Bringing the Nature Futures Framework to life: creating a set of illustrative narratives of nature futures

To halt further destruction of the biosphere, most people and societies around the globe need to transform their relationships with nature. The internationally agreed vision under the Convention of Biological Diversity—Living in harmony with nature—is that “By 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefts essential for all people”. In this context, there are a variety of debates between alternative perspectives on how to achieve this vision. Yet, scenarios and models that are able to explore these debates in the context of “living in harmony with nature” have not been widely developed. To address this gap, the Nature Futures Framework has been developed to catalyse the development of new scenarios and models that embrace a plurality of perspectives on desirable futures for nature and people. In this paper, members of the IPBES task force on scenarios and models provide an example of how the Nature Futures Framework can be implemented for the development of illustrative narratives representing a diversity of desirable nature futures: information that can be used to assess and develop scenarios and models whilst acknowledging the underpinning value perspectives on nature. Here, the term illustrative refects the multiple ways in which desired nature futures can be captured by these narratives. In addition, to explore the interdependence between narratives, and therefore their potential to be translated into scenarios and models, the six narratives developed here were assessed around three areas of the transformative change debate, specifcally, (1) land sparing vs. land sharing, (2) Half Earth vs. Whole Earth conservation, and (3) green growth vs. post-growth economic development. The paper concludes with an assessment of how the Nature Futures Framework could be used to assist in developing and articulating transformative pathways towards desirable nature futures

Elusive Meanings: Decentralization, Conservation and Local Democracy.” In Governing Africa’s Forests in a Globalized World, edited by Laura A. German, Alain Karsenty and Anne-Marie Tiani, 56–71

Abstract This paper questions the concept of democratic decentralization and its reductionist focus on state, powers, and subsidiarity. We review key lessons from the political economy of decentralization in Asia, Africa and Latin America to recognize the democratic content of the redistribution of state powers toward peripheral sites of decision-making; at the same time, we take stock of the limited number of success stories and of the different actualization of subsidiarity principles in three cases: political decentralization, CBNRM and biodiversity conservation. In that process, we see overwhelming evidence of the elusive nature of 'democratic decentralization' in conservation schemes and the 'fugitive' nature of power in decentralization processes -and we asked ourselves why? We argue that part of the problem lies with the ways conservation discourse and decentralization theory are de-linked from more complex concepts of governance. Conservation discourse is primarily concerned with territories; decentralization theory is obsessed with powers and politics; in both cases, the legitimacy and innovative potential of local agency is put into parenthesis or subsumed under external, normative explanatory frames. This leads to overemphasis of political and discursive reasons and de-emphasis of the web of embedded institutions and informal networks through which local meanings and other-than-power capabilities circulate to shape uncertain outcomes. In particular, the historic mutation of the state under a diversity of external and internal pressures is confounded with the multi-form "taking of space" that characterizes local and translocal governance. We argue that the move from government to governance implied by environmental decentralization cannot lead to predefined, singular environmental outcomes. A shift of perspective is thus needed, taking into account the multiple scales at which the legitimating frameworks for local governance manifest themselves, including customary forms of representation and embedded tenures

Report on the Workshop ‘New Narratives for Nature: operationalizing the IPBES Nature Futures Scenarios’. February 2020, Shonan Village, Hayama, Japan

The workshop ‘New Narratives for Nature: operationalizing the IPBES Nature Futures Scenarios’ was organised by the IPBES task force on scenarios and models and hosted by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), with support from the research team on “Predicting and Assessing Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services through an Integrated Social-Ecological Systems Approach (PANCES)” based at the University of Tokyo, the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN), and the United Nations University, with generous financial support from the Ministry of the Environment of Japan. Due to the COVID-19 virus outbreak, most task force members participated through virtual means, with a subset of task force members meeting in person in Japan. The aim of the workshop was to build on the Nature Futures Framework (NFF) and on the ‘nature futures’ participatory scenario-development work initiated by the IPBES expert group on scenarios and models in the first IPBES work programme. This workshop aims to further elaborate the pre-workshop scenario narratives and to enrich discussions on the NFF. The workshop also served to start working on a more detailed task force work plan

Science-Policy Interface: Beyond Assessments

In recognition of our inability to halt damaging ecosystem change (1–4), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was asked in December 2010 to convene a meeting “to determine modalities and institutional arrangements” of a new assessment body, akin to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to track causes and consequences of anthropogenic ecosystem change (5). The “blueprint” for this body, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), lies in recommendations of an intergovernmental conference held in the Republic of Korea in June 2010: the Busan outcome (6). But it is a blueprint for governance rather than science. Using the experience from past assessments of global biodiversity and ecosystem services change (1, 7, 8) and from the IPCC (9–11), we ask what the policy-oriented charges in the Busan outcome imply for the science of the assessment proces

Bringing the Nature Futures Framework to life: creating a set of illustrative narratives of nature futures

To halt further destruction of the biosphere, most people and societies around the globe need to transform their relationships with nature. The internationally agreed vision under the Convention of Biological Diversity—Living in harmony with nature—is that “By 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people”. In this context, there are a variety of debates between alternative perspectives on how to achieve this vision. Yet, scenarios and models that are able to explore these debates in the context of “living in harmony with nature” have not been widely developed. To address this gap, the Nature Futures Framework has been developed to catalyse the development of new scenarios and models that embrace a plurality of perspectives on desirable futures for nature and people. In this paper, members of the IPBES task force on scenarios and models provide an example of how the Nature Futures Framework can be implemented for the development of illustrative narratives representing a diversity of desirable nature futures: information that can be used to assess and develop scenarios and models whilst acknowledging the underpinning value perspectives on nature. Here, the term illustrative reflects the multiple ways in which desired nature futures can be captured by these narratives. In addition, to explore the interdependence between narratives, and therefore their potential to be translated into scenarios and models, the six narratives developed here were assessed around three areas of the transformative change debate, specifically, (1) land sparing vs. land sharing, (2) Half Earth vs. Whole Earth conservation, and (3) green growth vs. post-growth economic development. The paper concludes with an assessment of how the Nature Futures Framework could be used to assist in developing and articulating transformative pathways towards desirable nature futures