Abstract
In the face of global change, the exploration of possible futures of marine social-ecological systems (MSES) becomes increasingly important. A variety of models aims at improving our understanding of ecosystem dynamics and complexities by assessing how systems react to internal and external drivers of change. However, these models are often built from a natural-science perspective through a reductionist and top-down knowledge production process that does not engage with the interests, concerns and knowledge of stakeholders. Our work explores different futures of the Peruvian MSES tied to the Humboldt Current Upwelling System (HCUS) through a sequential integrative participatory scenario process. The methodology used opens novel ways to explore, at different contextual levels, the uncertainties of the future and, in doing so, to include diverging world views of different actors. This approach implies a broader social processing of scientific projections about the future and encourages the articulation of different notions of sustainability. We thereby contribute to current scientific discussions on scenario planning in MSES by exploring potential futures through the analysis of narratives, a process that helps to identify plausible future development pathways that can inform different types of ecosystem modelling or policy making.
Highlights
In a world of rapid global change and multiple anthropogenic pressures affecting socialecological systems (SES) in many dimensions, looking into the future becomes critical
Regarding socio-economic drivers of change only a few answers appeared connected to global phenomena; for instance, the demand and offer of seafood/fish meal/oil were linked to market forces or drivers such as SOC19 and SOC27 that were connected to governability
Our study provides insights into some important factors that could shape the future of the Humboldt Current Upwelling System (HCUS) and mostly shows the importance of the contextualization of future studies through on one hand the commonalities and divergences found between the four visions about the future created by participants during the workshops and the themes of the focus group discussions (FGD); and on the other, through the differences, that lay on their area of fishing or fishing practice, between fishers during the FGDs that have been mentioned in the previous section
Summary
In a world of rapid global change and multiple anthropogenic pressures affecting socialecological systems (SES) in many dimensions, looking into the future becomes critical. Scenario development has long been identified as a tool to tackle this multi-faceted task and explore the possible futures and associated impacts of SES (Börjeson et al, 2006; Kebede et al, 2018). Scenario development has become a common tool in global environmental assessments (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [MA], 2005; Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services [IPBES], 2015) and has been used widely in environmental and climate change studies over the last decades (Priess et al, 2018) mainly driven by the use of scenarios by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Scenarios are globally used as a key method for identifying plausible futures with medium- and long-term horizons (Saito et al, 2019) and stimulating reflective processes that can contribute to decision-making (Pereira et al, 2019)
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