One of the outputs of the Coolschools project, specifically from WP 5 (Co-management paths for climate shelters), is exploring the diversity of governance challenges through a series of scenario-based workshops that actively involve key stakeholders around the design, use and maintenance of green schoolyards as nature-based climate school shelters.
In order to approach the multiple challenges of these interventions, UOC led the elaboration and piloting of the Future Scenarios Methodology, as a tool to co-design practices of stewardship that take due consideration of inclusivity and justice at the level of the school, and beyond. This is an adaptation of the participatory scenario planning (PSP) in place-based social-ecological research, which has been increasingly applied in diverse environmental research contexts during the past years, including biodiversity assessments, the management of protected areas, ecosystem services and their relationship to human well-being, climate change, and land-use change, among others (Oteros-Rozas et al. 2015). The process around conducting the Future Scenario of green schoolyards workshops were captured and represented in a short video, explaining the methodology and the ideas behind.
English Subtitles: https://youtu.be/iUos5UW_MU8
Catalan Subtitles: https://youtu.be/SPzPsXElHfs
IMPLEMENTATION
The Future Scenarios Methodology was piloted in the fall of 2023 (late October-early November) two schools in Barcelona, in series of separate workshops targeting adults and children, and in three schools in Brussels only attended by adults. The main objective of the workshops was to make participants imagine the most desirable futures for their respective schoolyards, especially considering prospects of climate change impacts in each city, as well as the steps, approaches and policies to reach these (futures) through the development of a plausible scenario, or a set of scenarios.