Post-its, posters and pathways: a summary of the second PLURALAKES stakeholder workshop in the Lake District, UK

The first PLURALAKES workshop in the Lake District, UK was held last year on a sunny day in May. It centred on developing three future visions of the lakes in the region corresponding to the three values of the Nature Futures Framework; Nature for Nature (intrinsic), Nature for Culture (relational) and Nature for Society (instrumental). You can read the full workshop report here: Visions and plausible pathways for positive lake futures in the English Lake District, UK.

The second workshop contained a flurry of post-its and posters, as participants were asked to engage in a host of activities which aimed to build on the visions of the first workshop and to think about the pathways to reaching these visions. The day opened with participants reading three short stories describing a day in the life of a character living in each of the three future visions. Whilst some felt aspects of these visions jarring, there was a sense that in each there was something attractive to everyone, which is hopeful for the end goal of creating a shared future vision. The next activities invited participants to prioritise 2-3 ecosystem services in their lake futures and was an exercise in highlighting that trade-offs, conflicts and complex interactions are likely but are part of the process of ensuring lakes can provide ecosystem services in the future.

The most difficult exercises of the day focussed on mapping the pathways to achieving the desirable futures and thinking about both the unsustainable and sustainable systems, practices and behaviours which need to be phased out and built-up respectively over the next 25 years. Whilst we had touched on this in the first workshop, these activities required more depth and acknowledgment of timescales. This is a challenging ask, given the global and national contexts we and our ecosystems currently find ourselves. What we noticed as observers, however, was that there were no knowledge gaps on what needs to be done to reach our desirable nature futures. All groups had a suite of actions, example projects and partnerships that if supported correctly could start or grow in the next few years and set us on a positive trajectory for nature. Similarly, participants were aware of the barriers and tensions that prevent these from happening. To summarise, when it comes down to the crux of the matter, we know what needs to be done and overcome.

We were lucky enough to be joined by several new participants for this second workshop who bought new perspectives and insights. The activities were much more challenging in this second workshop and bought tensions of ownership and access to the fore. It is hoped this independent research setting, allows an open and safer way to have these difficult conversations, as have them we must.

The next steps for us PLURALAKES researchers are to synthesise the wealth of post-its and create a workshop report. Following on from this we will build up our systems models and generate scenarios on best-available data to understand whether these pathways are enough to reach our positive nature futures. We look forward to feeding this back to our participants in the next workshop.

Finally, we ended the day with a creative exercise inviting the groups to narrate the road to 2050 from the perspective of a younger member of society. Again, this was a challenging task but as each group shared these stories what shone through was a shared hope that nature is respected and cherished.

The story does indeed continue.