The tidal wetland-dykeland ecosystems of the Bay of Fundy provide essential benefits or ecosystem services that support peoples’ well-being and those of non-human lifeforms, such as plants and animals. However, the futures of these ecosystems and their ability to provide and sustain these benefits are strongly driven by climate change impacts (e.g., sea-level rise, changing climate patterns), including all the management decisions, policies, and actions to address them. We implemented a Participatory Scenarios Planning that engaged key actors working on these ecosystems to co-envision environmental futures that may plausibly unfold in 50 years if we take a reactive or proactive approach to climate action and whether we prioritize public goods or private interests for decision-making. We co-created four storylines, imagining not only the ecological but also the tightly linked social, economic, and cultural conditions in these futures of the ecosystems.
We have documented changes in participants’ knowledge and values in terms of their systems thinking for social-ecological dynamics of the tidal wetlands and dykelands, trust to collaborate with each other for future activities for the Bay of Fundy, and their collective environmental aspirations by 2072.
The scenarios were made in: 2022
The scenarios look out to: 2072
