Beyond the Floods: Scenario Planning for Climate Mobility in Mukuru

The workshop followed five structured activities, starting with participants identifying the key drivers of flood-induced mobility across seven dimensions, from political and economic to psychological, then mapping each one by its importance and level of uncertainty. The critical drivers were converted into testable questions such as, will increased flooding influence flood mobility governance? and paired to build scenario matrices. Small groups then brought each quadrant to life with a scenario name, a short narrative and measurable indicators.

Several features set this approach apart. Community members and researchers co-facilitated the process, ensuring that lived experience and scientific knowledge were treated as equally valid. Participants were guided to distinguish between drivers they could influence such as social networks and local infrastructure and those beyond their control, such as rainfall intensity. This distinction was essential for building a strategy that communities could actually act on. Rather than attempting to predict a single fixed future, Exploratory Scenario Planning (XSP) embraced uncertainty as a starting point, enabling residents to move from being passive informants to active co-thinkers about the range of futures their community might face.