ANNUAL CONGRESS 2025

Green transitions and collaborative landscape strategy making – insights from Denmark

Not scheduled

20m

Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul

Oral Track 10 | THEORIES

Speaker

Prof. Jørgen Primdahl (University of Copenhagen, Dept of Geoscience and Natural Resource Management)

Description

Rural landscapes are in transition worldwide driven by intersecting processes including climate change, structural changes in agriculture (concentration, specialization, intensification/extensification), urbanization in various forms, and decline in biodiversity (Pinto-Correia et al. 2018). Also, public policies and planning are changing at all levels and sectors (including both market policies and ‘sustainability policies’affecting (and affected) by landscape change (Primdahl and Swaffield 2010). However, the policies are poorly integrated, but will nonetheless meet in the landscape, often in conflict with each other and with overall dysfunctional outcomes. Collaborative planning has an obvious role to play in guiding these transitions in relation policy integration, conflict management, and place making (Healey 2009).
In this paper we present and discuss the radical changes in Danish climate and environmental policies recently approved by a vast majority in the parliament and in partnership with farmers union, trade unitions and the nature conservation association. Within the next few decades 15-25 % of the agricultural land (10-15% of the country) is expected to change land use – be afforested, converted to extensive grazing, or rewilded. The policies will be implemented partly through collaborative planning processes involving state agencies, municipalities and various interest groups, partly by individual agreements supported by various subsidy schemes and other enabling measures.
On this background we first review the fields of landscape ecology (including Termorshuizen and Opdam 2009 ), socio-ecological systems (including Folke et al. 2005) , and planning theory (including Healy 2009, Innes and Booher 2015, Forester et al. 2019) focusing on resilience and collaborative planning. We then draw on our own experiences from more than 20 action research projects presenting insights concerning conditions for and solutions from collaborative strategy making for rural landscapes (Kristensen and Primdahl 2020). Discussions will include principal and practical issues such as self- and co-determination, stakeholder involvement, scoping, confrontation dialogues (confronting external expertise with local experience and values), project selection, and framing.
We finalize by analyzing and discussing the opportunities and limitations of collaborative landscape strategy making as an approach to green transition in the context of the current Danish reform and with some wider references to the EU Green Deal.

References

Folke, C., Hahn, T., Olsson, P. and Norberg, J. (2005) Adaptive Governance of Social-Ecological Systems. Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 30:441–73
Forester J, Kuitenbrouwer, M and Laws, D (2019). Enacting reflective and deliberative practices in action research. Policy Studies 40(5): 456–475.
Healey, P. (2009). In search of the ‘strategic’ in spatial strategy making. Planning, Theory
& Practice 10 (4): 439–457.
Pinto-Correia, T., Primdahl, J. and Pedroli, B. (2018) European Landscapes in Transition. Implications for Policy and Practice. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Kristensen, L.S and Primdahl, J. (2020) Landscape Strategy making as a pathway to policy integration and involvement of stakeholders: examples from a Danish action research programme. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 63 (6), 1114-1131.
Primdahl, J. and Swaffeild, S. (2010) Globalisation and the sustainability of agricultural landscapes. In Primdahl, J. and Swaffield, S. (eds.) Globalisation and Agricultural Landscapes. Change Patterns and Policy Trends in Developed Countries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-15.
Termonshuizen, J.W. and Opdam, P. (2009) Landscape services as a bridge between landscape ecology and sustainable development. Landscape Ecology 24: 1037-1052.