Publications

Pereira, LM., Ortuño Crespo, G., Merrie, A and Homewood, C. (2022). Operationalising the Nature Futures Framework in the High Seas. Nereus Workshop report, Stockholm

The perceived remoteness and vastness of the ocean has inadvertently created a psychological and cultural barrier between people and the global ocean, particularly in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ); which accounts for >64% of the ocean and >45% of our planetary surface. After decades of commercial fisheries exploitation by a small number of nations this once untouched part of our planet and its biodiversity and ecos...

Österblom, H., Folke, C., Rocha, J. et al. Scientific mobilization of keystone actors for biosphere stewardship. Sci Rep 12, 3802 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-07023-8

The biosphere crisis requires changes to existing business practices. We ask how corporations can become sustainability leaders, when constrained by multiple barriers to collaboration for biosphere stewardship. We describe how scientists motivated, inspired and engaged with ten of the world’s largest seafood companies, in a collaborative process aimed to enable science-based and systemic transformations (2015–2021). CEOs face...

Spijkers, J., Merrie, A., Wabnitz, C.C., Osborne, M., Mobjörk, M., Bodin, Ö., Selig, E.R., Le Billon, P., Hendrix, C.S., Singh, G.G. and Keys, P.W., 2021. Exploring the future of fishery conflict through narrative scenarios. One Earth. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2021.02.004

Recent studies suggest that the pervasive impacts on global fishery resources caused by stressors such as overfishing and climate change could dramatically increase the likelihood of fishery conflict. However, existing projections do not consider wider economic, social, or political trends when assessing the likelihood of, and influences on, future conflict trajectories. In this paper, we build four future fishery conflict sc...

Hamann, M., Biggs, R., Pereira, L., Preiser, R., Hichert, T. et.al. 2020. Scenarios of Good Anthropocenes in southern Africa. Futures, Volume 118, April 2020, 102526, DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2020.102526

In the rapidly changing and uncertain world of the Anthropocene, positive visions of the future could play a crucial role in catalysing deep social-ecological transformations to help guide humanity towards more sustainable and equitable futures. This paper presents the outcomes from a novel visioning process designed to elicit creative and inspirational future scenarios for southern Africa. The approach based scenario develop...

Pereira, L, Sitas, N, Ravera, F, Jimenez-Aceituno, A and Merrie, A. 2019. Building capacities for transformative change towards sustainability: Imagination in Intergovernmental Science-Policy Scenario Processes. Elem Sci Anth, 7: 35. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.374

Scenario development has been recognized as a potential method to explore future change and stimulate a reflective process that can contribute to more informed decision-making. The assessment process under IPBES (the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) has however shown that the current predominantly biophysical and economic models and scenario processes for exploring the future of...

Petersson, M.T., Dellmuth, L.M., Merrie, A. and Österblom, H., 2019. Patterns and trends in non-state actor participation in regional fisheries management organizations. Marine Policy, 104, pp.146-156

Non-state actors (NSAs) have proliferated in number and are increasingly acknowledged to matter for global governance of natural resources. This has generated considerable scholarly interest, but there is surprisingly little systematic knowledge about patterns and trends of NSA participation in global fisheries institutions. This article addresses this gap by studying NSA populations, considering more than 500 actors attending...

Haider, L.J., Hentati-Sundberg, J., Giusti, M. et al. 2017. The undisciplinary journey: early-career perspectives in sustainability science. Sustain Sci. 13: 191. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-017-0445-1

The establishment of interdisciplinary Master’s and PhD programs in sustainability science is opening up an exciting arena filled with opportunities for early-career scholars to address pressing sustainability challenges. However, embarking upon an interdisciplinary endeavor as an early-career scholar poses a unique set of challenges: to develop an individual scientific identity and a strong and specific methodological skill-s...

Merrie, A., Keys,. P., M. Metian, Österblom, H. 2017. Radical ocean futures-scenario development using science fiction prototyping. Futures, available online 7 October 2017. DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2017.09.005

Scenarios can help individuals, communities, corporations and nations to develop a capacity for dealing with the unknown and unpredictable, or the unlikely but possible. A range of scientific methods for developing scenarios is available, but we argue that they have limited capacity to investigate complex social-ecological futures because: 1) non-linear change is rarely incorporated and: 2) they rarely involve co-evolutionar...

Haider, L.J., Hentati-Sundberg, J., Giusti, M. et al. 2017. The undisciplinary journey: early-career perspectives in sustainability science. Sustain Sci. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-017-0445-1

The establishment of interdisciplinary Master’s and PhD programmes in sustainability science is opening up an exciting arena filled with opportunities for early-career scholars to address pressing sustainability challenges. However, embarking upon an interdisciplinary endeavor as an early-career scholar poses a unique set of challenges: to develop an individual scientific identity and a strong and specific methodological skill...

Österblom, H., J.-B. Jouffray, C. Folke, B. Crona, M. Troell, A. Merrie, J. Rockström. 2015. Transnational corporations as ‘keystone actors’ in marine ecosystems. PLoS ONE 10(5): e0127533.

Keystone species have a disproportionate influence on the structure and function of ecosystems. Here we analyze whether a keystone-like pattern can be observed in the relationship between transnational corporations and marine ecosystems globally. We show how thirteen corporations control 11-16% of the global marine catch (9-13 million tons) and 19-40% of the largest and most valuable stocks, including species that play importa...