Scenarios and Surprises: When Change Is the Only Given1

Summary

Relationships between extractive industries and local northern communities are under intensive discussion. Scenarios are a way to explore uncertain futures and have been used for envisioning potential consequences of climate-related and political changes in the Arctic. However, existing Arctic scenarios do not target the relationship between extractive industries and local communities. By combining a review of published scenarios with insights from a series of scenario workshops carried out across Nordic Arctic, we have identified a series of wild cards that would have major implications for relations between extractive projects and local communities. By connecting these to existing general scenario archetypes, we enrich the established scenario narratives on plausible Arctic futures. We furthermore suggest linking participatory scenario exercises with efforts to elucidate the impacts of different drivers of change to examine the social-ecological-technological systems in which mining and local communities are embedded. Such efforts would be relevant for developing a more robust and anticipatory/proactive knowledge base for making political decisions about extractive industries.