Enhancing the relevance of global shared socio-economic pathways for climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability research

Over the past three decades scenario analysis has occupied a central role in assessments of the potential impacts of anthropogenic climate change on natural and human systems at different scales during the 21st century. Here, we discuss the role and relevance of a new framework for global socioeconomic scenarios – shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) – for climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability (IAV) research. We present an overview of uses of socioeconomic scenarios in IAV studies and the main shortcomings of earlier global environmental scenario sets for IAV analyses. Based on this, we argue that several scenario elements need to be added to the SSPs in order to enhance their usefulness for IAV studies. In addition to standard scenario indicators, such as population and gross domestic product, additional scenario elements, such as income distribution, spatial population, health projections and governance indicators would enable characterization of future developments in vulnerability and adaptive capacity.