Methods
Our interdisciplinary team comprised
researchers across career stages and from different environmental and
social disciplines. We collaborated over a series of workshops and
meetings in 2018 and 2019 that were organised as part of the Future Seas
project (https://futureseas2030.org/). This project aimed at developing
mobilising narratives across key challenges for the future of our ocean
(one of which is developing the offshore Blue Economy) and involved more
than 100 scientists. Working in such extended group allowed for inputs
from Future Seas participants beyond those directly involved in this
paper.
We followed the methods tested and agreed during the first Future Seas
workshop and common to all challenges (Nash et al. 2020a). We developed
two plausible futures in 2030 for the offshore Blue Economy and defined
a pathway to action. The first of these futures is the anticipated
business as usual based on current trajectories (Plankque et al. 2019)
and informed by published evidence. The second is an optimistic but
technically achievable more sustainable future aligned as much as
possible with SDGs and informed by existing and emerging knowledge. We
used a predictive approach to develop the business as usual scenario and
a normative approach to build the more sustainable scenario (Börjeson et
al. 2006). A range of assumptions negotiated among Future Seas
participants and common to all challenges constrain the futures. Example
of these assumptions are that population and resource use will continue
to increase to 2030, and that the globe is locked into climate change of
at least 1.5°C by 2030. A full list of assumptions can be found in Nash
et al. (2020a).
1. Scenario development
As a first step towards scenarios development, we identified key drivers
that society can influence and that will impact the offshore Blue
Economy over the Oceans Decade (by 2030; UNESCO 2019) (Table 1). To do
so, we brainstormed drivers of change in six categories: political,
economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental (PESTLE
analysis). Following brainstorming, we revised our detailed drivers and
grouped them into broader categories. Last, we mapped these categorised
drivers on a graph of low-to-high-influence versus low-to-high-impact
axes, and we selected those that society can most influence and that are
characterised by a high degree of impact on the offshore Blue Economy.
Once satisfied with our selection, we determined shifts in the intensity
and direction of drivers that will lead to the different futures. This
resulted in a table of key drivers and their behaviour in the context of
the business as usual and the more sustainable future. This table became
the starting point for developing the narrative around the alternative
futures (Table 1). To guide the definition of the business as usual and
the more sustainable future, we also looked to the SDGs. We identified
which of the globally important goals the offshore Blue Economy has the
greatest potential to influence (Fig. 2 and Table 1) and we discussed to
what extent they might be achieved in each future (Table S1). We gave
less consideration to SDGs that are more relevant to other papers of
this special issue (e.g. Farmery et al. 2020 focusing on SDG Zero
Hunger, Alexander et al. 2020 considering equity as per SDG 10, and
Trebilco et al. 2020 discussing climate actions).
We acknowledge that the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic is causing
major changes to economies and socioecological systems at the global
scale. It has changed growth rates and has seen calls for a redirection
during recovery, thus potentially pulled society away from the business
as usual path as outlined here and based on evidence prior to the
pandemic. Free from any defined trajectory, society has a choice to
make. It can return to the business as usual trajectory prior to
COVID-19 in the next few years; or it can consider the current
disruption to the global ocean, environment and society because of
COVID-19 as an opportunity to switch to a different trajectory in the
coming decade (as discussed in Pecl et al. 2020). The sustainable future
presented here is one option for such a shift.
2. Pathway towards a more sustainable future
We used a backcasting technique to identify tangible actions that
support society in moving towards the more sustainable future.
Backcasting is commonly used to define pathways that require knowledge
of the end-point to determine the measures needed to reach that point
(Robinson 1990). As a first step and guided by our vision of a more
sustainable future, we brainstormed actions required to achieve this
future and we identified who among the actors of the offshore Blue
Economy (civil society, government, non-government and international
organisation, industry, academia) should take each action. Next, we
asked how long it would take for each action to be implemented and we
placed each action on a 2021-2030 timeline, coinciding with the UN
Decade of Ocean Science. Last, we identified the risks of taking
actions. The aim of this last step was to promote a deep consideration
of all aspects of an action (gains and losses), and to isolate actions
that might lead to unintended outcomes and path dependency or that
require additional precursors or enabling actions.
Both the process of scenario development and that of identification of
tangible actions were iterative and involved repeated revisions of
constituent steps and components (drivers, characteristics and
descriptions of futures, and actions).