Transformative scenarios in a climate-challenged world: An introduction to alternative futures (2021-2035) for planning and decision making in the emergency management sector

This paper discusses the driving forces in the world that interact to shape the future in unpredictable and volatile ways; ways that humans cannot reliably forecast or predict. In 2020 and 2021, under the stewardship of BNHCRC and AFAC and lead by Reos Partners and RMIT University, a select team of leaders and professionals from across the Australia and New Zealand emergency management sector (EMS) and related organisations, came together over a series of months to better understand these driving forces.

As a result, this paper used these driving forces to construct a series of plausible futures that invite the EMS and the organisations within it to examine their current thinking, and challenge existing assumptions, perceptions, planning, operations and cultures. Further, the future scenarios in this paper explore what might happen over 2021-2035 in a climate-challenged world and how these futures might plausibly come about.