People most often value the environment yet take decisions that harm it. Although there is fit-for-purpose legislation in place, and lots of funding is spent, still biodiversity is in decline and climate goals are not met. Biodiversity loss and climate change are urgent, interlinked crises, caused by human activity, and in which land use plays an important role. A rapid and radical transformation in land use is necessary through simultaneous and coordinated action by a diversity of land use decision makers, ranging from private landowners and farmers to nature organisations and public authorities.
MOSAIC wants to contribute to a better understanding of why people take certain land use decisions, be it harmful or beneficial, what their motivations are, which drivers influence them, and how these can be targeted by specific approaches and (policy) instruments.
More importantly, MOSAIC wants to contribute to the solutions by integrating this knowledge, model expected land use on the basis thereof, and develop tools in a digital learning environment to provide actionable knowledge for land use decision makers.
Specifically, MOSAIC aims to achieve the following 5 objectives:
1. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the motivations and drivers behind land use decisions (e.g. behavioural factors, social identities, market prices, regulatory frameworks, etc.), including their relative importance and interactions, within and between relevant governance levels, ranging from individual land managers to supra-national organisations.
2. To gain a thorough understanding of the awareness of key land use decision makers, such as private landowners, farmers, governmental authorities and regulatory agencies, about climate change, biodiversity loss and renewable energy challenges and their willingness to address these challenges.
3. To characterise future land use patterns based on spatial, social and economic models that integrate key insights into the motivations and drivers behind land use related decisions and the result of these decisions in causing displacement effects, i.e. indirect land use changes in other parts of the world.
4. To support climate (mitigation, adaptation), renewable energy and biodiversity policy design and implementation by means of innovative cost-effective instruments and approaches co-created in policy labs contributing to and elaborating on MOSAIC’s research results in a transdisciplinary way.
5. To develop an interactive digital learning environment, embedded within a digital toolbox comprising proven technologies and approaches consistent with long-term European sustainability goals and strategies to support land use decision processes at governance levels ranging from local to supra-national scales.
