Step 2: future discovery and development

In the second 2-day workshop (February 2019) participants were provided with a refresher on the project’s methods. Then each team was given time to discuss their Key Challenge in general terms and identify common and contrasting perspectives across disciplines. For the rest of the second workshop, and in two subsequent 1-day workshops (April and June 2019) each team met to develop scenarios for their Key Challenge and identify potential actions to support achievement of these scenarios.

The first step in the development of the scenarios involved participants from each Key Challenge team brainstorming drivers of change. These drivers were factors that had the potential to impact on the Key Challenge, in the context of the SDGs, over the course of the Decade of Ocean Science (Fig. 2a). To stimulate the brainstorming processes, participants were encouraged to explore drivers in six categories: political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental (PESTLE analysis). The list of drivers produced by the participants were examined for significant overlap and duplication (within each Challenge) and grouped to provide a list of higher-level ‘umbrella drivers’ for use in the later stages of scenario development (Fig. 2b).

Process of scenario development used for each Key Challenge to create ‘Business-as-usual’ and ‘More Sustainable’ alternate futures for 2030. The process shown in this figure relates to the ‘Identify Drivers’ and ‘Create Futures’ components of Fig. 1. The arrows show the iterative nature of the scenario development process

Scenario exercises are often employed to explore uncertainties in the future by identifying the broadest range of possible futures. As such, the focus of the scenario development process is on drivers that can be influenced but also have a high degree of uncertainty (Biggs et al. 2007). In contrast, the Future Seas project was focused on exploring differences between a ‘Business-as-Usual’ versus a ‘More Sustainable’ future. Thus, the umbrella drivers were mapped onto two axes: 1/degree of impact of the umbrella driver on the challenge and 2/degree of influence that society has on the umbrella driver (Fig. 2c). This mapping process allowed participants to tease out those umbrella drivers that were likely to be central to how each Key Challenge could play out in the future (high impact) and that society had the potential to influence (high influence).

For each of these high impact-high influence umbrella drivers, participants identified trends and/or evidence for plausible future behaviour (following Merrie et al. 2018; references for evidence and trends are identified in the individual Key Challenge papers), and provided descriptors for the status in three contexts: I. Current state of umbrella driver; II. ‘Business-as-Usual’ 2030 state of umbrella driver; and III. ‘More Sustainable’ 2030 state of umbrella driver (Fig. 2d). Each Challenge team then identified, based on their collective expertise, the most important set of umbrella drivers (generally 3–5; Fig. 3) and their associated descriptors. This elicitation process led to the construction of a scenario table representing likely umbrella driver behaviour in the three contexts outlined above. At this stage, teams assessed the scenario table for internal consistency to ensure descriptors for the different umbrella drivers were not mutually exclusive. This process of choosing more than two umbrella drivers to incorporate in the development of alternate futures diverged from more commonly employed scenario building methods, which tend to focus on two drivers to produce four or more contrasting futures (e.g. Garard et al. 2018). As the intention of the Future Seas project was to simply identify two futures, the predictive ‘Business-as-Usual’ versus the normative ‘More Sustainable’ future, and then explore detailed pathways to achieving these futures, there was scope for more drivers to be incorporated into the narrative. Finally, participants developed a narrative and chose a descriptive name for each scenario (Fig. 2E; Fig. 4). Working with a graphic designer, each Key Challenge team developed a visualisation of their alternate futures (Fig. 4).

Umbrella drivers identified by Melbourne-Thomas et al. (2020) and Novaglio et al. (2020) in relation to their Key Challenges. Poleward bound: umbrella drivers include monitoring and detection of species range shifts, the temporal and spatial scale of management, the degree of cooperation, coordination and communication between jurisdictions, and social and economic adaptation. Deep aspirations: governance of the offshore blue economy, offshore research and innovation, how society values the oceans, and partnership and collaboration between jurisdictions. These umbrella drivers are shown in relation to relevant Sustainable Development Goals. See individual papers for more detail

Excerpts from the narratives developed by Nash et al. (2020) and Melbourne-Thomas et al. (2020), and the associated graphical depictions of these alternate futures. See individual papers for more detail

The process of developing the scenarios was iterative with participants assessing for internal consistency within their alternate futures at each step. As such, the process was not linear as tacitly implied in the method description above (illustrated by looping arrows in Fig. 2).

Each Key Challenge team used the process of backcasting to identify how society might choose to move towards the ‘More Sustainable’ future rather than the ‘Business-as-Usual’ future. Backcasting is a normative approach that involves taking a ‘particular desired future end-point … to determine the physical feasibility of that future and what policy measures would be required to reach that point’ (Robinson 1990, p. 823). Our backcasting process extended this approach by also considering a broader range of measures, in addition to management and policy, including for example how to shift societal norms or leverage ‘desirable’ behaviour change.

First, participants used their expertise and knowledge of existing research and case studies to identify potential actions that could support society in moving towards the ‘More Sustainable’ future from the current status of the Key Challenge. Brainstorming of actions was stimulated using a PESTLE framework (just as drivers were identified in the scenario development phase). Next, these actions were put in chronological order by placing them on a timeline of the UN Ocean Decade (2021–2030) (Fig. 5). Participants identified potential benefits and risks associated with the actions, and the data and knowledge necessary to deliver each action. This step helped isolate actions that might result in unintended outcomes or for which there were currently insufficient data and knowledge, or where there might be additional actions necessary to lead to the defined future. Where the identification and timeline of actions showed problems with reaching the ‘More Sustainable’ future by 2030, iterative revisions were made to the narratives of this future. This iterative process was in line with the intention that the ‘More Sustainable’ futures should be technically ‘feasible’, and was necessarily reflective of the participants knowledge and expertise regarding the time taken to accomplish specific actions in the action pathways over the time period from 2021 to 2030. Finally, the timeline of actions was used to create a short- medium- and long-term (in relation to the period of the UN Decade of Ocean Science) plan of action to achieve the ‘More Sustainable’ future.

Backcasting process and timeline. Dotted arrow indicates process of building up actions from 2030 backwards. Icons represent types of action to be implemented over the UN Decade of Ocean Science in relation to creating desirable feedbacks between ocean health and human health (see Nash et al. 2020 for more details)