Creating local storylines for climate mitigation and adaptation with policymakers across Europe: a new participatory and bottom-up method

While climate change is a global problem, solutions are often rooted at the local level. Consequently, the capacity to mitigate or adapt to climate change in local contexts is increasingly recognized as a crucial element in coping with it. Climate policies must be highly context-dependent, as they need to account for local needs and priorities. This article contributes to the ongoing research on participatory climate change socioeconomic scenarios and climate-resilient development pathways by presenting a participatory methodology for creating bottom-up, locally tailored climate adaptation and mitigation storylines. The methodology combines a visioning technique with an analytical framework that categorizes the visioning outcomes, facilitating scenario development while addressing real challenges to promote the co-creation of viable, site-specific solutions. We applied this methodology with policymakers from four case studies across Europe, revealing significant differences in how mitigation and adaptation are prioritized, policy actions chosen, key actors involved, and economic sectors impacted in each case. These findings underscore the value of the method in bridging local and scientific knowledge and generating context-sensitive narratives which can be compared between them. Finally, we present a set of qualitative climate mitigation and adaptation scenarios, outlining possible and desirable developments for each case study by 2050. • A new participatory method for developing locally specific climate adaptation and mitigation scenarios. • Applied methodology across four European case studies, showcasing diverse policy actions, key actors, and economic sectors shaped by local challenges. • Qualitative storylines envisioning potential and desirable futures for local climate mitigation and adaptation by 2050.