Shared socio-economic pathways extended for the Baltic Sea: exploring long-term environmental problems

Marianne Zandersen,Bo G Gustafsson,Jens Christian Refsgaard,Martin D A Le Tissier,Maciej T Tomczak,Kari Hyytiäinen,Detlef P Van Vuuren,Erik Fridell,Anna-Kaisa Kosenius,H E Markus Meier,Sampo Pihlainen,Barbara Bauer,Päivi E Haapasaari,Jørgen Eivind Olesen

doi:10.1007/s10113-018-1453-0

Abstract

Long-term scenario analyses can be powerful tools to explore plausible futures of human development under changing environmental, social, and economic conditions and to evaluate implications of different approaches to reduce pollution and resource overuse. Vulnerable ecosystems like the Baltic Sea in North-Eastern Europe tend to be under pressure from multiple, interacting anthropogenic drivers both related to the local scale (e.g. land use change) and the global scale (e.g. climate change). There is currently a lack of scenarios supporting policy-making that systematically explore how global and regional developments could concurrently impact the Baltic Sea region. Here, we present five narratives for future development in the Baltic Sea region, consistent with the global Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) developed for climate research. We focus on agriculture, wastewater treatment, fisheries, shipping, and atmospheric deposition, which all represent major pressures on the Baltic Sea. While we find strong links between the global pathways and regional pressures, we also conclude that each pathway may very well be the host of different sectoral developments, which in turn may have different impacts on the ecosystem state. The extended SSP narratives for the Baltic Sea region are intended as a description of sectoral developments at regional scale that enable detailed scenario analysis and discussions across different sectors and disciplines, but within a common context. In addition, the extended SSPs can readily be combined with climate pathways for integrated scenario analysis of regional environmental problems.

Highlights

Scenario analyses in support of environmental assessments have evolved rapidly over the past 20 years in response to the challenges of sustainable development and the growing recognition of the urgency to act while planning actions for the medium to long-term despite uncertainties about future developments (Alcamo 2001; Moss et al 2010; Shell 2013, 2008)
This study provides one of the first regional studies that systematically interprets the global Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) for assessing complex regional environmental problems, where climate change is one of multiple pressures amongst others
In contrast to how they used the SSPs in a participatory scenario process, we actively used the global SSPs and associated IIASA SSP database information to inform our expert/stakeholder group of the starting point for the regional scenarios

Summary

Introduction

Scenario analyses in support of environmental assessments have evolved rapidly over the past 20 years in response to the challenges of sustainable development and the growing recognition of the urgency to act while planning actions for the medium to long-term despite uncertainties about future developments (Alcamo 2001; Moss et al 2010; Shell 2013, 2008). Scenario analysis can be a powerful approach to explore plausible futures of human development under conditions of environmental, social, and economic change and uncertainty It can help in learning and assessing how the environment responds to human activities, to evaluate implications of different approaches to reduce pollution and resource overuse, and to adapt to altered environmental conditions. This may be important where vulnerable ecosystems are at stake. Despite the success of the Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP) since the 1990s to reduce nutrient loads to the Baltic Sea (Gustafsson et al 2012), the current loading (phosphorus (P) in particular) far exceeds the targeted level (Helcom 2015)

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