Towards a better future for biodiversity and people: modelling Nature Futures

The Nature Futures Framework (NFF) is a heuristic tool for co-creating positive futures for nature and people. It seeks to open up a diversity of futures through mainly three value perspectives on nature – Nature for Nature, Nature for Society, Nature as Culture. In this paper, we describe how the NFF can be applied in modelling to support policy. First, it describes key building blocks of the NFF in developing qualitative and quantitative scenarios: i) multiple value perspectives on nature and the frontier representing their improvements, ii) incorporating mutually reinforcing and key feedbacks of social-ecological systems, iii) indicators describing the evolution of social ecological systems. We then present three approaches to modelling Nature Futures scenarios in review, screening and design phases of policy processes. This paper seeks to facilitate the integration of relational values of nature in models and to strengthen modelled linkages across biodiversity, nature’s contributions to people and quality of life.