Participatory Demographic Scenarios Addressing Uncertainty and Transformative Change in Ethiopia

Atsede D. Tegegne (), Marianne Penker () and Maria Wurzinger ()
Additional contact information
Atsede D. Tegegne: BOKU, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences
Marianne Penker: BOKU, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences
Maria Wurzinger: BOKU, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences

Systemic Practice and Action Research, 2016, vol. 29, issue 3, No 5, 277-296

Abstract: Abstract Projections on future population trends provide important decision support, however are confronted with high uncertainty. In contexts of low data quality, missing and contradicting knowledge on drivers of change, such as in many developing countries, participatory scenarios can support the quality of assumptions needed for quantitative projections. We present a scenario approach designed for contexts of uncertain and missing demographic data and illiteracy, which was successfully tested in three study sites in North-West Ethiopia. The four qualitative scenarios for 2030 supported the inter-subjective definition of assumptions for the calculations, which were again validated by members of the rural communities. We argue that the participation process has resulted in more robust and context-specific projections. The collaborative work on the local drivers of demographic change between science and society provided a valuable space for social learning, so that local stakeholders could identify the need for and scope of local mitigation or adaptation measures to demographic transformation.

Keywords: Participatory scenarios; Population projections; Transformative change; Uncertainty; Community research; Knowledge integration; Social learning; Ethiopia; 2030 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11213-015-9365-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:syspar:v:29:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s11213-015-9365-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11213

DOI: 10.1007/s11213-015-9365-0

Access Statistics for this article

Systemic Practice and Action Research is currently edited by Robert Flood

More articles in Systemic Practice and Action Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().