Science-policy dialogue for managing land use change: bridges and barriers

Abstract

Extensive land use change over the last decades has altered the global environment at unprecedented rates, with severe consequences for biodiversity and ecosystems’ resilience and capacity to sustain human needs. The need for effective policies and strategies that manage ecosystem change, protect nature and local livelihoods is therefore evident. More often than not, these policies are driven by top-down approaches and are implemented differently across scales, usually not adapted to the local /regional /national level needs. Due to the high dependence of people on natural resources, the need to implement participatory approaches to land use management emerges. The implementation of these management strategies should be based on scientific and empirical evidence, while addressing policy requirements. However, few are the cases where all these aspects are taken into account and mostly the dialogue among scientific community, policy makers and local land users is a utopia. Based on an analysis of past examples we will give a first overview on the “barriers” and propose “bridges” towards a successful dialogue among the three main actors described above, on the field of land use change management for nature protection. Through round table discussions, each group of participants will address the issues of scale, terminology and technology and will identify how these should be taken into account to facilitate the above-mentioned dialogue. The expected outcome will be a peer-reviewed publication discussing the challenges and the way forward to improve the dialogue among these actors. This peer-reviewed publication will be prepared by a group of participants consolidated during the workshop. Our workshop will contribute to the GLP Conference thematic 2: “Local land users in a tele-connected world: the role of human decision making on land use as both a driver and response to global environmental change”, by considering the link between land use and the decision making process in the socio-ecological system structure. Statements and Questions - How does spatial, temporal and administrative scale affect the different steps of the decision making process, from data collection and analysis to result generation and their use to guide policy? - How does knowledge and terminology used among the different actors during the decision making process impact their communication and mutual understanding?JRC.H.5-Land Resources Managemen