Figure 6 Conceptual figure depicting how a loosely defined collective vision can act as a boundary objective for a boundary process guiding individual and collective actions based on a set of shared principles.
Indeed, the approach aligned well with the broader development process of NPHD. As such, the process did not initiate a structural break in the development trajectory of NPHD. Rather it supported the existing process, for which it was recognized as a useful tool by the director of NPHD, who was involved in co-design of this study and is an author on this paper. Starting the process with surfacing and reflecting on people’s diverse relationships with nature, facilitated by the NFF, was something that resonated. It inspired a more reflexive approach in subsequent engagement processes (Schultz et al. 2018; Horcea-Milcu et al. 2019); How are people entering the process; what values do they hold and bring in? So far that was a bit underexposed in the broader development process of NPHD.
Another aspect of the process that resonated was the exploration of the three time horizons. That thinking fitted-in well with a broader but somewhat ad-hoc iterative process of dreaming big and reflecting on the present by National Park actors, and helped to emphasize long-term thinking during development of NPHD’s landscape strategy (Veenstra 2020). More generally, what worked well was the clear structure and stepwise design of the process, through the six phases, that still allowed for flexibility in how it was applied. The success of visioning processes often depends on who participates. Indeed, not everyone feels comfortable with dreaming about a radically different future. Useful therefore is how the Three Horizons Framework promotes inclusivity as it provides flexibility to switch between time horizons depending on the emerging group dynamics. This was reflected by the dynamics of the three groups in this workshop: each completed the six phases of the process, but focused on different parts (Table 1). Furthermore, what was appreciated was that the workshop process based on the NFF and the Three Horizons is rather different from traditional workshops. As such, it offered the actors involved in the co-design of the process a reflection on alternative tools and methods for informing change processes, and enlarged their toolbox of available workshop methods.

Contributing to the Agenda 2030

The SDG Target analysis shows how development of NPHD towards the envisioned futures would result in progress for almost all of the SDGs. In particular there appears to be a large potential for NPHD to contribute to Goals 8, 11, and 15. Our analysis also uncovered several SDG targets that are deemed relevant for NPHD but which were not brought up by the participants during the workshop. These targets may indicate unrecognized potential for NPHD to contribute to sustainable development. For example, one topic that was clearly underexposed is equity (targets 5.5, 16.b, 10.3, 10.7). There is also relatively little attention for the contribution of NPHD to public health (targets 3.3, 3.D), though it must be noted that the workshop process took place a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Recent increased attention to nature-health relationships is likely to have shifted this focus (Kleinschroth and Kowarik 2020).
It is important to point out the limitations of the SDG analysis as applied in this study. The sticky notes are not very suitable as sampling units as they contain limited and diverse information. In response, the researchers took an inclusive approach to coding the sticky notes. It is likely that more specific ideas for the future of NPHD have scored fewer targets than broad or ambiguously formulated ideas indirectly touching on various targets. It is therefore important to focus on the more generic patterns that emerge from this analysis, such as the three goals that clearly stand out and the most frequently appearing targets. Indeed, the SDG Target analysis is not intended to provide hard evidence, rather as a starting point for critical reflections on which aspects of sustainability are to be considered and prioritized by NPHD. Even so, an additional step of Jiménez-Aceituno et al. (2020) that we have not done here but which can still provide interesting insights is an analysis of interactions between the SDGs through the elements of the visions. This may help understand how progress towards a specific target may be leveraged to attain various aspects of a desirable future for NPHD.
Heinrup and Schultz (2017) described UNESCO Biosphere Reserves in Sweden as arenas for implementing the Agenda 2030, distilling five key functions: they serve as platforms for collaboration; connect actors vertically and horizontally, maintain healthy ecosystems, promote learning and awareness raising, and integrate the SDGs. As a close relative of Biosphere Reserves, NPHD too can be an arena for implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Yet, to date, the SDGs have not played a significant role in the development process of NPHD, nor more generally in Dutch nature conservation and landscape governance. However there are actors in the region who are actively engaging with SDGs as part of their operations. As such, NPHD may strategically employ the SDGs as a tool to link with specific actors. Similarly, adopting the SDGs may help to better portray the international context of the National Park. The insights gained through the SDG target analysis about which Goals and Targets are relevant are expected to be useful here.
Besides understanding how NPHD may contribute to achieving the SDGs, the visions for NPHD, and NFF-inspired development processes more generally, may also provide valuable insights into what aspects of sustainable development are currently missing from the SDGs. We did not do an NFF analysis of the SDGs but close inspection of the SDG targets informed us that there is much focus on Nature for People and a bit on Nature for Nature but very little on Nature as Culture value perspectives. We note for example that landscapes are not represented in the SDGs, let alone biocultural landscapes (Chakroun and Droz 2020; Hanspach et al. 2020). Zheng et al. (2021) recently highlighted a general underappreciation of culture in the Agenda 2030. We point to a critical interrogation of the SDGs using the NFF as important future research.

