On June 7 Edmond Totin of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions (ASSAR) Mali team presented on “Using Transformative Scenario Planning (TSP) process to stimulate social changes and enable sustainable climate adaptation strategies” at the 3rd European Climate Change Adaptation Conference (ECCA 2017).

His presentation was part of a session organized by researchers from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) entitled “Evaluating Participatory Social Change Processes for Adaptation”.  The talk focused on identifying and exploring potential types of change that might be stimulated by the use of the TSP process as part of the participatory Research into Use (RiU) work of the ASSAR Mali team with participants in Koutiala District.

Four types of outcomes were evaluated: systems understanding, networking, learning across boundaries and change in practices.  The evaluation found that the greatest change, measured for this particular workshop through before and after questionnaires and interviews, was a large increase in networking and relationship building. Learning across boundaries, and changes in practices were also evident. Furthermore, at the time of the evaluation most noticeable changes occurred at the individual level and were incremental in nature.

Learn more about the TSP process in Mali here.