D4.3 Report on exploratory applications of the MuSIASEM Toolbox in Quantitative Story-Telling for anticipation

Samenvatting

The present deliverable relates to the objective of WP4 to structure the perception and representation of the Nexus using the approach of Quantitative Story-Telling based on the MuSIASEM accounting framework. In particular, it addresses the topics of Tasks 4.4 ‘Global Drivers’, 4.5 ‘Planetary Boundaries’, and 4.6 ‘Externalization’. In a series of exploratory analyses it illustrates MuSIASEM accounting and its potential for Quantitative Story-Telling for anticipation. Rather than claiming to generate plausible predictions of the future, the analyses aim to explore the feasibility, viability and desirability of assumed radical transformations. The deliverable covers the following three anticipatory applications:
a dramatic decarbonisation in relation to energy supply for a sample of 6 EU countries, with consequences for required assets and investments;
a dramatic reduction in the externalization of food supply for a sample of 8 EU countries while considering water as an entangled variable, with consequences for agro-economic activities and labour requirement in an urbanizing EU;
a dramatic change in global population and dietary patterns, in relation to regional materialisations of planetary boundaries, with consequences for meeting regional biospheric constraints to self-sufficiency and interregional dependencies.