Chen--2021|Chen et al., 2021]] ). Rather, policies and decision making tend to be based on narratives and storylines ( [[#Roe--1994|Roe, 1994]] ; [[#Roe--2017|Roe, 2017]] ). Although mathematical models and narratives are often presumed to be antithetical, in practice they may be complementary and work together ( [[#Morgan--2017|Morgan and Wise, 2017]] ). Communicating research insights through storylines and narratives may have a better chance of transmitting key messages. AR6 employs these communication tools in many places, for instance storylines for constructing and communicating regional climate information or climate services (WGI AR6 Chapter 10, [[#Doblas-Reyes--2021|Doblas-Reyes et al., 2021]] ; WGI AR6 Chapter 12, [[#Ranasinghe--2021|Ranasinghe et al., 2021]] ) or ‘low likelihood high warming storylines’ (Chapter 4). To better communicate deep uncertainty in sea level rise projections, WGI uses storylines to describe the physical events that would have to unfold to generate its high-end estimates (Cross-Chapter Box DEEP in Chapter 17).

'''Scenarios''' are defined in IPCC reports as plausible descriptions of how the future may develop, based on a coherent and internally consistent set of assumptions about key driving forces (e.g., rate of technological change, prices) and relationships (Annex II: Glossary). Scenarios are neither predictions nor forecasts but rather ‘foresights’, which imply envisioning challenging futures ( [[#Vervoort--2018|Vervoort and Gupta, 2018]] ). Scenarios are used to provide a view of the potential consequences and implications of developments and actions in a ‘what-if’ mode of exploring the future (AR6 WGIII Section 1.5.1; AR6 WGI Section 1.6.1, [[#Chen--2021|Chen et al., 2021]] ). They may be presented as numerical or mental models. Climate change scenarios are generated by climate modellers to highlight possible alternative GHG emission pathways and are used to develop and integrate projections of emissions and their climate change impacts and for analysing and contrasting climate policy choices. Cross-Chapter Box CLIMATE in [https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/chapter/chapter-1 Chapter 1] describes scenarios used in this report.

Pathways are one element of a larger scenario ( [[#O’Neill--2017|]] [[#O’Neill--2017|O’Neill et al., 2017]] ), focusing on just one element of a larger system of drivers, emissions or concentrations. Scenarios provide one means to represent deep uncertainty when there is disagreement or uncertainty about conceptual models (Cross-Chapter Box DEEP in Chapter 17; [[#IPCC--2019b|IPCC, 2019b]] ). In addition, scenarios provide several important functions in decision support. A lack of strong association with probabilities enables scenarios to promote buy-in from parties to a decision who hold different expectations about the future, helping them to expand the range of futures and options they consider. The process of generating scenarios can serve as the focus of participatory stakeholder exercises and processes, and scenarios can also be used to support risk management by stress-testing alternative policies and identifying robust and adaptive policies under conditions of deep uncertainty (Cross-Chapter Box DEEP in Chapter 17).

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