M3. Policy making for European landscapes

Agata Cieszewska (Warsaw University of Life Sciences), agata_cieszewska@sggw.edu.pl

Werner Rolf (IALE-Europe, Technical University of Munich)

Isabel Loupa-Ramos (IALE-Europe, Technical University of Lisbon)

Sónia M. Carvalho Ribeiro (Federal University of Minas Gerais)

Veerle Van Eetvelde (IALE-Europe, Ghent University)

Jarosław Balon (Polish Association for Landscape Ecology, Jagiellonian University),

Jerzy Solon (Polish Association for Landscape Ecology, Institute of Geography and Spatial Organisation PAS)

Summary

Growing and diversifying threats to the environment pose an increasingly demanding challenge to modern, sustainable and socially equitable development. This session will address a wide array of formal and informal instruments for policymaking and their abilities to address future challenges and steer changes of European landscape on the transition path to sustainability.

Description

On the one hand, we will look at formal EU level policies, focusing on the European Green Deal. EU put forward the European Green Deal as a new development strategy which also challenges new approaches for landscape thinking, planning and design. This strategy will also shape the discipline of Landscape Ecology and its development by providing funding for activities and research for sustainable landscape development.

As an informal strategy another focus will be the Florence Convention (also known as European Landscape Convention - ELC). In the 20 years since the adoption of the Convention, European countries and regions have made significant progress in landscape resources recognition, inventory and protection as well as in landscape management and planning. In has not just given new impulse to basic studies in landscape ecology and landscape-based spatial management but strongly influenced the integration of landscape issues into the formulation of national, regional and local spatial policies.

The general objective of the symposium is to share knowledge and experiences on the links between European policies and landscape ecology. It will discuss how landscape ecology is an inter- and transdisciplinary science, bridging natural and social sciences for a holistic understanding of landscape as a socio-ecological system. Among main policy areas that are to contribute to environmental transformation, several directly concern landscape ecology, such as biodiversity, sustainable agriculture and forest, others indirectly, sustainable mobility and renewable energy. The symposium will focus on how policies, stimulate the development of landscape ecology research on the one hand, while landscape ecological understanding contributes to the development of resilient landscapes and societies. Furthermore, we want to look beyond European policies and would like to reflect these issues with experiences from Europe and all around the world to learn from each other.

Impact

This symposium is a co-organisation of PAEK and IALE-Europe, fitting in the WG Europe’s Stakeholders – Shaping Future Policy and Science. It will contribute to the further implementation of the ELC at the national and regional level with a solid landscape ecological foundation. Furthermore, a special issue is planned for Land Use Policy (Elsevier). Participants will be invited to contribute.