3.3. Solution Identification: Skillbuilding

Which approaches to nature-based solutions am I most (un)comfortable with?

Module Outline:

Module 3.2 introduced various methods for solution identification, including solution trees, cooperation timelines, linkage map interruption brainstorming, prioritisation matrices, feasibility matrices, and scenario forecasting. Module 3.3 invites you to self-assess your comfort using these approaches. Worksheets will review key concepts and provide templates for you to analyse a conflict context of your choice.

Module Objectives:

- identify and redress gaps in knowledge around productive interventions for environmental conflict contexts, including Nature-based solutions
- practice solution identification by applying techniques to a variety of case studies

Best Practices for Conflict-Sensitive Climate Action

You are encouraged to practice using solution identification strategies by applying them to your own context.

Brainstorming and testing solutions will be more productive if you have a good sense of interventions that have proven effective in other contexts. While any project should be adapted for local realities, inspiration can be drawn from other settings and programs.

A growing number of organisations have tested and highlighted Nature-based solutions as options for broad-impact interventions. The Geneva Nature-based Solutions Dialogues series might be a helpful starting place for ideas.

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Nature-based Solutions and Peacebuilding | Geneva Nature-based Solutions Dialogues

Solution Tree

HOW DO I MAKE A SOLUTION TREE?

Review your Problem Tree.
Can you ‘shift’ its problematic components into positive outputs?
Identify your overall purpose.
What is the ‘big picture’ goal you are trying to address? This should be the opposite of the primary problem on the trunk of your Problem Tree.
Turn each of the root causes into solution-creating activities.
How can root causes of a problem be reworked into positive actions for an intervention?
Highlight the effects of these solution activities.
What are some impacts of the proposed actions?
Visualise your purpose, activities, and outcomes on a Solution Tree.
How do your solution activities ‘feed into’ productive fruit? You can sketch your own tree, write over your Problem Tree, or use the blank template on this worksheet.

Solution Tree Analysis.pdf

Cooperation Timeline

HOW DO I MAKE A COOPERATION TIMELINE?

Note: the steps and worksheet below guide you through adapting a conflict timeline in order to emphasise where collaboration and peace efforts have existed, even amidst conflict and environmental stressors. It can also be helpful to create a cooperation timeline for an external project you have seen that has successfully intervened in a problematic situation, drawing inspiration from its event series. Creating a cooperation timeline for an external context requires slight adaptations to the instructions below, but involves the same general steps.

Review your conflict timeline and/or situation.
What context will you analyse? If you have created a conflict timeline, you can use its result to help inform your cooperation analysis. If not, spend some time defining your timescale, the situation you’re addressing, and the various actors involved.
Identify peace efforts, collaborative initiatives, and productive interactions.
When has peace been present, even amidst ongoing concern? When have parties negotiated on something? When has cooperation coexisted alongside conflict? Highlight positive episodes that have taken place at different scales and been instigated by various actors.
Arrange episodes by their chronological order.
When did various incidents take place?
Plot your events on a timeline.
Which details need to be included? Consider how to accurately summarise the incidents, balancing brevity with nuance. You can sketch your own timeline, or use the template on this worksheet.
(Optional) Consider your y-axis.
Do you want to plot your collaborative efforts against another factor, such as geographic scale or instigating actor? If so, create a list of y-axis labels, categorise events accordingly, and create a more complex, multi-dimensional cooperation timeline.
(Optional) Combine your timelines.
Might it be helpful to see how conflict and cooperation have coexisted in your chosen context? You can include both event series on a single graphic by using the y-axis and/or different colours to signal various types of interaction.

Cooperation Timeline Worksheet.pdf

Linkage Charts: Brainstorming Interruptions

HOW DO I BRAINSTORM LINKAGE INTERRUPTIONS?

Review a Linkage Chart for your chosen setting.
What context are you working in? For this technique, you will need a completed linkage chart. You can make your own using the strategies outlined in this worksheet.
Summarise each linkage.
What are the climate-peace-security intersections involved in the conflict context? Make a list of interactions corresponding to linkage arrows drawn on the chart.
Identify potential linkage interrupters.
What might disrupt the relationship? For each linkage, brainstorm a few actions that would break the connection.
Consider the viability and impact of each brainstormed action.
Which linkage interruptions are both possible and effective? Disrupting a causal relationship with multiple spinoff impacts will be more effective than disconnecting a 'downriver' outcome that doesn't have knock-on effects. Once you have identified a few ideas that seem to have the most potential, use other solution identification analytical tools to determine which has the greatest potential.

Linkage Charts Interruptions Worksheet.pdf

Feasibility Matrix

HOW DO I CREATE A FEASIBILITY MATRIX?

