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Participatory scenario planning (PSP) has mainly concerned scenario development and outreach, with less emphasis on scenario assessment. However, eliciting stakeholder responses to scenarios, focusing on subjective wellbeing, can increase the legitimacy, relevance, and applicability of PSP. We developed a PSP exercise with a multi-stakeholder, cross-cultural group in the Fitzroy River (Martuwarra) basin in Western Australia. Four scenarios were developed collaboratively, each describing alternative development pathways in the basin by 2050. We held two scenario assessment workshops: a multi-stakeholder workshop and a workshop with Traditional Owners (Aboriginal Australians) only. We first asked participants to consider and discuss the current situation in the basin regarding how well nine categories of wellbeing were satisfied. Then, for each scenario, participants assessed and scored the change in each wellbeing category relative to the current situation. Participants’ ratings followed a similar pattern in both workshops, except for the scenario with strong policy and increased large-scale irrigation, which was scored mostly positively by the multi-stakeholder group, and mostly negatively by Traditional Owners. We identified different discourses that help to explain these results: (a) scenarios with large-scale agriculture, or with poorly regulated development, would increase the money circulating in the region, and benefits would trickle down to local communities through employment, enhancing most wellbeing categories; and (b) such modes of development might create jobs but could negatively impact other areas of wellbeing, potentially affecting culturally or environmentally significant places and increasing social inequities. We discuss how these results can support planning in the region, and how trade-offs were approached.

Co-production across scientific and Indigenous knowledge systems has become a cornerstone of research to enhance knowledge, practice, ethics, and foster sustainability transformations. However, the profound differences in world views and the complex and contested histories of nation-state colonisation on Indigenous territories, highlight both opportunities and risks for Indigenous people when engaging with knowledge co-production. This paper investigates the conditions under which knowledge co-production can lead to improved Indigenous adaptive environmental planning and management among remote land-attached Indigenous peoples through a case study with ten Traditional Owner groups in the Martuwarra (Fitzroy River) Catchment in Western Australia’s Kimberley region. The research team built a 3D map of the river and used it, together with an interactive table-top projector, to bring together both scientific and Indigenous spatial knowledge. Participatory influence mapping, aligned with Traditional Owner priorities to achieve cultural governance and management planning goals set out in the Fitzroy River Declaration, investigated power relations. An analytical framework, examining underlying mechanisms of social learning, knowledge promotion and enhancing influence, based on different theories of change, was applied to unpack the immediate outcomes from these activities. The analysis identified that knowledge co-production activities improved the accessibility of the knowledge, the experiences of the knowledge users, strengthened collective identity and partnerships, and strengthened Indigenous-led institutions. The focus on cultural governance and management planning goals in the Fitzroy River Declaration enabled the activities to directly affect key drivers of Indigenous adaptive environmental planning and management—the Indigenous-led institutions. The nation-state arrangements also gave some support to local learning and decision-making through a key Indigenous institution, Martuwarra Fitzroy River Council. Knowledge co-production with remote land-attached Indigenous peoples can improve adaptive environmental planning and management where it fosters learning together, is grounded in the Indigenous-led institutions and addresses their priorities.

What does the future hold for the world’s ecosystems and benefits that people obtain from them? While the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has identified the development of scenarios as a key to helping decision makers identify potential impacts of different policy options, it currently lacks a long-term scenario strategy. IPBES will decide how it will approach scenarios at its plenary meeting on 22–28 February 2016, in Kuala Lumpur. IPBES now needs to decide whether it should create new scenarios that better explore ecosystem services and biodiversity dynamics. For IPBES to capture the social-ecological dynamics of biodiversity and ecosystem services, it is essential to engage with the great diversity of local contexts, while also including the global tele-coupling among local places. We present and compare three alternative scenario strategies that IPBES could use and then suggest a bottom-up, cross-scale scenario strategy to improve the policy relevance of future IPBES assessments. We propose five concrete steps as part of an effective, long term scenario development process for IPBES in cooperation with the scientific community.

The concept of ''usable knowledge'' is central to sustainability science, but most of the research that ex- plores this concept focuses on the science-policy interface. This paper expands this scholarship by describing a par- ticipatory research methodology that aimed to facilitate knowledge sharing between indigenous peoples, and sup- port indigenous community efforts to consider different knowledge claims and negotiate indigenous knowledge that could be used for environmental risk assessments and management responses. We draw on two case studies to show how a participatory mapping approach enabled Aboriginal people connected to the Girringun Indigenous Corporation (Girringun) in northern Australia to negotiate the knowledge needed to assess the environmental risks that affect their territories. Individuals painted and drew maps of their values, knowledge, and management aspirations for water and native vegetation. These maps were shared with the wider group to enable the consid- eration of different perspectives and the negotiation of agreed risks affecting local watersheds and native vegeta- tion. These maps were also used to facilitate the design of knowledge partnerships among the Girringun tribal groups, staff, and other collaborators that are critical to re-framing and co-managing the environmental risks affecting this region of northern Australia.

Achieving sustainable landscapes that integrate food production with biodiversity conservation remains challenging, particularly in the tropics where most forest clearance results from conversion to industrial agriculture. Land-sparing (delineating protected areas and intensifying agricultural production from developed land) has often been identified as more effective than land-sharing (mixing protection and production in an agro-ecological matrix) for biodiversity in the tropics. Nevertheless, biodiversity decline continues despite protected area expansion meeting global targets under international conventions. We developed a low-order stock-and-flow model to consider this apparent paradox, and used it to structure deliberations on the impacts of the power of governance regimes. The model articulates our shared hypothesis about the basic dynamics of the social–ecological system. We present scenarios that depict plausible biodiversity change over time under three different governance regimes and land-use trajectories. The scenarios raise the possibility that, while land-sparing gives better short-term results for biodiversity, land-sharing may outperform it over time. Two key insights derive from our deliberations. First, the forces that drive forest clearance for development do not necessarily oppose those that drive forest protection; this decoupling helps explain why biodiversity loss continues as protected areas increase. Second, the power of the governance regimes that protect existing forest can be weakened by protected area expansion, through lowering public discourse about risks from biodiversity loss, while the power of governance regimes for development concurrently remain strong; this helps explains why some REDD+ schemes are associated with increasing deforestation. These insights suggest novel leverage points for sustainable tropical landscapes, such as prioritising protected area placement by proximity to active agricultural frontiers, rather than by representative biodiversity or cost-effectiveness; or using area-based conservation targets that include both the extent of protected areas and of other remaining forest habitat. We recommend further investigation of these ideas, and of collaborative conceptual modelling approaches, to explore solutions for sustainable tropical landscapes.