Compare methods

	Participatory Scenario Planning	Livelihood Vulnerability Index
Field	Environmental Sociology	Environmental Sociology
Family	Process / pipeline	MCDM
Year of origin	2003	2009
Originator	Garry D. Peterson, Graeme S. Cumming & Stephen R. Carpenter	Micah B. Hahn, Anne M. Riederer & Stanley O. Foster
Type	Multi-stakeholder pipeline for exploring plausible environmental futures	Composite indicator of household climate vulnerability
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.	Hahn, M. B., Riederer, A. M., & Foster, S. O. (2009). The Livelihood Vulnerability Index: A pragmatic approach to assessing risks from climate variability and change-A case study in Mozambique. Global Environmental Change, 19(1), 74-88.
Aliases	Exploratory Scenario Planning, Participatory Futures Scenarios, Stakeholder Scenario Development, Social-Ecological Scenario Planning	LVI, Hahn Livelihood Vulnerability Index, LVI-IPCC, Composite Livelihood Vulnerability Assessment
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 Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) is a composite-indicator method for assessing the vulnerability of households and communities to climate variability and change, developed by Micah Hahn, Anne Riederer and Stanley Foster in a 2009 case study in Mozambique. It is built from household survey data organized into major components — typically socio-demographic profile, livelihood strategies, social networks, health, food, water, and exposure to natural disasters and climate variability — each composed of standardized sub-indicators. These are normalized to a common scale, averaged into sub-components and weighted major components, and aggregated into an overall index. A companion formulation, the LVI-IPCC, reorganizes the same indicators into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's contributing factors of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, offering a pragmatic, data-driven way to compare vulnerability across places and to target adaptation.