Confirm your shortlist of potential solutions.
Which options are you deciding between? The table on this worksheet may help you organise your notes.
Consider what ‘feasibility’ entails in your context.
What is and is not possible, given your situation? In general, the ‘feasibility’ of something relates to how realistic, practical, and manageable it is to accomplish.
Rate the internal feasibility of each solution option.
Can you and your partners successfully implement a proposed solution? Assign each solution option a score between 1 and 5, with 1 being “low internal feasibility” and 5 being “high internal feasibility”.
Rate the external feasibility of each solution option.
Will a proposed solution be acceptable to the wider community? Assign each solution option a score between 1 and 5, with 1 being “low external feasibility” and 5 being “high external feasibility”.
Take note of any particular challenges or possibilities for each solution.
What makes each solution feasible or infeasible? As you rank the internal and external feasibility of each solution, it’s worth taking note of a few reasons you assigned the scores you did. Qualitative rationale isn’t included in a feasibility matrix, but having a record of your thinking may be useful during program design, project implementation, and monitoring and evaluation phases.
Plot each solution in the feasibility matrix.
Is each solution’s internal and external feasibility high, medium, or low? Write down your various solutions in the corresponding cell of a matrix, positioning each according to both feasibility axes. (The matrix on this worksheet may be useful, but you can develop your own.)
Consider what the rankings tell you - and what they don’t.
Given the results of the feasibility matrix, what should you do next? Generally speaking, you will want to seriously consider implementing the solutions which received high rankings for both internal and external feasibility. But you should be mindful of your assumptions, and recognise what you did and did not evaluate with this exercise.
You might also reflect on whether you have enough capacity to carry out all of the highly feasible solutions, or if you intend to select and implement just one - in which case, using another solution identification analysis tool (such as a prioritisation matrix) might be helpful.

Feasibility Matrix Worksheet.pdf

Prioritisation Matrix

HOW DO I CREATE A PRIORITISATION MATRIX?

Confirm your primary goal.
What is the overall purpose you hope to address? Being clear about this will help you prioritise possible projects and actions based on their relation to the core intention.
Create a shortlist of possible actions.
Which options are you deciding between? A prioritisation matrix will be most useful if you are ranking or choosing between a handful of choices that all have potential.
Select evaluation criteria.
Which factors matter to you, when deciding which action(s) to take? This is a critical component of prioritisation. Take your time thinking about, selecting, and defining criteria. This worksheet includes examples and can help you organise your decisions.

(Optional) Step 3b. Set a weight value for each criteria.
Which criteria are particularly important to your work? You can create a more robust prioritisation calculation by weighting each score. Set your ‘standard’ criterion weight value to ‘1’, and assign relative values to reflect each criterion’s relative importance.
Score each option according to each criteria.
What are the pros and cons of the various possible actions? Assign each option a score for each criterion, making sure to be consistent with high and low scores as ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable’.

(Optional) Step 4b. Calculate the weighted scores.
How much does each score really matter? Multiply each raw score you assigned by the criterion’s weight to determine the option’s weighted score.
Determine the overall ranking of the options.
How does each possible action measure up? Calculate the sum of each option’s scores.
Consider what the rankings tell you - and what they don’t.
Given the results of the prioritisation matrix, what should you do next? Generally speaking, you will want to emphasise your highest-scoring options for future action. But be mindful of your assumptions, and what you did and did not evaluate with this exercise.

Prioritisation Matrix Worksheet.pdf

Scenario Forecasting

HOW DO I CONDUCT SCENARIO FORECASTING?

Scenario planning, at its most robust, involved specialised expertise and complex mathematical models capable of predicting climate change effects and other conditions. This steps and worksheet below will guide you through a vastly simplified version of scenario forecasting, which can be helpful as a thought exercise when evaluating possible solutions. If resources allow, you are encouraged to engage experts to develop more informed scenarios, especially if implementing large-scale infrastructure projects.

Define your context.
What timescale and geographic scope are you working within? Be clear about your parameters, as these will inform how you build scenarios. Longer timescales generally mean less accurate scenarios but more sustainability-centric decision-making. Larger geographic scope introduces more complexities but also allows you to consider further-flung impacts, which may be positive or negative.
Identify drivers that will impact various outcomes.
Which factors will determine what the future looks like? Think about a range of influences, including social, technological, economic, environmental, and political aspects. This worksheet may help you organise your ideas.
Consider the best-case situation.
What are positive outcomes from each driver? Think about the future context if everything has gone ‘right’.
Consider the worst-case situation.
What are negative outcomes from each driver? Think about the future context if everything has gone ‘wrong’.
Craft a handful of potential scenarios.
What might the future look like? Combine different ‘best-case’ and ‘worst-case’ features from various drivers to develop 3-5 possible contexts. Tell a brief ‘story’ about what the future looks like in these various situations.
Consider the likelihood of various scenarios.
Which of the possible futures is most likely? If it seems that a particular scenario is particularly probable, it’s important to include it in the next stage of analysis. If something is incredibly unlikely, the utility of extensive analysis based on it diminishes, as does its risk level.
‘Test’ your proposed solution in the most likely scenarios.
Will a proposed solution still be productive in various possible futures? Consider whether the outcomes and results of your proposed solution change, depending on various drivers and features. Does a particular future render your solution useless, or even harmful?
Make any necessary adaptations to your proposed solution.
How can your proposed solution be more ‘future-proof’? Conflict sensitivity and climate sensitivity require paying attention to these contradictions, and working to mitigate potential harms resulting from your efforts. As such, you should consider (1) choosing the solution that fares ‘best’ in the widest range of scenarios, and/or (2) altering your proposed solution if it would create negative consequences in versions of the future that seem quite likely to happen.

Scenario Forecasting Worksheet.pdf

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