ECA_5_Executive summary_577

Knowledge gaps and resulting uncertainties in exploring future interactions between nature and society are substantial because integrated assessments of future impacts on nature, nature’s contributions to people and a good quality of life that take account of the complex interdependencies in human and environmental systems are rare (well established) (5.6.2). Very few studies were available for Central Asia and to a lesser extent for Eastern Europe (well established) (5.6.2). Less information was also available for marine systems than for terrestrial and freshwater systems (well established) (5.6.2). Few integrated scenario and modelling studies include indicators of nature’s nonmaterial contributions to people and good quality of life (5.3.2, 5.5.1, 5.6.2) and therefore existing assessments of synergies and trade-offs are limited in the interactions and feedbacks they represent (well established) (5.3.2). No studies were found that assessed future flows of nature’s contributions to people across countries, which would have been important to assess the impacts of the scenarios and pathways for Europe and Central Asia on other parts of the world (well established) (5.6.2). There is also a significant gap in the current literature in recognizing the diversity of values, with the focus being mainly on instrumental values (well established) (5.6.2). Finally, scenario and modelling studies include many uncertainties in their projections of the future resulting from input data, scenario assumptions, model structure and propagation of uncertainties across the integrated components of the systems, which should be borne in mind when interpreting their results (well established).
"Finally, there were very few scenario studies which modelled feedbacks from direct drivers, such as climate change or land use change, to socio-economic trends (an integral component of the IPBES conceptual framework; D.az et al., 2015), highlighting a key gap in the scientific literature covering nature’s contributions to people.
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These findings show that only a minority of scenario studies take account of the value of nature, its contributions to people, and good quality of life (Murray-Rust et al., 2013). They also indicate that most studies addressed the different dimensions of value only independently (e.g. MEA, 2005) or linked nature with a limited set of mainly instrumental values, excluding other dimensions such as intrinsic or relational values. This highlights a significant gap in the current scenario literature in recognizing the diversity of values (e.g. IPBES, 2016b). Closing this gap could be of particular importance as the transformative practices that may be needed for achieving sustainable futures can benefit from embracing such value diversity (Pascual et al., 2017) (see Section 5.5)."
The assessment of how findings from the different reviews related to policy goals or targets similar to the Sustainable Development Goals and Aichi Biodiversity Targets was mostly based on the expert judgement of the author team, as most documents reviewed did not explicitly include links to these goals or targets. The absence of direct links to these international goals in reviewed documents is related, on the one hand, to the fact that scenarios usually deal with time horizons going beyond 2020 and even 2030. Furthermore, most studies were published before the Sustainable Development Goals were adopted and naturally did not include the goals. Moreover, the partial coverage of the full set of these international goals is related to their regional prioritization and reflects the dominant regional values. Lastly, our primary focus on studies targeting at least nature and its contributions to people meant that other strategic documents focusing on good quality of life with only loose links to nature were not considered.
All reviews reveal knowledge and information gaps for Central Asia and, to a lesser extent, for Eastern Europe. In general, higher uncertainties in outcomes are expected from regions where evidence is based on very few studies. There is a high diversity in the complexity and degree of integration reflected in the four reviews, which is explored further below.
Studies which explicitly covered indigenous and local knowledge were largely unrepresented in all the reviews. This is related to the focus of some of the reviews on the national scale or higher. Yet, while indigenous and local knowledge was often not included explicitly, a range of studies, particularly in the visions and pathways review, were developed together with stakeholders and revealed valuable insights into nature’s non-material contributions to people and relational values. This confirms the suggestion made by the IPBES “Guide on the production and integration of assessments from and across all scales” (IPBES/4/INF/9) as well as in the IPBES Methodological Assessment of Scenarios and Models of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES, 2016b), where participatory scenario development and modelling are recommended as powerful approaches for knowledge co-production and the inclusion of indigenous and local knowledge. The development of new scenarios for IPBES (Rosa et al., 2017) will open up opportunities for such approaches and work towards the appropriate inclusion of indigenous and local knowledge in future assessments.
The coverage of nature’s non-material contributions to people, and quality of life indicators was poor in most scenario and modelling studies and they were absent from, or limited to, recreational benefits in most visions and pathways studies.
Studies covering the marine realm were poorly represented, and almost absent from visions and pathways. Consequently, very few results and conclusions on associated ecosystems can be provided.
The analysis of how values were included in the exploratory scenario and normative scenario (or pathways) literature showed that some dimensions of value (i.e. intrinsic values) were not considered by the majority of futures studies. This highlights a significant gap in the current literature in recognizing the diversity of values where most studies predominantly focus on anthropocentric values (i.e. instrumental). Furthermore, socio-cultural approaches to valuation were used to a much lesser extent than biophysical or economic methods.
The review on exploratory scenarios revealed that the indirect drivers of institutional change, cultural change and technology were rarely explicitly included within scenario analyses, but frequently subsumed within common socioeconomic storylines (i.e. IPCC SRES, SSPs). Only limited aspects of these driver categories were addressed by the studies, for example efficiency of governance, level of international collaboration and proactivity of environmental management among institutional drivers; diet, material and meat consumption and environmental awareness among cultural drivers; and agricultural efficiency among technological drivers. Given the frequent presence of technology, cultural and governance drivers within qualitative storylines, we hypothesize that the relative absence of explicitly quantified technology and governance drivers is due to the complexities involved in parameterizing such uncertain drivers for inclusion in models. Economic drivers were frequently parametrized through increasingly questioned indicators, such as GDP.
