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MILJØFORSK-Miljøforskning for en grønn samfunnsomstilling

Activating local resources for cultivating regional cooperation for sustainable land-use

Alternative title: Aktivering av lokale ressurser som fremmer regionalt samarbeid for bærekraftig arealbruk

Awarded: NOK 12.5 mill.

BIOSPHERE aims to strengthen social-ecological resilience in peri-urban and rural Norway. To ?build back better? we need to apply more holistic and inclusive approaches to solving the complex and interconnected challenges of our time. We must build a knowledge base for the complexities of managing a multidimensional reality, enhancing social-ecological resilience and avoiding conflict, based on the perception of land as a basic limited resource. BIOSPHERE will meet the increasing calls for Nature based Solutions and establish ?nature? as the fundamental basis for building sustainable economies and societies. We will do so by generating integrated whole-systems knowledge of social-ecological systems, using UNESCO?s Man and the Biosphere-programme as our context and empirical basis. Our regional partners, Alver municipality and Nordhordland UNESCO Biosphere, will enable transdisciplinary and participatory approaches to knowledge and solution generation for a more sustainable development, in line with the UN?s Agenda 2030. This regional collaboration and strong local involvement provide a unique testing ground for deeper analysis of trends in land-use and for developing societal resilience in the transition to a low-emission society. By extending our understanding of complex adaptive systems through local cooperation, we will facilitate scaling up of sustainability solutions within sectors and scaling out across geographies and societies. We will use the newly established (2019) Nordhordland UNESCO Biosphere Area as our empirical testing ground. We have newly appointed a PhD-candidate that will work with a 50-year old data material from the region. By re-sampling this unique legacy dataset, the Lindås-project (1971-76) with regards to vegetation and soil, in combination with stakeholder processes and comparative studies abroad, we will gain important new knowledge on the speed and direction of land-use change over the past 50 years and generate scalable solutions for sustainable land-use in Nordhordland and beyond. The newly appointed postdoc will analyse processes in the social-ecological system to unravel the role of stakeholders and drivers in this process. We have already arranged three workshops with stakeholders to gain a common understanding of the framing of the project and to co-produce research case studies that will be used as the empirical basis. To achieve durable impacts, we will work to align the motivations of public, private, and civil society actors, together with Alver municipality, Nordhordland UNESCO Biosphere Area, our regional stakeholders, UNESCO Paris, and international partners.

Land-use is one of the most important drivers of the climate and nature crises at a global scale. To ‘build back better’ we need to apply more holistic and inclusive approaches to solving these complex and interconnected challenges. People depend on and interact with the biosphere through their use of different ecosystem services, and consequently, we change the biosphere in a myriad of ways through activities like agriculture, forestry and urbanization. Many of the renewable solutions will have major land-use consequences through their impacts on the species diversity and ecosystem services we depend on, but also through impacts on food production, pollution of the environment, people's quality of life, and our physical and mental health. We must build a knowledge base for the complexities of managing a multidimensional reality, enhancing social-ecological resilience and avoiding conflict, based on the perception of land as a basic limited resource. This deep transformation must be echoed in academia in how we deal with challenges of the Anthropocene. BIOSPHERE meets the increasing call for Nature based Solutions to the risks posed by the nature and climate crises, and to establish ‘nature’ as the fundamental basis for building sustainable economies and societies. We will do so by generating integrated whole-systems knowledge of social-ecological systems, using UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere-programme as our empirical basis. Our regional partners, Alver municipality and Nordhordland UNESCO Biosphere, will enable transdisciplinary and participatory approaches to knowledge and solution generation for a more sustainable development, in line with UN’s Agenda 2030. By re-sampling a unique legacy dataset, the Lindås-project (1971-76), in combination with stakeholder processes and comparative studies abroad, we gain important new knowledge on the speed and direction of land-use change and generate scalable solutions for sustainable land-use in Nordhordland and beyond.

Funding scheme:

MILJØFORSK-Miljøforskning for en grønn samfunnsomstilling