NEW FUNDING
Centre joins SEK 45 million landscape programme
Centre researchers are part of a new landscape programme that will engage with a number of stakeholders such as reindeer husbandry to design more sustainable management practices. Photo: A. Löf/Azote
LAND-PATHS programme will engage with ordinary citizens to develop more sustainable and integrated decision-making processes
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Centre researchers Tim Daw and Andrea Downing are part of a five-year research programme that will develop more sustainable and multifunctional management practises for different types of landscapes.
Part of the work will be to test citizen-focussed dialogue processes.
"Debates about landscape management are usually dominated by stakeholder representatives and self-selected groups with strong opinions. We will explore whether engaging with ordinary citizens, who’s voices are not usually heard, can support deliberation and creative solutions to conflicts," Downing and Daw say.
LAND-PATHS will engage a number of stakeholders such as reindeer husbandry, the environmental movement, local communities, administration and decision makers.
Benefits from different goals
The programme, entitled LAND-PATHS, will focus on five landscape types of forest, agricultural landscape, sea and coast, city and mountains.
Knowledge in each area will be developed in collaboration with users and other actors in each landscape.
LAND-PATHS will apply a transdisciplinary approach, combining expertise of both researchers and stakeholders.
An important part of the work will be to investigate how obstacles to landscape multifunctionality can be counteracted and how synergies between different societal goals can be build on.
Protecting multifunctional landscapes
”Nature has many valuable functions for humans and society, but most landscapes are impoverished today,” says programme coordinator Malgorzata Blicharska.
She is an associate professor of natural resources and sustainable development at Uppsala University.
Researchers from the Swedish Agricultural University and Södertörn University are also part of the project.
”We want to investigate how biodiversity and landscapes that are more multifunctional can be protected and developed. It is an important task, but it is also exciting and fun research that we will conduct in broad collaboration," says Blicharska.
The programme is funded by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.
