Conservation futures 2050: Developing future scenarios to explore potential socio-economic developments and their impact on biodiversity

place greater weight on maintaining ecological integrity, biodiversity and ecosystem services to mitigate the likely risks and take advantage of the potential opportunities. Many of the most significant implications across scenarios were driven by changes in land use. Land use patterns are well-recognized drivers of biodiversity conservation outcomes, from forest fragmentation to propagule pressure for invasive species [45, 85]. In an economy underpinned by primary production, land use also has significant economic implications, with cascading effects on social fabric and economic opportunities, including conservation funding. Land use patterns can also be sensitive to changes in land ownership, policy, social license and climate. As a result, each of the scenarios we explored reflected anticipated shifts in land use patterns that necessitate a change in land management or goals over the long-term. The importance of ecosystem services was another theme consistent across the scenarios. How human societies recognize and value ecosystem services has the potential to dramatically affect priorities and decisions around land use and spending [20, 86, 87]. Under the scenario exploring an increase in extreme events, the extent to which ecosystem services form a viable and prioritized part of the national response to climate change was expected to drive many of the conservation outcomes. Similarly, the use of some form of biodiversity or carbon credits was expected to be essential to make a transition from non-native forestry viable in the native

afforestation scenario and would likely be an important factor in enabling Māori to achieve their goals under the increased indigenous land tenure scenario. Each scenario also presented the opportunity to reduce inequality and empower indigenous peoples, but contained the risk that these inequalities could be exacerbated, depending on how policy and management respond to the new challenges. Even under a scenario of increased indigenous land tenure, positive outcomes for Māori communities were not assured, and depended on the way land was transferred and the level of financial support provided during the transition (see also [2, 40]). This emphasizes the importance of governance and policy deci- sions, which mediate the impact of these scenarios on social structures and can either promote or hinder systemic changes to promote equity and indigenous development across scenarios. Next steps and extension to other systems These scenarios were developed to stimulate future thinking in conservation planning and management. One opportunity provided by a scenarios format is as a tool for engagement across different communities or stakeholders. Scenarios as narratives have the potential to be highly effective for communicating to the public, practitioners, and government and policy- makers [15, 17], enabling broader engagement with major emerging environmental issues and the challenges or opportunities they present. In our conversations with land managers and practitioners, the narrative nature of the scenarios has made discussions about the future less

abstract and easier to visualize. These discussions have sparked insights and feedback from land managers and practitioners about management challenges under these scenarios, illus- trating their use as an engagement tool, providing further guidance to us as we finalized the scenario narratives, and confirming the relevance of the scenarios we chose to develop (R Spra- gue, per. obs.). Furthermore, scenarios, by making specific hypotheses about the future, also invite constructive critical feedback, through interrogating, adapting and comparing the hypothesized outcomes with real-life events [8]. Discussing these scenarios with experts from other disciplines (e.g. health, technology sectors) can expand the range of implications consid- ered for each scenario, and could draw in other developments, such as disruptive technologies, which are not considered extensively in our narratives. This could also lead to the development of additional scenarios, which reflect the concerns and priorities of fields outside of core con- servation ecology disciplines. PLOS ONE Conservation futures 2050 PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0311361 December 12, 2024 10 / 16