PLURALAKES: Using the Nature Futures Framework to co-create visions for desired lake futures and practical pathways to achieving them

Freshwater ecosystems are among the most threatened ecosystems globally yet are often underrepresented in governance processes. To support sustainable and equitable governance of lakes, an international transdisciplinary Water4All research project, called PLURALAKES, was launched. Using the Nature Futures Framework (NFF) as a guiding tool, PLURALAKES is developing and testing a novel approach to co-creating desired visions for lake futures, as well as pathways to achieving them, across case studies in Finland, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. To inform practical pathways for achieving desired lake futures, we combine participatory visioning, systems thinking, environmental valuation, and ecosystem modelling across cases. Here, we present our transdisciplinary approach to envisioning desired lake futures and developing practical, and desired, pathways for achieving them. To illustrate the application of the PLURALAKES approach, we share preliminary insights and reflections from PLURALAKES’ participatory visioning and pathways workshops in the English Lake District, where lakes are deeply valued yet strongly impacted by human activity, including agriculture and tourism. Because these lakes are experiencing water quality issues that affect many lakes across the world—and given the conflicting interests and values that often perpetuate these issues—the English Lake District offers an ideal case study for demonstrating how the PLURALAKES approach incorporates plural values and co-develops pathways towards shared visions. In these participatory workshops, we draw on tools such as the NFF and the X-curve to co-develop visions of desired futures in the Lake District, which were later presented back to participants as narratives. These narratives, combined with causal loop diagrams and further engagement with X-curves, were then used to identify important intervention points in the system and to chart pathways to achieving desired visions for these lakes. Future work will draw on long-term (80-year) datasets and modelling to develop quantitative and semi-quantitative pathways to achieving these visions. These pathways will be used to inform local lake governance.