Identifying and categorizing stakeholders for protected area expansion around a national park in Namibia

Protected areas and adjacent landscapes are increasingly being viewed as integrated. A more general awareness is emerging of the relevance of collectively managed landscapes for conservation and human well-being. In Namibia, areas dedicated to conservation are increasing because of the proliferation of conservancies and game reserves. Management toward integrated conservation in these landscapes involves land use practices variably dedicated to wildlife management and the inclusion of land owners and resource users in the decision-making process. We use stakeholder analysis to identify participants integral to an expanded protected area network around the Etosha National Park in Namibia. We identified and categorized important stakeholder groups, and quantitatively and qualitatively assessed their relative importance to the protected area decision-making process. Twelve stakeholder groups were identified, and categorized according to proximity to the national park, land tenure, and land use type. Primary stakeholders, those who both affect and are affected by decision making, comprised livestock farmers, communal conservancy members, resettlement farmers, and tourism/hunting enterprises. For each group the cumulative values of position (level of support for, or opposition to the concept), interest (perceived disadvantages and advantages thereof), and power (resources stakeholders can mobilize to express their position) were calculated. These attributes provide an indication of stakeholder salience, i.e., how likely stakeholders are to affect or be affected by an integrated conservation landscape. We find that livestock farmers, although interested in the concept, mostly oppose protected area expansion. The conflict in opinion is linked to the benefits derived from being part of the conservation landscape and the losses endured due to the porous park fence, including human-wildlife conflict and regulations involving a veterinary cordon fence. A consideration of stakeholder salience, taking into account the different perceptions surrounding the benefits of living adjacent to a protected area, can potentially lead to the better implementation of integrated conservation areas

Social, Ecological, and Technological Strategies for Climate Adaptation

Resilient cities are able to persist, grow, and even transform while keeping their essential identities in the face of external forces like climate change, which threatens lives, livelihoods, and the structures and processes of the urban environment (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, How to make cities more resilient: a handbook for local government leaders. Switzerland, Geneva, 2017). Scenario development is a novel approach to visioning resilient futures for cities. As an instrument for synthesizing data and envisioning urban futures, scenarios combine diverse datasets such as biophysical models, stakeholder perspectives, and demographic information (Carpenter et al. Ecol Soc 20:10, 2015). As a tool to envision alternative futures, participatory scenario development explores, identifies, and evaluates potential outcomes and tradeoffs associated with the management of social–ecological change, incorporating multiple stakeholder’s collaborative subjectivity (Galafassi et al. Ecol Soc 22:2, 2017). Understanding the current landscape of city planning and governance approaches is important in developing city-specific scenarios. In particular, assessing municipal planning strategies through the lens of interactive social–ecological–technological systems (SETS) provides useful insight into the dynamics and interrelationships of these coupled systems (da Silva et al. Sustain Dev 4(2):125–145, 2012). An assessment of existing municipal strategies can also be used to inform future adaptation scenarios and strategic plans addressing extreme weather events. With the scenario development process guiding stakeholders in generating goals and visions through participatory workshops, the content analysis of governance planning documents from the SETS perspective provides key insight on specific strategies that have been considered (or overlooked) in cities. In this chapter, we (a) demonstrate an approach to examine how cities define and prioritize climate adaptation strategies in their governance planning documents, (b) examine how governance strategies address current and future climate vulnerabilities as exemplified by nine cities in North and Latin America where we conducted a content analysis of municipal planning documents, and (c) suggest a codebook to explore the diverse SETS strategies proposed to address climate challenges—specifically related to extreme weather events such as heat, drought, and flooding

Setting the Stage for Co-Production

Participatory scenario visioning aims to expose, integrate, and reconcile perspectives and expectations about a sustainable, resilient future from a variety of actors and stakeholders. This chapter considers the settings in which transdisciplinary participatory visioning takes place, highlighting lessons learned from the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN). It reflects on the benefits of engaging in the co-production process and the challenges that must be considered amid this process

Positive Futures

We describe the rationale and framework for developing scenarios of positive urban futures. The scenario framework is conducted in participatory workshop settings and composed of three distinct scenario approaches that are used to (1) explore potential outcomes of existing planning goals (strategic scenarios), (2) articulate visions that address pressing resilience challenges (adaptive scenarios), and (3) envision radical departures from the status quo in the pursuit of sustainability and equity (transformative scenarios). A series of creative and analytical processes are used to engage the community in imagining, articulating, and scrutinizing visions and pathways of positive futures. The approach offers an alternative and complement to traditional forecasting techniques by applying inspirational stories to resilience research and practice

The UREx Guide to Scenarios

This Scenario Planning Guide outlines how the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN) supports ongoing efforts in its nine network cities in conducting participatory workshops. The Scenarios Working Group team, together with students, researchers, and collaborators across the network, have synthesized the co-produced visions from Workshop I. City-leads, practitioners, network participants, and participating institutions are encouraged to use the quantitative and qualitative outputs to further develop resilient, equitable, and sustainable transition pathways to help bring about their envisioned futures. The primer begins with a brief description of the UREx SRN, before introducing the innovative framework applied to participatory scenario workshops. This is followed by an outline of the social-ecological-technological systems (SETS) approach that is applied throughout the project. A general explanation of scenarios is given, and a detailed description is provided of why scenario planning is applied, and the types of scenarios produced. The main portion of the primer focuses on the scenario workshops with detailed information provided on pre-workshop events, workshop activities and post-workshop data analysis and product synthesis

Beyond Academia: A case for reviews of gray literature for science-policy processes and applied research

