Abstract

Developing long-term visions through participatory approaches can be very useful to explore different possible scenarios and pathways to reach desirable futures. This brief report describes a participatory process conducted in the Emilia-Romagna region (Italy) to develop a long-term vision for rural areas of 2040. This approach consisted in: (i) interviews and a focus group conducted with a Multi-actor Platform (MAP) composed of experts from science-society-policy sectors, (ii) an on-line questionnaire addressing a larger number of rural stakeholders of the region. Mixing expert-based consultation through the MAP with a more inclusive consultation approach, resulted to be an effective method to build long-term visions in the very heterogeneous rural context of the Emilia-Romagna. However, this study only constitutes a preliminary step into a more elaborated backcasting approach