| SSP1 | SSP2 | SSP3 | SSP4 | SSP5 | |
| RCP8.5 | Unspecified Pacific | ||||
| no mitigation, fragmented world, reactive NZ (8.5-3-A) | |||||
| RCP6.0 | Homo Economicus | ||||
| global growth with little mitigation, NZ does minimum but adapts smartly (6.0-5-D) | |||||
| RCP4.5 | Kicking, screaming | Clean Leader | |||
| fragmented world that mitigates through power blocks, NZ dragged along (4.5-3-A) | global growth, significant mitigation, NZ leads, strategically exploits competitive advantage (4.5-5-F) | ||||
| RCP2.6 | 100% Smart | Techno-garden | |||
| global cohesive sustainability focused world with ambitious mitigation, with NZ riding front wave (2.6-1-F) | global ambitious mitigation in a cohesive rich world focused on economic gain, NZ keeps economic focus (2.6-5-B) |
What are scenarios?
Plausible stories of the future.
Why use scenarios?
Scenarios provide a coherent and consistent basis to frame, explore and discuss the implications of the future for decision making.
How are scenarios relevant to NZ?
We are developing a set of globally-linked, NZ-focused scenarios to aid exploration of the implications of possible futures for NZ decision making with differing degrees of climate change and development.
Global Scenario Architecture
There are three elements that make up the Global Scenario Architecture. These are:
- Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) globally
- Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) globally
- Shared Policy Assumptions (SPAs) about climate change
What Might Go In a Scenario?
| Demographics | • Population total and age structure |
| • Urban and rural population | |
| Economic Development | • Global and regional GDP and trends in productivity |
| • Regional, national and sub-national distribution of GDP | |
| • Share of population in extreme poverty | |
| • Nature of international trade | |
| • Sectoral structure of national economies, incl share of agriculture and agricultural land productivity | |
| Welfare | • Human development including access to public health and health care infrastructure |
| • Educational attainment | |
| Environment | • Air, water, soil quality |
| • Ecosystem functioning | |
| Resources | • Fossil fuel resources and renewable energy potentials |
| • Other resources such as phosphates, fresh water, etc | |
| Institutions | • Existence, type and effectiveness of national/regional/global institutions |
| • Degree of participation / rule of law | |
| Technology | • Type (slow, rapid, transformational...) and direction (environmental, efficiency, productivity...) |
| • Innovation in specific sectors | |
| World Views | • Life styles (including diets) |
| • Societal tension | |
| Policies | • Non-climate development strategies, urban planning and transportation policies, energy security policies, and environmental policies, etc |