Baltic Scenarios
Possible Futures for the Use of the Baltic Sea towards 2030
The ‘Baltic Scenarios’ is an initiative launched by WWF and designed to spark a broad dialogue and serve as a catalyst for future collaboration, commitment and action by the public and private sectors to create the Baltic we seek today, tomorrow and in 20 years.
Through our collective work to develop, advocate, and implement solutions to protect the Baltic marine ecosystem and ensure the sustainable use of its resources, we have experienced firsthand the growing realization that our own futures and the future of the Baltic Sea are inextricably linked. The 2010 WWF report ‘Future Trends in the Baltic Sea’ highlighted substantial growth trends expected in the region over the next 20 years. A year later, WWF released its 2011 ‘Scorecard’ report to evaluate the degree to which governments around the region were honoring their commitments to some of the most important environmental agreements and conventions designed to protect and manage the Baltic Sea. The results were disappointing.
These two reports succinctly illustrate two overwhelming challenges for the Baltic Sea:
1) the tremendous projected growth which will place even more demands on an already over-stressed ecosystem, and
2) a governance framework that is not only unable to deliver the needed protection for the Baltic Sea today but is clearly ill-equipped to meet the oncoming challenges.
They demonstrate that the sheer scale of the challenges facing the Baltic Sea requires much broader engagement and action – of both the public and private sectors – than exists today. It was with this in mind that WWF, with financial support from Trygg Hansa/RSA, launched this Baltic Scenarios process in 2011 and released a WWF Report, Counter Currents – Scenarios for the Baltic Sea 2030, in August 2012. The report presents a summary of WWF’s consultation with a number of regional actors on possible futures for the Baltic Sea. Central to the process was a Scenario Planning exercise and analysis. The report summarizes 4 possible futures, or scenarios, for the Baltic Sea in 2030. The focus has been to ask ourselves what kind of future we really want in the Baltic Sea as a basis from which to begin to define what kind of commitments and action will be needed in order for us to reach this desired future.
Of course we do not know what the future holds. Scenarios, however, help us describe possible futures, which is what this report aims to do. By describing what is possible tomorrow we believe we can better prepare ourselves for potential actions and responses today. The report can be downloaded from the right hand column.
These two reports succinctly illustrate two overwhelming challenges for the Baltic Sea:
1) the tremendous projected growth which will place even more demands on an already over-stressed ecosystem, and
2) a governance framework that is not only unable to deliver the needed protection for the Baltic Sea today but is clearly ill-equipped to meet the oncoming challenges.
They demonstrate that the sheer scale of the challenges facing the Baltic Sea requires much broader engagement and action – of both the public and private sectors – than exists today. It was with this in mind that WWF, with financial support from Trygg Hansa/RSA, launched this Baltic Scenarios process in 2011 and released a WWF Report, Counter Currents – Scenarios for the Baltic Sea 2030, in August 2012. The report presents a summary of WWF’s consultation with a number of regional actors on possible futures for the Baltic Sea. Central to the process was a Scenario Planning exercise and analysis. The report summarizes 4 possible futures, or scenarios, for the Baltic Sea in 2030. The focus has been to ask ourselves what kind of future we really want in the Baltic Sea as a basis from which to begin to define what kind of commitments and action will be needed in order for us to reach this desired future.
Of course we do not know what the future holds. Scenarios, however, help us describe possible futures, which is what this report aims to do. By describing what is possible tomorrow we believe we can better prepare ourselves for potential actions and responses today. The report can be downloaded from the right hand column.
Counter Currents - Scenarios for the Baltic Sea Towards 2030
