Setting the scenario: Planning for environmental change

The UK National Ecosystem Assessment (UK NEA) is the first analysis of the benefits the UK's natural environment provides to society services like food, clean water and climate regulation. Scenarios are widely used by researchers and decision-makers to help them think about the future. The idea is that they help people use their present knowledge to explore what the future might be like by enabling them to think about the way different drivers of change affect the world around them. They can also be used to compare different visions of the future, and so help them explore different management or policy goals. One thing that the UK NEA scenarios are not is a set of predictions about the future of ecosystem services. The purpose of the six scenarios is to capture what they know about the way ecosystem services could change if they make different assumptions about the forces that affect them.