How the process can be further developed

The 1-day workshop process, whilst a useful activity for the stakeholders and as a case study to explore how the NFF could be operationalized in a local level case study, also had its limitations. For a fully immersive futuring process, it is advisable to bring people together for a couple of days at a time so that they can really engage fully with the process, unpack potential inconsistencies and work through potential conflicts. This workshop process was developed from a longer Manoa mash-up method approach that was initially established as a 3-4 day workshop (Pereira et al. 2017; Raudsepp-Hearne et al. 2020). A potential next step could therefore be to consolidate the visions that emerged during the workshop in NPHD into more integrative and coherent narratives through a longer process whereby a full Manao mash-up method is employed. Steps for such extended narrative development could build from the newspaper headlines in this paper (Table 1) and use either the VERGE framework to ask participants to describe certain aspects of the future world, such as what is created/what is destroyed/what is consumed (Lum 2015) or take a more science-fiction prototyping approach whereby a narrative is developed around a core character in this future world (Merrie et al. 2017). The latter has informed the development process for illustrative narratives of future worlds using the NFF (PBL 2020). Another aspect could be to get more creative with the visions so that they are able to draw on people’s emotional attachment to the national park (Pereira et al. 2019). Graphic facilitation helped participants to visualize their discussions, but more engaged artistic experiences such as through theatre or photography could elicit other connections to nature value perspectives (Galafassi et al. 2018; Muhr 2020).
While our analyses focused on the visioning of the third horizon, an important part of the participatory process was the exploration of transformative change through all three horizons in steps 3-5. This is a first step in developing pathway scenarios that connect the visions and describe how to get to these more desirable futures (Hamann et al. 2020). The second horizon already offers building blocks for connecting the future visions with the present and outline some specific interventions, but these can be made more concrete and potential conflicts and trade-offs unpacked (Raudsepp-Hearne et al. 2020). An example here is how agriculture inside the national park is both a challenge and an opportunity for achieving desirable nature futures of NPHD. Creating multiple pathways emphasizes that there is no single trajectory and makes explicit different perspectives and trade-offs. It is also possible then to compare and contrast these local scenarios with elements in existing global scenarios, such as the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, to delineate what alternatives to the dominant global narratives there may be (Aguiar et al. 2020). Similarly, enabled by the thematic analysis (Table 2), these local scenarios may be cross-fertilized with other local NFF-inspired scenarios (e.g. Lembi et al. 2020), and feed into the inductive scenario development process of the IPBES task force on scenarios and models to better inform future assessments (Pereira et al. 2020).
Responding to the remark of one of the participants that “now we need maps and start drawing”, a step to extend and concretize the visioning and pathway exploration approach would be to develop spatially explicit scenarios and create maps to visualize the possible futures. Such a step could be facilitated through participatory mapping approaches where stakeholders jointly spatialize their visions (Palacios-Agundez et al. 2015; Reilly et al. 2018). This could serve as a cross-check to determine whether the visions could be realized within the study region. The scenario maps would form the basis for further assessment and quantification of ecosystem services and implications for biodiversity. Easy-to-use, readily available ecosystem services models such as InVEST can be applied for such assessments (Ruckelshaus et al. 2015; Hamel et al. 2021), specifically to analyze implications regarding the Nature for Society perspective of the NFF. From the Nature for Nature and Nature as Culture perspectives the visions and desires of people, as surfaced during our process, challenge conventional modelling approaches, as these fail to represent the known diversity of people-nature interactions (Kok et al. 2016; Rosa et al. 2017).
National parks and other forms of protected areas are increasingly understood as complex adaptive systems, subject to nonlinearity, uncertainty, emergence and self-organization (Berkes 2004, 2007; Cumming and Allen 2017). From that perspective, the objectives of NPHD will likely evolve over time, and the process of developing the park will never be “finished”. Navigating the development trajectory of NPHD towards desirable futures for nature and people can benefit from adaptive co-management approach that includes frequent visioning and pathways exploration as part of a continuous stakeholder engagement process (Olsson et al. 2004; Kerkhoff et al. 2019). As such, the outcomes generated by the workshop process in NPHD should not be seen as final products and could become stepping stones in a series of engagements. Yet, depending on the aims of the process, the scope may be narrowed down further to hold more focused discussions. For example, a follow-up workshop could focus on nature futures of the bulb agriculture within NPHD, to identify more integrated solutions to a known policy challenge. Whatever the context and the aims, it is important to clearly communicate before the workshop to participant stakeholders what will be done with the outcomes. And, in that same vein, to report back to the participants after the workshop what is done with the results.