Compare methods

	Participatory Scenario Planning	Delphi Environmental Foresight
Field	Environmental Sociology	Environmental Sociology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2003	1999
Originator	Garry D. Peterson, Graeme S. Cumming & Stephen R. Carpenter	Gene Rowe & George Wright (synthesizing the RAND Delphi tradition)
Type	Multi-stakeholder pipeline for exploring plausible environmental futures	Iterative anonymous expert-elicitation pipeline with controlled feedback
Seminal source	Peterson, G. D., Cumming, G. S., & Carpenter, S. R. (2003). Scenario Planning: a Tool for Conservation in an Uncertain World. Conservation Biology, 17(2), 358-366.	Rowe, G., & Wright, G. (1999). The Delphi technique as a forecasting tool: issues and analysis. International Journal of Forecasting, 15(4), 353-375.
Aliases	Exploratory Scenario Planning, Participatory Futures Scenarios, Stakeholder Scenario Development, Social-Ecological Scenario Planning	Environmental Delphi, Policy Delphi, Delphi Expert Elicitation, Iterative Expert Consensus Survey
Related	3	3
Summary	Participatory scenario planning is a structured, multi-stakeholder method for exploring how a social-ecological system might unfold under irreducible uncertainty, rather than predicting a single most-likely future. Drawing on the scenario tradition formalized for conservation by Peterson, Cumming and Carpenter in 2003, it brings together researchers, managers, and affected communities to identify the forces driving change, isolate the critical uncertainties that matter most, and build a small set of contrasting yet plausible and internally consistent narratives. Candidate policies are then stress-tested across these alternative futures to find strategies that remain acceptable no matter which future arrives. Because the scenarios are co-produced, the method also builds shared understanding and social capital among participants who may begin with divergent interests.	The Delphi method is a structured technique for aggregating expert judgment about uncertain or future-oriented questions through several rounds of anonymous, individually completed surveys with controlled feedback between rounds. As distilled in Rowe and Wright's 1999 analysis, its defining features are anonymity, iteration, controlled feedback of the group's responses, and statistical summary of the panel's collective view. Applied to environmental foresight, Delphi is used to elicit and synthesize expert opinion on questions where hard data are sparse or absent — the timing of ecological thresholds, the plausibility of emerging risks, the priority of research needs, or the likely effectiveness of policy options. By letting experts revise their judgments in light of the anonymized group response, Delphi seeks reasoned convergence while filtering out the social pressures of face-to-face committees.