Using the three horizons approach to explore pathways towards positive futures for agricultural landscapes with rich biodiversity

Abstract

In light of the global challenges of the Anthropocene, including biodiversity loss, there are increasing calls for positive, inspirational futures to motivate action and help steer away from current, largely unsustainable trajectories. The three horizons framework is an approach in future studies that engages with normative futures and helps develop pathways towards them. However, this approach has not been applied to explore opportunities for biodiversity conservation with farming communities. We developed a template to apply the three horizons framework in combination with storytelling to explore positive futures for agricultural landscapes with rich biodiversity. We then applied this method over two workshops with a rural community in a farming landscape of south-eastern Australia facing typical contemporary challenges of an ageing population, climate change, biodiversity loss and global market uncertainty. In the workshops, six pathways for change were developed. We unpack these narratives of change to contrast problem framings, future aspirations and mechanisms of change and discuss implications for conservation. We discuss our approach to integrating diverse perspectives and values, creating actionable knowledge and highlight the role of governance and policy to support individual and collective agency. We conclude that the three horizons approach has the potential to create actionable knowledge through locally meaningful narratives of change, and thus influence priorities and empower local action. For lasting on-ground change, leadership and effective cross-scale governance is required.

Recipe for a scenario: Moving from vision to actionable pathways towards sustainable futures

“…Due to its focus on recognizing systemic patterns with the goal of working towards transformative change, it is often of special interest to scholars studying human-environment systems. For instance, it has been utilized to envision future knowledge systems to support action towards sustainability (Fazey et al 2020), co-design global scenarios to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (Aguiar et al 2020), co-creation of positive climate futures that could emerge after COVID19 (Lazurko and Keys 2022), and co-production of pathways towards desirable futures associated with storytelling and visual arts (Schaal et al 2023). Three Horizons can also be incorporated into broader processes to facilitate specific activities (e.g., the Manoa Mashup Method as described by Pereira et al (2018) and Hichert, Biggs and Preiser (2019)).…”

“…Building connections across diverse stakeholders to co-produce scenarios is key to ensuring workshop outcomes are useful to building workable solutions to complex problems (West, Van Kerkhoff and Wagenaar 2019; Schaal et al 2023). In parallel, the presence of diverse voices in scenarios workshops can help avoid ‘group think’ or domination of viewpoints (Nalau and Cobb 2022; Cork et al 2023).…”

“…Connecting scenarios to decision-making is a key challenge, so applicability can increase with participation of champions in the community who are interested in supporting implementation (Cork et al 2023). In this regard, we argue that the “Recipe for a Scenario” tool can facilitate scenarios workshops to co-produce actionable knowledge that can inform transformation processes led by change agents (Cork et al 2023; Schaal et al 2023).…”

Participatory pathways to the Sustainable Development Goals: inviting divergent perspectives through a cross-scale systems approach

“…The three horizons approach to explore possible futures The Three Horizons is a tool to think about the future that focuses on three qualities of the future visible in the present: present dominant system features that are declining in importance, desired future features of the system, and change elements to reach a desired future. The tool has been used in participatory settings to explore possible alternative futures (Sharpe et al 2016, Colloff et al 2017, Pereira et al 2018, Sharpe 2020, Schaal et al 2023. The three horizons represent respectively (figure 1): the system to transform from (Horizon 1), the changes that are needed to break the current dominant patterns that are undesirable and to reach desirable alternative patterns (Horizon 2); and the system to transform to (Horizon 3).…”

Three Horizons for Future Geoscience

“…That rehabilitation would seem to require a paradigm change in geoscience's relationship to society. In the wider context of environmental systems change, one way to conceptualize paradigm change has been through the "Three Horizons" approach (Sharpe, 2013;Sharpe et al, 2016;Fazey et al, 2020;Schaal et al, 2023). The approach uses a conceptual tool in which the future is viewed as emerging through three overlapping horizons (Figure 1):…”