STARS4Water has developed scenario narrative storylines (in short: narratives) for business as usual (BAU) developments up to 2050 for the seven river basin hubs of project, through a co-creation process with the stakeholders. The BAU scenario narratives focus on both socio-economic and biophysical variables and represent the first step in the development of water scenarios in the project. In addition, several what-if scenario questions have been formulated for each hub, as an alternative or alternating scenario to the BAU narrative in order to assess additional possible future consequences or impacts of changes. Both BAU scenario narrative and what-if scenario questions were developed for the Danube (transboundary), Drammen (Norway), Duero (Spain), East Anglia (UK), Messara (Greece), Rhine (transboundary) and Seine (France) river basins.
A common methodology was used to develop the narratives, the core aspect of which is co-creation with stakeholders to raise awareness about water resources challenges in the river basins, while arriving at meaningful water scenarios for the river basin levels.
The backbone of all the narratives is the global Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 2 (SSP2) narrative from the IPCC AR6. This SSP2, also called “The Middle of the Road”, can be understood as a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario and was inspirational for the development of the narratives. The co-creation process included the development of a matrix of anticipated changes for a number of river basin-specific socio-economic and biophysical variables as an intermediate step towards the narrative. Expected changes in variables were assessed qualitatively (either “no change” or between one and three pluses – increase, or minuses – decrease).
Twenty-four scenarios based on the “business as usual narrative” and “what-if” questions, ranging from two to eight per hub, were grouped by type of driver: climate (change), water allocation, water or environmental policy, land use change, and socioeconomic change. Climate (change) was the most popular driver, appearing in 12 scenarios and all seven river basin hubs.
In total, 62 and 43 variables appeared in the socio-economic and biophysical categories of the narratives, respectively. Some of them were exclusively proposed and used for a particular river basin. The changes in agriculture, the development of urban areas, as well as demographical issues were reported in almost all the river basin hubs. It is also interesting to stress the important role of sectoral polices, seen as important factors shaping the river basins’ development in the coming 20 years. The issue of increasing the number of hydraulic structures to respond to and fulfil the water management tasks was also raised in most of the river basin hubs.
Summary of final matrixes of anticipated changes for all the river basin hubs for the category biophysical. (Variables marked in bold were added by specific the river basin hubs compared to the common template provided)
The developed BAU scenario narratives and what-if scenario questions will be further processed within the STARS4Water project to quantify their impacts on water availability and demand in all river basin hubs using available models (like hydrological, integrated river basin, e-flow, groundwater models).
More information can be found in the following STARS4Water project Deliverable:
Okruszko, T., Giełczewski, M., Piniewski M., Habersack, H., Kloesch, M., Glas, M., Preiml, M., Scrieciu, A., Toma, A., Hegdahl, T.J., Huang, S., Hisdal, H., Martinez Santos, P., de la Hera Portillo, A., Keller, V., Rickards, N., Rees, G., Kossida, M., Monokrousou, K., Kritsotakis, M., Pantazoglou, F., ter Maat, J., Edler, T., Schasfoort, F., Duel, H., Mes, E., Kruishoop, J., Ramos, M.H., de Lavenne, A. (2024): Water scenarios for river basin hubs. Horizon Europe project STARS4Water. Deliverable D1.5.
