Field Guide to the Future
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"Field Guide to the Future" is a practical, step-by-step manual for using scenario-based methods in communities. The guide explain methods to help communities think ahead and plan for change. These methods are: Scenarios, Projections, Visioning and Pathways.
"Field Guide to the Future" is the latest in a series of CIFOR books that explain methods to help communities think ahead and plan for change. The field guide begins with a brief discussion about communities that depend on natural resources, thinking about the future and why it is important for communities to think ahead. Next, we briefly introduce four methods for thinking about the future, describing hypothetical situations where each might be applied. We provide a comparative matrix to make it easier to decide between methods in a given context. We then discuss concepts such as participation, mental maps, uncertainty and complexity. In the second section "Getting Ready" we explain how to plan for an exercise in thinking ahead in a community, with suggestions for organizing an event, selecting participants and monitoring progress. The third section "Facilitating the Methods Step by Step" delves into the details.
The guide has been written in straightforward language and organized as a teaching tool to facilitate the use of the methods without additional training.
In the preparation of this field guide, the authors collaborated with communities in many parts of the world, particularly in tropical forest margins, and now share experiences, lessons learned and methods used by those communities, so that other communities can use them to prepare for the future.
Partners and sponsors
The Field Guide to the Future is a collaborative effort between the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), ASB - Partnership for the Tropical Forests Margins, the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) Secretariat. This field guide is part of a CIFOR project, Stakeholders and Biodiversity in the Forest at the Local Level, funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), and the ongoing ASB Scenarios project, funded by the Government of the Netherlands through its Programme for Cooperation with International Institutes (SII) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The MA Secretariat provided conceptual guidance, training and technical support for the ASB Scenarios project.
Field guide to the Future: Four Ways for Communities to Think Ahead (3.4MB)