Planning Land Use Strategies: Meeting biodiversity, climate and social objectives in a Changing world.

Project Information

PLUS Change

Grant agreement ID: 101081464

DOI

10.3030/101081464

EC signature date 3 May 2023

Start date 1 June 2023

End date 31 May 2027

Funded under

• Climate, Energy and Mobility

Total cost

€ 6 678 922,50

EU contribution

€ 6 678 922,50

Coordinated by

USTAV VYZKUMU GLOBALNI ZMENY AV CR VVI
Czechia

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PLUS Change (Planning Land Use Strategies: Meeting biodiversity, climate and social objectives in a Changing world.)

Reporting period: 2023-06-01 to 2024-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

PLUS Change brings together 23 institutions from across Europe including 5 Universities, 5 research institutes, 3 stakeholder network organisations, 1 performing arts collective, and 9 practice partners representing regional planning and land management authorities and organisations. The project aims to create land use strategies and decision-making processes that meet climate, biodiversity and human well-being objectives of sustainability, and to develop interventions that leverage political, economic, societal, material and cultural contexts to achieve these strategies, by involving actors at multiple decision-making levels (individual, land management, planning, policy). Activities include land use modelling (including historical and future trajectories of change), systems mapping, causal loop diagrams, performing arts approaches, randomized controlled trials of behaviour change, sociological surveys, and policy and governance reviews. The work is embedded in 12 in-depth practice cases, and 1 broad scale multiplier cluster as sites of multi-actor knowledge co-creation dissemination and impact. They cover key land use challenges at a range of scales across Europe including urban, rural and peri-urban areas. All activities brought together in an integrated research design that draws on their different contributions to a systems-thinking approach to understand multi-scale land use systems across a diversity of socioeconomic and biogeographical contexts, and create usable tools for land managers, users, planners and policy makers. Outputs include recommendations of co-designed and tested interventions to unlock behavioural, structural and procedural changes to achieve identified land use strategies; and a toolkit to support land use planners in enacting these interventions, including knowledge training, a planning dashboard and simulation tools, and methods for engaging citizens and land managers in behaviour change. In this way, PLUS Change contributes to meeting a range of policy goals for biodiversity, climate and society (including those of the European Green Deal, 2021 Adaptation Strategy, Nature Restoration Law, etc.).

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During RP1, work has focused on establishing the transdisciplinary foundations of the PLUS Change project (WP1 and collaborations through practice cases), setting up project management processes (WP7), understanding the historical trajectories of land use change (WP2), and establishing CDE activities for ensuring the project's impact (WP6). WPs 3 and 4 are also underway, building on the foundations laid by the others.

Within WP1, capacity building has ensured that all consortium partners have a foundation in transdisciplinary collaborations. This includes through ethics and justice seminars. A seminar series for integrative work across the project has also been established, leading to briefing notes on the working definition of sustainable land use, and on the challenges of land use decision making in a changing world. Practice cases are now established with stakeholder involvement. During RP1, workshops 1 and 2 have been completed in all practice cases, and workshop 3 was completed by some. Initial explorations of the toolkit (T1.4) are underway, with a focus on meeting practice case needs, and considering the broader relevance of intended project results for broader audiences.

WP2 has looked back in time across the practice cases, and embedded these understandings within broader trajectories of change across Europe and beyond. Activities have included a focus on broad scale changes in land system dynamics across Europe, based on spatial data (T2.1) a focus on changes in land use governance over time (T2.2) and narratives of land use change over time (T2.3). The work has included in depth policy analysis, review of spatial data, and the selection of key indicators for climate, biodiversity and well being, and a literature review. Key conceptual challenges around defining well being, novel land use, major land use changes have been resolved as far as needed to complete the research. Key deliverables that present the results are due in M21. Strong collaboration across the project, facilitated by WP1, mean that understandings are being incorporated into WP3 and 4.

WP3 has conducted a possible landscapes workshop across all practice cases, to explore future desirable land use changes (T3.1). Causal loop diagrams have been constructed to account for policy drivers of land use change across all practice cases and at the European scale (T3.2). The key results from these CLDs are due for delivery early in RP2. T3.3 has constructed a methodology for integrating across policy drivers and the possible landscapes and embedding these within trajectories of global change. This methodology will soon be applied across the practice cases to produce harmonised scenarios.

WP4 has worked closely with WP2 and WP3. Stakeholder analyses have supported further engagement through the project (in WP1), as well as informing the analyses of political economies of land use change (T4.1). Policy questionnaires have been completed with the input of all practice cases. Initial work is underway in pulling together across work done so far into creating pathways of change (T4.2).

WP7 has worked to ensure that the project is progressing, that management processes are in place, and that processes meet best practice for data management and open science. The DoA and consortium agreement have been supplemented with a project handbook (D7.1) which creates project processes and norms. An advisory board, and 15 ambassadors have been appointed and are supporting across the project. Within this WP, collaboration has also been established with the sister projects. In particular, a science-policy dialogue, held jointly between the three projects, has established the policy context for the project's impacts.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Because of the focus on building foundations for this project, results are expected from RP2 onwards. The key result in RP1 has been the development of a 'justice lens'. The justice lens integrates and visualises different dimensions and aspects of justice, which can be used to identify, analyse and plan for action. Within the project, this lens is used to identify land use justice concerns across the practice cases and the research activities. The purpose is to ensure that activities and land uses that are useful for climate change and biodiversity outcomes also consider the social impacts. The lens is available as part of D1.1 including examples of how the project has worked with the lens to create plans. The deliverable is already in use across Practice Cases, and is being used also by some of the project Ambassadors. There are plans to publish it, and to develop it as a tool within the toolkit (T1.4).

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