Three pathways toward nature-positive Europe(s)

How can Europe become nature-positive by 2050? And what kinds of transformative change are needed to get there?

To explore these questions, BIONEXT brought together researchers, practitioners and biodiversity experts for a participatory foresight workshop on the Dutch coast. Working with the Nature Futures Framework and backcasting methods, participants co-created three distinct pathways towards nature-positive futures in Europe. The results are now published in a new paper in People and Nature.

Highlights

• The workshop revealed that there is no single route to a nature-positive future.

• Pathway Dòigh Nàdair, centres on community stewardship, biocultural values and polycentric governance, with change emerging from local initiatives and stronger relationships between people and nature. NaturAll focuses on sufficiency and ecological limits, combining strong regulation with broad societal participation. The last pathway, Return to Nature, emphasises coordinated governance, innovation and the mainstreaming of biodiversity goals across society.

• Beyond developing these pathways, the study explored how different understandings of transformative change shape the futures people imagine. Participants held diverse views on who should drive change, how quickly it should happen, and which interventions should be prioritised. These differences were reflected in the pathways that emerged.