Gray literature is increasingly considered to complement evidence and knowledge from peer-reviewed literature for science-policy processes and applied research. On the one hand, science-policy assessments need to both consider a diversity of worldviews, knowledge types and values from a variety of sectors and actor groups, and synthesize policy-relevant findings that are salient, legitimate and credible. On the other hand, practitioners and scholars conducting applied research, especially in environmental and health-related fields, are affected by the time lag and documented biases of academic publication processes. While gray literature holds diverse perspectives that need to be integrated in science-policy processes as well as practical evidence unfiltered by commercial publication processes, its heterogeneity has made it challenging to access through conventional means for a literature review. This paper details one endeavor within the Values Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) to review gray literature using Google’s Programmable Search Engine. In the absence of a standardized approach, we build on a limited experiential knowledge base for reviewing gray literature and report on the potential applicability of our strategy for future reviews. Our results contrast the findings of our parallel review of academic literature, underlining the importance of mobilizing different knowledge bases in science-policy assessments, evidence-based practices, and applied research

A Vision for Resilient Urban Futures

A fundamental systems approach is essential to advancing our understanding of how to address critical challenges caused by the intersection of urbanization and climate change. The social–ecological–technological systems (SETS) conceptual framework brings forward a systems perspective that considers the reality of cities as complex systems and provides a baseline for developing a science of, and practice for, cities. Given the urgency of issues we collectively face to improve livability, justice, sustainability, and resilience in cities, bringing a systems approach to resilience planning and policymaking is critical, as is development of positive visions and scenarios that can provide more realistic and systemic solutions. We provide a vision for more resilient urban futures that learns from coproduced scenario development work in nine US and Latin American cities in the URExSRN. We find that developing an urban systems science that can provide actionable knowledge for decision-making is an emerging, and much needed, transdisciplinary research agenda. It will require true boundary-crossing to bring the knowledge, skills, tools, and ideas together in ways that can help achieve the normative goals and visions we have for our shared urban future

Diverse values of nature for sustainability

Twenty-five years since foundational publications on valuing ecosystem services for human well-being(1,2), addressing the global biodiversity crisis(3) still implies confronting barriers to incorporating nature's diverse values into decision-making. These barriers include powerful interests supported by current norms and legal rules such as property rights, which determine whose values and which values of nature are acted on. A better understanding of how and why nature is (under)valued is more urgent than ever(4). Notwithstanding agreements to incorporate nature's values into actions, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)(5) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals(6), predominant environmental and development policies still prioritize a subset of values, particularly those linked to markets, and ignore other ways people relate to and benefit from nature(7). Arguably, a 'values crisis' underpins the intertwined crises of biodiversity loss and climate change(8), pandemic emergence(9) and socio-environmental injustices(10). On the basis of more than 50,000 scientific publications, policy documents and Indigenous and local knowledge sources, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessed knowledge on nature's diverse values and valuation methods to gain insights into their role in policymaking and fuller integration into decisions(7,11). Applying this evidence, combinations of values-centred approaches are proposed to improve valuation and address barriers to uptake, ultimately leveraging transformative changes towards more just (that is, fair treatment of people and nature, including inter- and intragenerational equity) and sustainable futures

Diverse values of nature for sustainability

Twenty-five years since foundational publications on valuing ecosystem services for human well-being1,2, addressing the global biodiversity crisis3 still implies confronting barriers to incorporating nature’s diverse values into decision-making. These barriers include powerful interests supported by current norms and legal rules such as property rights, which determine whose values and which values of nature are acted on. A better understanding of how and why nature is (under)valued is more urgent than ever4. Notwithstanding agreements to incorporate nature’s values into actions, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF)5 and the UN Sustainable Development Goals6, predominant environmental and development policies still prioritize a subset of values, particularly those linked to markets, and ignore other ways people relate to and benefit from nature7. Arguably, a ‘values crisis’ underpins the intertwined crises of biodiversity loss and climate change8, pandemic emergence9 and socio-environmental injustices10. On the basis of more than 50,000 scientific publications, policy documents and Indigenous and local knowledge sources, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessed knowledge on nature’s diverse values and valuation methods to gain insights into their role in policymaking and fuller integration into decisions7,11. Applying this evidence, combinations of values-centred approaches are proposed to improve valuation and address barriers to uptake, ultimately leveraging transformative changes towards more just (that is, fair treatment of people and nature, including inter- and intragenerational equity) and sustainable futures

Diverse values of nature for sustainability

Twenty-five years since foundational publications on valuing ecosystem services for human well-being, addressing the global biodiversity crisis still implies confronting barriers to incorporating nature’s diverse values into decision-making. These barriers include powerful interests supported by current norms and legal rules such as property rights, which determine whose values and which values of nature are acted on. A better understanding of how and why nature is (under)valued is more urgent than ever. Notwithstanding agreements to incorporate nature’s values into actions, including the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, predominant environmental and development policies still prioritize a subset of values, particularly those linked to markets, and ignore other ways people relate to and benefit from nature. Arguably, a ‘values crisis’ underpins the intertwined crises of biodiversity loss and climate change, pandemic emergence and socio-environmental injustices. On the basis of more than 50,000 scientific publications, policy documents and Indigenous and local knowledge sources, the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessed knowledge on nature’s diverse values and valuation methods to gain insights into their role in policymaking and fuller integration into decisions. Applying this evidence, combinations of values-centred approaches are proposed to improve valuation and address barriers to uptake, ultimately leveraging transformative changes towards more just (that is, fair treatment of people and nature, including inter- and intragenerational equity) and sustainable futures