The direct drivers of pollution and invasive alien species also had limited coverage in exploratory scenarios compared to other direct drivers, such as climate change and land use change. Among pollution drivers, only nutrient emissions from agriculture were covered more frequently. Biological invasions were addressed only generally in most cases, assuming high or low levels of invasive alien species, without specific assumptions regarding individual species.
The review of integrated models revealed that integrated studies which attempt to capture some of the complex interdependencies between human and environmental systems under multiple drivers of change are rare, particularly for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Furthermore, they are often limited in the different social and ecological components that are coupled and the feedbacks between them that are represented. Few studies specifically focus on nature and its contributions to people, although such aspects can be included as part of a model chain or by linking the output of integrated models to biodiversity or ecosystem service models. This is a key priority for future work to quantify impacts on nature, its contributions to people, and good quality of life indicators under both exploratory and normative scenarios (or pathways), including the uncertainties associated with such model projections. Moreover, integrated models that accounted for nature’s non-material contributions and aspects of a good quality of life were rare, and the few that were found used simplified expert-based approaches for representing the interrelationships. Few integrated modelling approaches have been benchmarked or inter-compared to fully capture and quantify uncertainties from different approaches. There is a significant gap in integrated assessments in terms of exploring the full range of synergies and trade-offs between the multiple aspects of nature, its contributions to people, and a good quality of life under different scenario archetypes and across different scales.
Furthermore, nature is not a simple unit. Rather, any change in drivers will likely favour some dimension of biodiversity (i.e. some species, variants, combinations of species that produce a given ecological function) at the expense of others. As a result, nature is rarely included as a dependent variable in scenarios. However, according to the IPBES conceptual framework, knowledge on the responses of various facets of nature to various direct and indirect drivers, and on the effects of changes in nature on changes in its contributions to people, would be crucial. Moreover, the multifaceted character of biodiversity may also explain why integrated models struggle to capture detailed impacts on biodiversity (many use simple indicators, such as mean species abundance or biodiversity vulnerability indices). Coupling more sophisticated (process-based rather than statistical) models of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning with models of human processes within integrated assessment models would provide a more realistic assessment of the trade-offs between nature and other indicators of socio-ecological systems. Despite these drawbacks, integrated modelling approaches offer great promise in capturing some of the important interrelationships in complex systems which are key to understanding the impacts of drivers on nature, its contributions to people, and a good quality of life.
The visions literature search yielded only a limited number of regional visions, with a small number of visions from the scientific literature. For Western, Central and Eastern Europe, visions have already been developed by different stakeholder groups and for several activity sectors. In Central Asia, however, future planning is only covered by the strategic plans developed by governmental agencies. Thematic gaps, for which societal visions have not been found, include marine ecosystems and urban systems at the broad regional scale. The level of development of visions was very heterogeneous (from a single paragraph to detailed descriptions of vision components), and most lacked quantitative goals providing only qualitative orientating goals. Moreover, reviewed visions did not explicitly include a diverse range of values in their narratives. Visions can also be “stakeholder-specific” with different societal groups having different (and potentially conflicting) visions of the future. Visioning processes which rationalize or accommodate these different viewpoints in their analysis are rare, although cross-sectoral visions involving multiple stakeholders were found.
Environmental goals within visions were mostly related to the need to reduce or avoid environmental impacts derived from human activity or in the context of nature’s contributions to people. The underpinning role of nature and ecosystems in the delivery of these contributions and the maintenance of good quality of life was often missed. Finally, the analysis of visions content suggests that interregional flows are being overlooked, which could result in an aggravation of global inequalities.
The pathways review found that there are very few fully developed pathways studies that go beyond narrative presentations of pathways and are supported by quantitative modelling. Nevertheless, well-developed narrative approaches may be just as valuable (if sometimes not more so) for empowering decision-makers and stakeholders, but this makes results more difficult to link with exploratory scenarios and formal analyses of specific drivers (i.e. analytical approaches) using quantitative modelling approaches. In addition, this lack of quantitative analysis means that pathway narratives express intent rather than feasibility, and that some trade-offs may be underestimated. Many pathways studies addressed tradeoffs between nature’s material contributions to people (food, timber, fisheries) and water provisioning and quality, global climate regulation and biodiversity conservation. However, consideration of biotic regulation services (e.g. pollination, pest control), natural hazard protection and non-material contributions were largely absent from trade-off analyses. Detailed descriptions and sequencing of actions within pathways was rare, as was information on combinations of policy instruments for implementing specific actions. With the notable exception of transition movements narratives, pathways to sustainability focused on very few dimensions of a good quality of life. The incorporation of combinations of exemplary transition movements pathways into largescale scenario exercises and into participatory scenario development is suggested as a way forward for better resolving trade-offs and for scaling-up local or sectoral solutions. Furthermore, while investments were mentioned in a number of studies across the chapter, none of them provided systematic research to appropriately respond to the role of investments in the protection of ecosystems.