Broadening the horizon in land use change modelling: Normative scenarios for nature positive futures in Switzerland
Within scenario-based research of social-ecological systems, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of normative scenarios that define positive outcomes for both nature and society.
Within scenario-based research of social-ecological systems, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of normative scenarios that define positive outcomes for both nature and society. These scenarios stand in contrast to typical exploratory scenarios that focus on predicting the most likely future changes, by instead allowing for the rethinking of existing strategies to identify the possibilities for transformative change. However, while there has been an increasing number of studies presenting qualitative narratives of normative scenarios, there is still a gap in terms of operationalizing these narratives in quantitative simulation modelling.
In our new paper in Regional Environmental Change external page https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-024-02261-0 we take normative scenarios of landscape development in Switzerland between 2020-2060, developed by PLUS colleagues external page https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-023-01380-7 within the ValPar.CH project external page https://valpar.ch/index_de.php, and demonstrate how these can be realized within a spatial model of land use and land cover change. Our approach, illustrated in the diagram below, included a combination of data-driven approaches to encapsulate scenario-specific differences in local and global scale phenomena, as well as iterative expert elicitation to quantify descriptive trends from narratives. To validate the results of the land use change modelling we created an interactive webpage which can be explored here: https://valpar.ch/land-use-change-scenarios/index-en.html.
Our future land use simulations clearly demonstrated the trade-offs of managing the landscape under different normative goals. For example, adopting a ‘Nature for nature’ perspective, resulted in improved landscape cohesion in protected areas, as compared to business-as-usual predictions, but at the expense of a decline in traditional Swiss cultural landscapes such as alpine pastures and grassland.
This highlights that the value of normative scenario modelling is not to identify the most optimal strategy but instead to serve as inputs to on-going discussions among stakeholders as to the desirability of different future outcomes.