Figure 2. A depiction of how three phases of the workshop focused on the Three Horizons. a) Phase 3 focused on the Third Horizon. b) Phase 4 focused on the First Horizon. c) Phase 5 focused on the Second Horizon. On the x-axis is time, without units, and on the y-axis is ‘dominant patterns’, without units.

Phase 4: First Horizon

The fourth phase focused on an assessment of the current system, that is, the first horizon. What are things people cherish and want to maintain into the future, what needs to grow, and what needs to be phased out (Figure 3B). Questions asked to the groups were: What in the current area of NPHD contributes to, impedes, and needs to develop to create desirable futures for NPHD? Different colors of sticky notes were used to differentiate desirable features from undesirable features. New and promising policies and plans that have come into effect but are too new to have had any effect are mapped onto the middle of the first horizon, as a lead-up to the second horizon. Additionally, we encouraged participants to think of more seeds in the present, and agree on three seeds that are considered particularly promising for growing the third horizon, which were captured by the graphic facilitator.

Phase 5: Second Horizon

The fifth phase focused on the transitional space and thinking about enabling actions, that is, the second horizon (Figure 2C). Questions asked to the groups were: What needs to happen to transition from the present towards the desired futures? Which innovations are going to be game changers in the near future and play a role in the transitions? Where will the main tensions and contestations arise? Can we identify synergies between nature values, innovations and seeds? The emerging discussion then naturally converged into a few key talking points. We asked the groups to come up with a name of their group that represented these defining issues, as well as three key words.

Phase 6: Group Presentations and Plenary reflections

During the final phase the groups presented their main outcomes to each other, using their sheets and the artwork of the graphic facilitator. Discussions and reflections continued in plenary using a semi-free format. The questions we used to guide the discussion were: What did the participants learn? What are lessons for NPHD? What will the participants take back to their organizations? What are follow-up steps? The discussion was moderated by the director of the National Park.

Analytical Framework

The analytical framework was applied to the co-produced group outputs for the third horizon, which sketch a coarse vision of a desirable future of the National Park. The framework consists of two parts, a thematic analysis and an SDG Target analysis.

Thematic analysis

Developing a thematic structure to present the envisioned futures for NPHD in the third horizon helps with ex-post sense-making of the content produced within subgroups as well as comparison across subgroups. Such structured comparison facilitates identification of commonalities as well as differences and divergences, which may point to consensus and disagreement across the stakeholders about the future of National Park Hollandse Duinen. Additionally, it facilitates cross-case comparison with other bottom-up scenario processes using a similar structure and the uptake of the content into the inductive scenario development process of new global nature scenarios for IPBES based on case studies from across the world (Pereira et al. 2020).
After the workshop we entered transcripts of the sticky notes from the annotated participatory diagrams into a spreadsheet database. Then, for each of the groups, we organized the entries into thematic categories. To do so, we first checked for clusters of sticky notes as formed by the participants themselves during the workshop process. Notes from the subgroup discussions served as a guide to interpretation of post-it transcripts and emergent clusters. Additionally, we looked at thematic categories that emerged from a pilot application of the Nature Futures Framework in Brazil (Rana et al. 2020) and a narrative building workshop by the IPBES Task Force on Scenarios and Models (PBL 2020) and adopted relevant categories to complement or merge with the previously identified categories. This was to start to develop some level of consistency between various case studies that use the Nature Futures framework. It is envisaged that with each iteration, a final group of categories that are relevant across different contexts and cases will emerge.

SDG Target analysis

The SDGs provide humanity with a target space for sustainable development. Thus, arguably, the SDG targets represent the internationally agreed third Horizon of the world. As such, they may be compared with the third horizon for NPHD to assess how the envisioned futures of NPHD may help achieve the international vision for sustainable development as portrayed by SDGs, and vice versa.

Content analysis

The SDG Target analysis started with an inspection of each of the 169 SDG Targets. Two researchers assessed which of the targets are relevant for National Park Hollandse Duinen, first without reference to the workshop outputs. Filtering out all the SDG Targets that are clearly not relevant, at least according to the understanding of the researchers, presents a potential SDG space against which the results of the outputs of the workshop process may be compared. Next, following Jiménez-Aceituno et al. (2020), we used content analysis to identify the SDGs and related targets addressed by the sticky notes that shaped the third horizons generated by the workshop process. The sticky notes of the third horizon provided the sampling units, the expressions on the sticky notes provided the data collection units, and the SDG targets were the units of analysis. For each of the sticky notes we checked whether they met each one of the 169 SDG targets in an iterative process of coding and re-examining. Additionally, for each of the sticky notes, we selected one Goal that was most relevant (see Appendix C for an example). We analyzed the data collection units in the original language (Dutch) to prevent meaning going lost in translation. The notes from the subgroup discussions served as a guide to the interpretation of the data collection units. Yet, here we acknowledge that the information provided by the sticky notes is diverse and, inherently to sticky notes, limited. Some ideas and preferences for the future of NPHD clearly speak to one or several SDG targets. In other cases, however, some interpretation by the researchers was unavoidable, for example when expressions were formulated ambiguously or so broad that they touched upon various SDG targets, albeit not very directly. In those cases, the researchers discussed their interpretations until consensus was reached. In general, because the workshop outputs were supposed to provide more of a rich picture than a clearly articulated vision, the researchers were inclusive in their judgement. Also, akin to (Jiménez-Aceituno et al. 2020), the SDG targets were, in some cases, adapted to be relevant for the analysis of this workshop process. For example, when the year 2020 was mentioned as part of the target description we used 2030 instead.

Descriptive analysis

We used descriptive statistics to explore which SDGs, and how many of the SDG targets were addressed by the sticky notes that shaped the third horizon for NPHD. These targets may be used to discuss the potential of NPHD to contribute to the Agenda 2030 if the visions would give direction to the development process. Subsequently, we identified which of the SDG targets that, a-priori, were considered by the researchers to correspond with the mission of NPHD did not appear in the broad visions for NPHD produced during the workshop process. These targets may be discussed as unrecognized potential of NPHD to contribute to the Agenda 2030.