Visions of Land Use Transitions in Europe

1. Visions of Land Use Transitions in Europe Bas Pedroli, 24 May 2011, Brussels ESPON workshop Evidence on European Land Use

2. VOLANTE • Objective: • to provide European policy and land management with innovative visions for future sustainable resource management and land use policy development under a range of environmental and management conditions across Europe • FP7 Collaborative project • Duration 4.5 years as from November 2010 • 14 partners from 11 countries • Project Coordination Alterra Wageningen UR

4. Starting points • The world is a changing environment. • Land use transitions will occur in an ever increasing pace, answering changing conditions of global market and society. • Sound management of energy sources, climate adaptation and mitigation, and changing urban-rural relationships will all have large, hardly predictable impacts on land use. • European Policy is therefore confronted with the need to develop visions of managing these land use transitions in a responsible way.

5. Approach • Land system science (GLP) • Three basic questions: • How can the analysis of empirical and historical land system datasets provide insight into human-environment interactions? • How can integrated modelling and the ecosystem service concept contribute to the testing of hypotheses about land system functioning and decision making? • How can our current understanding of land systems inform the choices that society has about future landscapes?

7. Module Processes

8. Effects of policies on landscape

9. Syndrome Analysis

10. Module Assessment: modelling approach

11. Discussion • can observed patterns of land use and land use change be used to infer the underlying processes? • in complex systems this principle breaks down! • many development pathways arising from multiple drivers, controlled by different processes lead to same land use outcome, • while similar processes may lead to different outcomes. • thus: not rely on observation alone, but use both empirical analysis and model simulation in combination to explore the how and why of land system change

12. Discussion (2) • models can be used to explore alternative development pathways, but models need to be grounded in, and able to reproduce, observation • the processes that models represent can only be informed by empirical evidence, yet observation alone cannot be used to explore the wide range of processes that occur in reality • therefore: coupling of different land system methods exploiting methodological strengths whilst overcoming their weaknesses

13. Conclusion • sustainable land use strategies need to be underpinned by understanding of how policy will affect land use and ecosystem services and the trade-offs and synergies between them • embedding policy makers and relevant stakeholders in the research process through a carefully planned strategy of knowledge exchange • Improving the potential to support the formulation of sound, evidence-based policies

14. Visions of Land Use Transitions in Europe: Enhancing sound land use management for the future