Global Futures & Strategic Foresight (GFSF) program enhances and uses a coordinated suite of biophysical and socioeconomic models to assess potential returns to investments in new agricultural technologies and policies. These models include IFPRI’s International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT), hydrology and water supply-demand models, and the DSSAT suite of process-based crop models. The program also provides tools and trainings to scientists and policy makers to undertake similar assessments. GFSF program is a Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) program led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

1. Scenario Analysis
By: Daniel Mason-D’Croz &
Shahnila Islam

2. What are scenarios
• Scenarios are plausible futures
• Scenarios are what-if stories used to explore
future uncertainties
• Scenarios can be told in narratives, numbers,
and even images
• Scenarios are not predictions of the future,
but are instead focused on system dynamics
and interactions and are based on knowledge
of past and current behavior

3. Moving from the Past to the Future
Future: broad
uncertainty
ForecastingPast
Present
perspective

4. Limitations of Forecasting

5. Moving from the Past to the Future
Future: broad
uncertainty
ScenariosPast
Present
perspective

6. Scenario Example

7. Who uses scenarios?
• Has a long history of use in the military
• Businesses have also used scenarios
extensively
• People do basic scenario planning every day

8. Why use scenarios?
• Scenarios provide concrete ways to deal with
future uncertainty
• They allow us to identify current and potential
challenges and institutional vulnerabilities
• Allow us to test and develop policies ex-ante
based on our current understanding of system
behavior

9. Scenario studies you may be familiar
with
• Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
• Presidential Elections
• WTO Scenarios
• WHO Scenarios

10. Models
• Models are logical constructs that represent
dynamic systems
• Models can:
– Simplify a complex system
– Highlight key behaviors and relationships
– Provide insights to the inner workings of a system
• Models cannot and do not explain everything
– Everything should be made as simple as possible,
but not simpler

11. Why use models
• Allow for pseudo-scientific experimentation in
an ex-ante environment
• Allow for the combination of diverse
assumptions on various key drivers, without
also specifying how they will effect each other
• Allow us to isolate parts of a complex system
and analyze it
• Because we can’t wait till 2050 to start
planning policies

12. What uncertainties do we test?
• Demographic shifts (population growth,
migration, aging, etc.)
• Economic growth and development
• Technological Advances
• Climate Change
• Water Resource Management

13. Standard IMPACT scenarios
• IMPACT Drivers:
– Population
– GDP
– Climate
– Technology Growth Assumptions
– Water Resource Management and Infrastructure
• Drivers are combined to create a suite of
scenarios to create an envelope of plausible
futures (worst-case, best-case, and scenarios
in between)

14. Global Future Scenarios
• Drought Tolerance
• Heat Tolerance
• Higher Yield Crops
• Pest Management Practices
• Differing Maturity Crops
• C4 Rice

15. Questions