Futures consciousness and governance transitions for climate adaptation in South African protected areas

Figures & data

Box 1. Garden Route National Park: vision, goals, and management programs.

- Collective vision: An innovative and accessible national park, spanning mountains to marine, conserving the natural and cultural heritage of the Garden Route collaboratively for the benefit of people and the environment.- Goal: conserve the diverse ecosystems of the Garden Route on a landscape level- High-level objectives guiding management programs: natural heritage (conserve terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems through adaptive, collaborative, and innovative approaches), cultural heritage (preserve, interpret, and present the diverse cultural heritage through allowing access, engagement, responsible utilisation and research), responsible tourism (nature- and culture-based opportunities), equitable access and benefit sharing, participative engagement, learning, interpretation research and monitoring (promote up-to-date knowledge and awareness to biodiversity and cultural heritage), and good governance.- Extracted from SANParks (2020) Garden Route National Park Management Plan

Table 1. Unpacking the five dimensions of futures consciousness (central column, Ahvenharju et al. 2018) enabling the transitions (left column, van Kerkhoff et al., 2019) for transformative change in the Garden Route National park (GRNP), South Africa. The quotes in the right column are selected illustrative quotes from the interviews.

Transition	Futures consciousness dimensions	Illustrative quote
From preventing change and reducing uncertainty, to anticipate and embrace change and accept uncertainty	Systems perception: understand social-ecological system processes, responses, and feedback across space and time	Do we fight it? Or do we live with it? Probably a bit of both. We try and prevent it obviously as much as you can, but there are going to be radical changes that are beyond our control (Int. 12)
	Time perspective: to address management timeframes while observing, understanding, and anticipating the system
	Agency beliefs: feeling able to respond to unexpected events, through incremental or transformative actions
	Openness to alternatives: embracing change require being flexible and spontaneous when faced to different alternatives and pace of change (rapid or slow)
(2) From approaches focusing on some ecological features to social values and benefits	Concern for others: a shift from ecological to social values calls to reflect on issues of ethics, care and responsibility towards human, and relations with non-human agents	Climate change is not just going to impact fish stocks, it’s going to impact the people that are utilising those fish stocks and how they change their behaviour might change the fish stocks even more. We need to think beyond just the depth our parks for the corridors and the movement of animals, to think about how it’s going to be influencing those [SES] systems all together (Int. 13)
	Systems perception: having systemic and holistic approaches helps to consider complex societal problems and implications of solutions across scales
	Openness to alternatives: rethinking existing assumptions about conservation goals
(3) From adaptation as a scientific/technical issue, to adaptation as governance	Agency beliefs: organising strategies and rules to better respond to future changes	That means working with stakeholders, and seeing we as part of a mosaic landscape, not as a park that’s separate from the landscape. And how do we allow these bigger processes across multiple land uses and multiple land tenure or ownership (Int. 15)
	Openness to alternatives: questioning how science informs planning and decision-making, to rearticulate knowledge systems and governance
	Systems perception: addressing participation of different governance models across scales and sectors
	Concern for others: negotiate and reconcile power imbalances between different stakeholders
(4) From reactive problem solving, to learning and reflexive approaches	Agency beliefs: understanding and shaping future events through learning, rethinking, and envisioning	The GRNP is a very fragmented and open access park. So, there’s a lot of land uses in between pockets of the park [it makes] more important to have stakeholder participation because people are so influenced by the park, and they influence the park so much (Int. 14)
	Time perspective: anticipating future changes while ‘keeping an eye’ on the present, learning from past events, and being aware of events and consequences through time
	Systems perception: learning through relational engagement with SES to rearticulate management
	Concern for others: participation as a transformative process through engaging stakeholders with diverse ways of knowing, doing, and values to address complexity and long-term change

SANParks. 2020. Garden Route management plan for the period 2020-2029. Pretoria: South African National Parks, SANParks.

 Google Scholar

Ahvenharju S, Minkkinen M, Lalot F. 2018. The five dimensions of futures consciousness. Futures. 104:1–13. doi: 10.1016/j.futures.2018.06.010.

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar

Colloff MJ, Gorddard R, Abel N, Locatelli B, Wyborn C, Butler JRA, Lavorel S, van Kerkhoff L, Meharg S, Múnera-Roldán C, et al. 2021. Adapting transformation and transforming adaptation to climate change using a pathways approach. Environ Sci Policy. 124:163–174. doi: 10.1016/j.envsci.2021.06.014.

 Web of Science ®Google Scholar