ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to distil key messages and guidelines from the literature on futures-thinking in order to help researchers, policymakers and land managers decide when and how to apply futures-thinking when considering ecosystem services. Futures-thinking draws on a range of disciplines to acknowledge and address the psychological and other barriers to thinking openly and creatively about future possibilities and their implications for planning over multiple timeframes. The methods associated with futures-thinking explore how external forces have interacted with human thinking, values and behaviours to shape the past and present and how such interactions might shape the future. The chapter explores a large body of literature on futures-thinking and shows how it can contribute to ecosystem assessments. Like ecosystem assessments, critical and integral futures approaches aim to improve societies' ability to think more deeply about social as well as bio-physical futures. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment sought to make explicit the relationships between ecosystem services and human needs.
