M1.3 Putting Scotland in the context of global Shared Socio-economic Pathways to inform Land Use Transformations for Net Zero and Resilience

The aim of this report is to detail the global Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) narratives and
their structure used to organise climate change assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, and how the SSPs can be used to inform research on Land Use Transformation in
Scotland. The SSPs detail five possible future societal development pathways.

The objective is to explore the development of Scotland-focussed SSPs and place them in a spatial
context to inform discussion, research and analysis on achieving net zero and socio-ecological
system resilience in the context of land use transformation.

Information is provided about the five main Shared Socio-economic Pathways, a critique of the
assumptions, caveats and benefits of their use. We provide references and links to work done
elsewhere to translate the global SSPs to a UK and devolved nation scale.

Whilst the SSPs may have limitations due to their assumptions and caveats, the structure and detail
within their narratives enables researchers to project and model future scenarios and identify
possible actions to mitigate or adapt to these scenarios.

In this report we make the case for adding spatial analyses to the SSPs to address questions on what
net zero looks like with respect to land use in Scotland.