Ecosystem Scenarios as Environmental Futures - Implications for Participatory Framework Designs Integrating Social Capital Formation and Natural Capital Preservation

In integrated ecosystem assessment projects, scenarios provide alternative images of environmental futures as orientation knowledge for opinion-forming and decision-making. Participatory scenario frameworks provide the methodological basis for ecosystem scenario building as multi-stakeholder process. These processes combine scientific assessment of natural capital and related ecosystem services with the formation of social capital as stakeholders’ identification and trust with the research process and results. The article reviews the ecosystem scenario concept from a futures studies perspective and traces its practice from the origins in the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment to its present forms and application potentials. The theoretical argumentation also derives relevant aspects for combining natural capital preservation and social capital formation in ecosystem scenario processes and discusses implications for participatory framework designs. Overall, it contributes to the wider establishment of ecosystem scenarios in the futures studies community and to interdisciplinary exchange with related fields such as the natural, environmental and sustainability sciences.