Developing detailed foresight narratives: a participatory technique from the Mekong region

Narratives that explore uncertain events are central to a variety of future-oriented approaches ranging from planning to community visioning. Techniques to create interesting narratives, however, have been overlooked in the peer-reviewed environmental foresight literature. We describe a participatory, multidimensional, pragmatic technique to generate qualitative foresight ("scenario") narratives. We applied this technique in the Mekong region of Southeast Asia during 11 workshops conducted in 5 countries and 1 regional setting. To improve consideration of systemic connections, narratives were shared between the six settings, allowing participants to understanding cross-scale enablers and inhibitors of desired development outcomes. A second innovative feature is elaboration of character-oriented narratives. We discuss how the technique responds to ongoing methodological challenges of critical inquiry, policy salience, and agency.