F2. Planning and policy approaches for future landscapes: learning from past experiences to develop novel pathways
Simona R. Grădinaru (University of Bucharest), simona.gradinaru@g.unibuc.ro
Anna M. Hersperger (Swiss Federal Institute for Forest)
Ana Beatriz Pierri-Daunt (Swiss Federal Institute for Forest)
Summary
Worldwide, land transformations have contributed to amplifying environmental challenges such as depletion of food providing areas, climate change effects, or soil degradation. Efforts need to be put in improving the capacity of governments and authorities to formulate and implement policies which tackle these challenges. This symposium aims to assemble talks that discuss innovative approaches for integrating landscape ecology principles, concepts, methods into planning and policy for better addressing these challenges. We encourage papers which address all steps of the planning cycle.
Description
Worldwide, we experience fast and profound alteration of our human and natural environment. Arguably one of the most important processes therein are land transformations and their associated impacts on the landscapes. The resulting challenges, including rapid global urbanization, depletion of green spaces and food providing areas, climate change, and soil degradation, among others, are critical in our time. It is in this context that great effort needs to be put in understanding how to improve the capacity of the worldwide governments and authorities to formulate, adopt and implement policies that tackle these challenges.
Spatial planning and policy, in its various forms ranging from integrated strategic approaches for setting long term visions to targeted policies, has been proven to influence patterns of land transformations. Thus, current environmental challenges need to be integrated into the planning agendas.
We welcome presentations which follow the general congress theme – making the future, learning from the past, and present:
- evidence on the role of planning in landscape transformations,
- lessons learned from participative/collaborative planning processes,
- novel methods through which landscape ecology could support addressing current challenges during the planning process,
- integration of landscape ecology concepts into planning and policy,
- approaches for mainstreaming ongoing challenges such as landscape changes, and food security, into planning documents,
- developing scenarios of future landscapes.
We invite papers that address various steps of the planning cycle, from goal setting to implementation and evaluation procedures. Presentations can address, for example, the role of the actors during the planning process, the efficacy of the planning instruments, or the impact of plans and policies on the landscapes. A focus on urban landscapes and the use of new tools for integrating the ecological and human dimensions within a spatial framework (e.g. digital plans) are particularly welcomed. We encourage contributions that present both theoretical endeavours and empirical results.
Impact
The main outcomes of the symposium will be: continuing the tradition of addressing the role of planning in landscape ecology and community building. Organization of this symposium has become a tradition, with the previous two symposia being organized during the European Landscape Ecology Congress in Ghent and the World Landscape Ecology Congress in Milan. We expect that the community of landscape ecologists addressing planning in their work to strengthen their networks and identify common ground for their research. We will discuss the opportunity of starting a working group.