Collaborative Design of Pathways to Sustainability. Guidebook for designing and running in-person workshops

The guidebook is meant as a practical introduction and step-by-step instruction on how to design and apply the Collaborative Systems Mapping of Sustainable Pathways (CoSMoS) method. The process has been developed to bridge the gap between science, policy, and society. Scientific knowledge about sustainability challenges was used to develop multiple global scenarios.
However, stakeholder engagement in scenario planning is often misunderstood as a way to give expert input to scientists and provide feedback on research results. If scenario efforts are to be useful for policy development, they need to clearly indicate the sphere of control where stakeholders representing specific decision unit(s) can develop robust strategies. The CoSMoS process allows them to develop strategic insights by building on selected representations of real-world structures and processes. The guidebook provides a necessary basis to understand the process so that readers can use it, adapt it to specific circumstances, and successfully execute it.

The guide is an updated version of the ISWEL guidebook on Policy Simulations and is designed as a manual for organisations interested in using Collaborative Systems Mapping of Sustainable Pathways for face-to-face workshops. This includes organisations directly or indirectly involved in the process of policy development, especially in the context of various crises, such as climate emergency, biodiversity loss, rise in populism, and many others. The methodology strongly emphasises the positive, active, and inclusive approaches to co-creating sustainability pathways to desired futures.

The guidebook will:
1. explain the assumptions underlying the co-creation of scenarios and pathways,
2. compare and contrast them with other, similar tools, and
3. instruct how to adapt, design, and run new CoSMoS workshop sessions.