Community Scenarios beyond the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways: The Scenario Evolution Process

The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) have provided a widely adopted foundation for climate-centric research, yet their design increasingly limits applicability in the context of today’s interconnected “polycrisis.” Key challenges include artificial no-policy/no-impact baselines, insufficient and non-fundamental treatment of equity, and narratives that are difficult to translate to regional and local decision-making contexts. To address these limitations, the International Committee on New Climate Change Assessment Scenarios (ICONICS) has started the Scenario Evolution Process (SEP): a community-led initiative to critically reassess, adapt, and potentially transform the SSP framework to better support research on resilient, equitable, and sustainable development and develop socioeconomic scenarios that have a applicability beyond the climate change domain.

The Scenario Evolution Process critically reflects on all elements of the existing framework, but also emphasizes evolution, acknowledging that future adaptations may range from incremental refinements to more fundamental changes. Coordinated by ICONICS, the process is set up to be inclusive, transparent, and iterative, engaging a broad and diverse community of researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders across disciplines and regions.

The process starts with an information collection phase that consists of four main activities:

• A multi-stage survey to both scenario producers, as well as users of scenario-based information. Stakeholders will be drawn from established scenario and assessment communities (e.g., ICONICS, IPCC, IPBES, CMIP, GEO, IAMC), as well as from underrepresented disciplines such as political science, biodiversity research, and economics, with targeted efforts to include policymakers and civil society actors. This engagement aims to broaden perspectives and reduce Global North bias.
• An academic literature exchange, with a special issues soliciting proposals for an updated scenario framework, or for elements thereof.
• A series of workshops in the period 2026 to mid-2027 to engage with a diverse range of communities
• Collection of general audience inputs on their needs for climate scenario information.

The information collected will feed into an expert workshop in 2027 that will propose next steps in the evolution of the Scenarios Framework. This could include updated or expanded scenario narratives and key quantitative drivers.

This presentation aims to reach out to the EGU audience and point to the many ways that scenario users can engage with this process.