Scenarios: WIO coastal and marine environmental futures
The 45 649 km long coastline of Africa is shared by 33 mainland countries and six island states. The continents' coastal and marine resources support many economic activities such as shipping, transportation and recreation. The state of the coastal environment is an indicator of the potential economic benefit that can be derived from the natural goods and services that accrue to government accounts and their people. An analytical exploration of the future state of coastal resources is required to understand the relationship between the use and exploitation of natural goods and services and the concept of sustainable development. The western Indian Ocean (WIO) Regional State the Coast Report (RSOCR) presents an exploratory scenario and policy analysis to better inform anticipatory planning and management of coastal and marine resources. To address gaps and policy failures in the governance of ocean and coasts, there is a need to explore a more holistic approach to managing complex seascapes, such as spatial management approaches like the use of marine protected areas (MPAs) and marine spatial planning, which both seek to implement ecosystem based management. This integrated approach to management that considers the entire ecosystem, including humans, can be employed across the WIO region through futuristic analyses. Complex issues such as environmental change are best communicated by way of contrasting 'scenarios' or 'worlds' which explore future trends, trade offs, implications and policy lessons derived from our understanding of the drivers of environment change. Scenarios are imagined 'futures' They are seldom presented as a single forecast, but rather as a set of alternative plausible future pathways that can provide options for decisionand policy making. The range of future options describes both optimistic and problematic futures in the hope of benchmarking both 'extremes'and 'middle grounds' in order to steer decisionand policy making to achieve a desirable future. For better results of an assessment process, scenarios should explore different ramifications and extensions of critical uncertainties and interaction of factors within specific themes. Long range planning, informed by scenarios, enables decision makers to predict and explore a range of possible alternative futures in order to identify possible corrective actions and the subsequent and resulting consequences. In this regard, scenario analysis can be effective in supporting strategies for resource use management and conservation. Scenario analysis goes beyond simple contingency planning, sensitivity analysis and computer simulations by presenting comprehensive exploration of alternative futures. It is thus desirable for regional, national and subnational stakeholders in the WIO region to mainstream scenario planning in order to anticipate weaknesses and inflexibilities in coastal and marine resources management towards growth and development. If understood and anticipated, such weaknesses can be avoided, or their impact reduced, through appropriately targeted and costed interventions, rather than engaging mitigation measures as they