Scenarios as a tool for supporting policy-making for the Wadden Sea

The Wadden Sea region along the Dutch coast is currently an area undergoing a turning point in the context of both environmental change and economic growth and development, which will inevitably result in pivotal alterations of its natural systems. In this work, we apply scenarios as a tool to explore possible futures of both environmental conditions and use-regimes in this region. Implications of divergent world-views about the Wadden Sea environment and its development potential are evaluated with this methodology to find common ground among stake-holders regarding management trajectories and the possible environmental conditions that may result from prospective policy options. Particular considerations of how to generate and evaluate scenarios are identified and applied to reveal how current environmental tensions regarding development, resource exploitation, and conservation in the Wadden Sea region can be useful to frame feasible policy prescriptions and mitigate conflict among user-groups. Two scenarios, "Nature First" and "Food and Energy" were constructed based on present-day attitudes and perceptions of how this region should be managed, given its particular status as a unique and sensitive ecosystem that also harbors abundant resources and industrial growth capacity. We show that by looking ahead into potential outcomes of current trends in development efforts, these scenarios can effectively inform the decision-making processes by revealing the potential consequences, both beneficial and adverse, that could result from the variety of development goals currently being considered for the Wadden Sea region. We show that this heavily-utilized coastal zone requires a strategic long-term integrated vision that includes the flexibility to accommodate unexpected circumstances that result from short-term management decisions. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.