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How Environmental Futures Can Inform Decision Making: A Review
Citation:
Flotemersch, J. How Environmental Futures Can Inform Decision Making: A Review. Futures. Elsevier B.V., Amsterdam, Netherlands, 108:37-52, (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2019.02.023
Impact/Purpose:
This review should help environmental futures programs think about how they can better fit into decision-making processes.
Description:
Environmental decision- and policy-making must contend with uncertainty about the future that can hinder proactive environmental decisions, forcing environmental managers into reactive postures. To help prevent this, a variety of methods exist for exploring potential environmental futures and associated uncertainties. Producing environmental futures benefits those involved by supporting a systems-level understanding and expanding thinking beyond “business as usual”. We review select environmental and non-environmental futures programs that seek to inform decision-making. Review objectives are to: 1) identify and discuss key environmental futures program attributes, and 2) propose program attributes that support successful connection with decision processes. Attributes discussed include purpose and audience, methods, addressing uncertainty and assumptions, relationship to indicator programs, how program values and biases are addressed, the role of goals, and how success is measured and defined. We conclude with recommendations for how to conduct environmental futures programs to be more useful for environmental decisions. These include: combining multiple environmental futures methods to provide complementary insights or highlight inconsistencies in assumptions, including a schematic of assumptions and drivers, and defining success criteria, whenever possible. These practices can help increase the acceptance of environmental futures products in decision-making and increase their short-term and long-term contributions.
