Linking multiple values of nature with future impacts: value-based participatory scenario development for sustainable landscape governance

• Published in: Sustainability science 2022-05, Vol.17 (3), p.849-864
• Main Authors: Harmáčková, Zuzana V., Blättler, Linda, Aguiar, Ana Paula D., Daněk, Jan, Krpec, Petr, Vačkářová, Davina
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Case studies; Climate Change Management and Policy; Decision making; Earth and Environmental Science; Ecosystem services; Environment; Environmental Economics; Environmental Management; Future pathways; Human-nature relationships; IPBES; Landscape Ecology; Participatory scenario building; Protected areas; Public Health; Quality of life; Social-ecological values; Special Feature: Original Article; Special Feature: Valuation of Nature and Nature’s Contributions to People; Sustainability; Sustainability governance; Sustainable Development
• ISSN: 1862-4065; 1862-4057; 1862-4057
• DOI: 10.1007/s11625-021-00953-8

Reaching sustainable and just futures for people and nature requires tackling complex social-ecological challenges across multiple scales, from local to global. Pathways towards such futures are largely driven by people’s decisions and actions, underpinned by multiple types of motivations and values. Thus, understanding the link between potential futures and the values underpinning them represents a key question of current sustainability research, recently embraced by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Particularly the understanding of causal chains leading from values to futures across different contexts and scales is vital to identify which sustainability pathways to collectively pursue. In this study, we build on a transdisciplinary knowledge co-creation process in an array of local case studies in protected areas in the Czechia (Central Europe). We apply the Life Framework of Values and the Three Horizons framework in an innovative value-based participatory scenario building process to explore the relationships between (1) multiple types of values, (2) actions taken by different types of stakeholders, and (3) their potential impacts on nature, nature’s contributions to people (including ecosystem services) and good quality of life. The resulting local-scale value-based pathways show the complex relationship between multiple types of values for nature and potential future trajectories. Finally, we reflect on the utility of value-based participatory scenario planning as a means to strengthen sustainable governance. We highlight that if participatory deliberation of values is to support decision-making processes, its design needs to carefully reflect local context and institutional set-up.