title: A method to identify drivers of societal change likely to affect natural assets in the future, illustrated with Australia's native biodiversity.
abstract: Human society has a profound adverse effect on natural assets as human populations increase and as global climate changes. We need to envisage different futures that encompass plausible human responses to threats and change, and become more mindful of their likely impacts on natural assets. We describe a method for developing a set of future scenarios for a natural asset at national scale under ongoing human population growth and climate change. The method involves expansive consideration of potential drivers of societal change, a reduction of these to form a small set of key drivers to which contrasting settings are assigned, which we use to develop a set of different scenarios. We use Australia's native biodiversity as the focus to illustrate the method.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Applied Ecology, The University of Canberra, Bruce 2617, ACT, Australia. Electronic address: david.pepper@canberra.edu.au.
authors.forename: D A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Pepper
authors.affiliation: Institute for Applied Ecology, The University of Canberra, Bruce 2617, ACT, Australia.
authors.forename: Hania
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lada
authors.affiliation: Institute for Applied Ecology, The University of Canberra, Bruce 2617, ACT, Australia.
authors.forename: James R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Thomson
authors.affiliation: Institute for Applied Ecology, The University of Canberra, Bruce 2617, ACT, Australia.
authors.forename: K Shuvo
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Bakar
authors.affiliation: Institute for Applied Ecology, The University of Canberra, Bruce 2617, ACT, Australia.
authors.forename: P S
authors.initials: PS
authors.lastname: Lake
authors.affiliation: Institute for Applied Ecology, The University of Canberra, Bruce 2617, ACT, Australia.
authors.forename: Ralph
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mac Nally
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D044822:Biodiversity; D057231:Climate Change; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D006801:Humans
keywords: Conservation; Futures; Human population; Land use; Planning and development