Step 3: learning

All the Challenge teams followed the same broad methodological framework. This facilitated discussion and learning across all the Key Challenges, allowing participants to draw out common themes, drivers and actions from the process. However, each team had leeway within this broad framework (as articulated in the individual papers in this issue) to ensure their approach aligned with the needs and context of their specific Key Challenge.

Throughout the course of the year-long process, plenary sessions were used at each workshop to highlight and resolve misunderstandings and potential misconceptions around the scenario development approaches used to create the alternate futures. In a final 5-day workshop (November 2019), all participants met to finalise the futures and action pathways for each Key Challenge, and complete a review of the overall Future Seas process. A series of facilitated plenary discussions synthesised learning across the challenges in two key areas: equity in ocean use and behaviour change (Table 1B). These syntheses explored interdisciplinary lessons learnt during the broader Future Seas initiative and were used to generate an interdisciplinary research agenda to provide a clear foundation for future research activities at local, regional and global scales.