Future Scenarios Project Origins and Background

Project Origins

In 2018, our Leadership Council adopted Beyond 2020 Resolution which described our goals for Puget Sound recovery and made a call to action. The resolution challenged the Puget Sound recovery community to pursue ambitious solutions, secure funding, seek supportive legislation, and stay accountable for implementing all actions needed to make Puget Sound resilient.

We have made progress, but our efforts have not been at a scale or pace sufficient to restore Puget Sound to health…This is our moment to define what our future can look like, and to fight to make it a reality…
Our vision includes a resilient ecosystem…a thriving economy, sustainable farms and forests, and human communities with high quality of life…Most importantly, our vision includes a broad community of engaged citizens who commit to save Puget Sound.

We issue this call to action to everyone connected to Puget Sound: Join us in protecting habitat, recovering iconic species, and ensuring that our lands and waters sustain generations to come.”

Excerpted from the 2018 Action Agenda for Puget Sound and the our Leadership Council’s Call to Action.

The Puget Sound Future Scenarios project (Future Scenarios) grew from our Leadership Council’s vision and call to action. Achieving the goals of the Beyond 2020 Resolution means planning for a future in a region that is changing in significant ways, some of which we understand and can predict, while others are uncertain.
In 2020-21, after consulting with the Science Panel, we launched Future Scenarios to:

  • Invite creative and innovative thinking about Puget Sound recovery strategies.
  • Strengthen the interdisciplinary community of recovery practice.
  • Better understand and communicate potential consequences and tradeoffs of current policy and management choices on future conditions.

Over the years, Future Scenarios has been implemented through multiple phases, each with different purposes, outcomes, questions, and forms of engagement. Despite evolving over time, the project stayed true to its original intent by exploring a range of potential futures for Puget Sound recovery through character-driven stories that reflect different approaches to growth and development management.

Project Background

There have been four main phases for the Future Scenarios effort. Activities and accomplishments for each phase are listed below.

Future Scenarios Phase 1 | 2020-22

  • Established interdisciplinary advisory group to advise on the project and build on similar regional scenario planning efforts
  • Identified regional drivers of change, along with initial project metrics and data sets to assess them
  • Developed exploratory scenario tools: Envision and qualitative network model
  • Created an initial baseline scenario and a set of alternative scenarios

Future Scenarios Phase 2 | 2022-23

  • Updated the baseline scenario and created initial versions of the project’s current alternative scenarios: Salmon Forward, Networked Growth, and Rural Stewardship
  • Refined and expanded modeling representation, including a salmon favorability index model that combines habitat factors into a single score to compare outcomes across scenarios
  • Held the first of two science-policy workshops in November 2023: Bold Land Use Planning in Puget Sound. The workshop brought together over 60 regional land use and growth management experts, local and state agency planners and coordinators, and stormwater and salmon experts. Participants identified over 70 potential future impacts related to development, human wellbeing and equity, and ecosystem restoration and conservation. They also generated 27 bold ideas that could address those impacts.

Read the November 2023 Future Scenarios Bold Land Use Planning in Puget Sound workshop synopsis, including the bold ideas that could address future development, human wellbeing and equity, and ecosystem restoration and conservation challenges.

Future Scenarios Phase 3 | 2023-2024

  • Created the Hybrid Scenario, a fourth alternative scenario that explores several ideas from the November 2023 Bold Land Use Planning workshop.
  • Continued to refine and expand modeling representation.
  • Hosted the second science-policy workshop in June 2024: Exploring Bold Land Use Ideas in Puget Sound. The workshop brought together over 50 recovery experts who considered what it would take to implement ideas from the November workshop. They generated 31 “seeds of bold action” that can accelerate Puget Sound recovery.

Read the June 2024 Exploring Bold Land Use Ideas in Puget Sound workshop synopsis, including the “seeds of bold action” to accelerate Puget Sound recovery.

Advancing Future Scenarios | 2024-2026

  • Updated all four alternative scenario narratives to improve cohesion and reflect small changes in assumptions.
  • Improved ability to simulate conservation and restoration activities.
  • Improved representation of habitat important to salmon and added representation of sea level rise.
  • Developed additional models to explore outcomes of interest to the Puget Sound recovery community, including:
    • Housing affordability index
    • Environmental justice
    • Working lands
    • Recreation and tourism
    • The restoration economy.
  • Worked with Jefferson County to consider how Future Scenarios findings align with its recent comprehensive plan’s goals and policies.
  • Continued to engage with key partners, including our boards team, Strategic Initiative Leads, and the Puget Sound Institute.

 

Current as of: 07/17/26

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