To accompany her Research Article ‘Developing multiscale and integrative nature–people scenarios using the Nature Futures Framework‘ and plain language summary ‘Creating desirable futures for nature: The Nature Futures Framework‘ Laura Pereira has answered some questions for Relational Thinking, on the inspiration behind her article and how it informs future research.
Highlighting the truly global nature of the research and the international author list, Laura organized the translation of her plain language summary into Afrikaans, Arabic, Bemba, Catalan, Chinese, French, Frisian, Greek, Hindi, isiZulu, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Setswana, Shona, Spanish, Swedish, Te ReoMaori, Twi, Ukranian, Urdu, Wolof and Yoruba. The abstract is also available in Afrikaans, Chinese, French, Greek, Hindi, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Twi, Ukranian and Yoruba.
What was the inspiration for this article?
As the former expert group on Scenario and Models for IPBES, we developed a plan for catalysing research that could address the gap in biodiversity scenarios that were plural, desirable and applicable across multiple scales. The article was inspired by the need to document the journey of how the Nature Futures Framework (NFF) was developed and how we hope the research community will be able to help build on it and use it for elaborating a new generation of nature scenarios that put nature at the centre and focus on desirable futures that take multiple values into account.
How does your article inform future research?
The NFF is merely a starting point to catalyse future research on nature scenarios. We hope that the research community is inspired by this process to apply the framework to their own research and to work with us to galvanise the new generation of nature futures that we will need in order to navigate towards achieving the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD’s) 2050 Vision for Biodiversity. 2020 and 2021 will be incredibly important years for nature (prior to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, 2020 was dubbed the nature ‘superyear’ ) as the new targets for the CBD are to be negotiated in Kunming, China and the UNFCCC negotiations on climate change will also take place in Glasgow, Scotland. Having a framework like the NFF to help guide research that can feed coherently into these important processes is a core goal of this paper.
Why did you choose People and Nature for your research?
People and Nature is a leading interdisciplinary journal that deals exactly with the topics of human–nature relationships and diverse values of nature that sit at the heart of this paper. It also has an engaged editorial body who are committed to guiding authors through the review process, which can be fraught in the case of truly interdisciplinary research.
Relational Thinking 