From social-enquiry to decision support tools: towards an integrative method in the mediterranean rural environment

Policy-relevant approaches to assessing land-use change must be based upon a number of transdisciplinary mechanisms. This approach demands a number of skills—social enquiry, modelling and soft complex systems thinking, which are necessary to facilitate an effective cross-disciplinary dialogue. Underpinning the development of these transdisciplinary skills, and the acceptance of systems as complex and subject to multiple interpretations, is the need to move away from the desire to predict and towards enhancing the capacity to adapt. In terms of methodology, this means the exploration of a range of possible futures rather than the anticipation of any specific future path. In this paper, we present an example of the ‘Integrative Method’ in the context of Mediterranean desertification. The basis of this work has been the need to include stakeholders in the research, planning and implementation of policies and a willingness to step beyond disciplinary paradigms towards an integrative and transdisciplinary approach. This requires an approach that is grounded in systemic thinking, social enquiry, and the need explore the future through a range of conceptual and mathematical models which are accessible to policy makers.