- Scenarios
- Biodiversity
- Freshwater ecology
- Regime shifts
- Ecosystem services
- Resilience
Jan Kuiper's research focuses on the use of participatory scenarios and models to inform decision-making processes in social-ecological systems, from the local to the global level
Jan Kuiper is a broadly oriented sustainability researcher and educator focused on the governance and transformation of social-ecological systems. At the Centre, he combines research, project leadership, teaching, and PhD supervision. He is a theme leader of the Centre’s Transformative Futures theme and serves as an alternate member of its board.
Kuiper heads several international initiatives, including biospherefutures.net, an open-access database of social-ecological scenario case studies, and the PLURALAKES consortium, which works to integrate plural values into lake governance with case studies in the UK, Netherlands, and Finland. He also co-leads a research project on sand and sustainability, examining the risks and opportunities of the global sand systems.
He coordinates the MSc course Resilience Reflections and Applications, and serves as seminar leader in the BSc course Sustainability Science 1.
Kuiper's background is in aquatic ecology. He completed his doctoral research at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) and Wageningen University, where he studied resilience and regime shifts in shallow lakes.
In close collaboration with water quality managers and other stakeholders, he developed and applied dynamic modelling tools to quantify ecosystem resilience and predict the occurrence of abrupt regime shifts.
Before his PhD studies, he conducted research on the functional role of biodiversity in peatland ecosystems at Utrecht University, contributing to the development of the Global Biodiversity model for policy support (GLOBIO-Aquatic) at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.
Kuiper served as a fellow of the task force on scenarios and models of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) that is mandated to catalyse the development of new scenarios and models of biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people. In that capacity, Kuiper was heavily involved in developing the Nature Futures Framework, a new scenario framework that engages with the plurality of people’s relationships with nature.
Kuiper is further associated with the Natural Capital Project, a partnership of world-leading academic institutes and NGOs that works to integrate the value of nature’s contributions to people into all major decisions, centred at Stanford University.
Awards and achievements
- MCED Award for Innovative Contributions to Ecological Modelling (1st prize, 2016)
- Publication Award Netherlands Ecological Research Network (2nd prize, 2016)
- Publication Award Graduate School for Production Ecology and Resource Conservation (1st prize, 2015)
- FORMAS Planning grant (2018-02371): The futures we want: exploring diverse, credible and positive scenarios for navigating transformation under the 2030 Agenda
Current funding
- FORMAS Mobility grant for early-career researchers (2019-01648): To use nature, to protect nature, or to be nature: That is the question
- FORMAS Research grant for early-career researchers (2021-01006): Sand in the Anthropocene: risks and opportunities for global sustainability
- FORMAS/ Water4All 2023 Joint Transnational Call “Ecosystem Services” (2024-00994): PLURALAKES – Co-creating pathways to desirable nature futures of temperature lakes
Supervision
Liam Carpenter Urquhart, PhD, main supervisor
Kiran Pereira, PhD, co-supervisor
Key publications
Kuiper JJ, Carpenter-Urquhart LR, Bérbes-Blázquez M, et al (2024). Biosphere Futures: a database of social-ecological scenarios. Ecology and Society 29(1):19. https://doi.org/10.5751/ ES-14795-290119
Cork S, Alexandra C, Alvarez-Romero JG,... Kuiper JJ, et al (2023). Exploring alternative futures in the Anthropocene. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 48:25-54. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-112321-095011
Kuiper JJ, (2023). A plea for more freshwater experts in IPBES. Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 33:6. https://doi.org/10.1002/aqc.3956
Kuiper JJ, van Wijk D, Mooij WM, et al (2022). Exploring desirable nature futures for Nationaal Park Hollandse Duinen. Ecosystems and People 18:1. https://doi.org/10.1080/26395916.2022.2065360
Pereira LM, Davies KK, Belder E,... Kuiper JJ, et al (2020) Developing multiscale and integrative nature–people scenarios using the Nature Futures Framework. People and Nature 2:1172-1195. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10146