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- Convenors:
-
Bep Schrammeijer
(Athena Institute)
Rachel Morgain (Melbourne University)
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- Chair:
-
Bep Schrammeijer
(Athena Institute)
- Discussant:
-
Rachel Morgain
(Melbourne University)
- Format:
- Combined Format Open Panel
Short Abstract:
The climate, biodiversity, food, agriculture and health crises, and their solutions, all relate to our interaction with landscapes. However, interests in, and values of, landscapes vary across stakeholders in science and society. How can we navigate these differences to enable just transformations?
Long Abstract:
The way we interact with landscapes has an important role in both contributing to and mitigating the interconnected climate, biodiversity, food, agriculture and health crises. For example, our relationship with the landscape is relevant for healthy urban planning, reversing land degradation, improving food production, halting biodiversity loss, developing infrastructure for the energy transition, enabling climate change mitigation and adaptation. Sustainable transformations require that we understand the power relations and norms that determine land-use, and the resulting impacts and trade-offs for society and ecosystems - in other words, the cultural, economic, political and livelihood contestations that play out across social and biophysical landscapes. STS offers crucial tools for theorising these inter-relationships between cultural, social, and technical structures and knowledges, but their ecological and spatial interpretation are less recognised.
To better understand the impact of our actions on the many aspects of landscape, to come up with solutions and to enable sustainable transformation we need both the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders, and new ways of understanding and creating values across landscapes. However, the variety of perspectives, needs, interests and values related to the use and relevance of landscapes can impede dialogue, feed polarisation and thwart change. Typically, traditional approaches make it difficult to fully understand the coupling of cultural, social and biophysical values and needs, and their dependencies and impacts upon one another, when considering land and land use change.
This panel will explore insights into how differences in valuing landscapes can be navigated to make and do sustainable transformations. We propose a Combined Format Open Panel that focuses on multi-stakeholder approaches in sustainable land use transitions. The panel is open to exploring these values across a diversity of geographies, human communities, ecosystems and land use challenges. We welcome research paper presentations, workshop formats, dialogue sessions or art dialogues.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Daniel Cooper (California State University San Marcos) Nina Kruglikova (University of Oxford)
Short abstract:
This paper focuses on Indigenous landscape perceptions and maintenance strategies in an Amazonian context. It depicts kanaima (e’toto) as a way of limiting violence and exploitation in order to maximize local sustainability.
Long abstract:
Kanaima (e’toto in Akawaio) has many manifestations that are well represented in oral traditions, places, and ethnographic literature from the circum-Mount Roraima landscape that transcends the porous border region between Guyana, Brazil, and Venezuela. Generations of exposure to threats and opportunities within an Amazonian biome, competition for resources, hunting, warfare, missionization, disease, and other forms of colonial and postcolonial intrusion are mutually reinforced by Pemon (Makushi, Arekuna, and Taurepan) and Ka’pon (Akawaio, Ingarikó, and Patamona) conceptual systems. Landscape functions as a unit of study to examine the relationship between territory and violence within this dynamic complex of beings and dialectic exchanges. Fieldwork data in the form of oral histories and pantoni (stories) documented and interpreted within geographical, historical, spiritual, ecological, and political frameworks challenge colonial stereotypes. The chapter concludes with a depiction of kanaima and e’toto as real and symbolic controls on violence and hoarding that maintain balance, reciprocity, and continuity within a contested, performative, and transformational space between life and death.
Corie Griebel (North Carolina State University) Christopher Oates (North Carolina State University) Natalie Nelson Khara Grieger
Short abstract:
Our project tackles climate change and nutrient management by engaging diverse stakeholders, developing inclusive practices, and enhancing environmental monitoring to inform equitable policies and models.
Long abstract:
Across the United States, underrepresented communities disproportionately bear the burden of climate change, environmental injustices, and the mismanagement of land, such as excess nutrients in the water bodies. This disparity is often exacerbated by the placement of water quality monitoring stations in affluent areas, leaving socially vulnerable communities needing critical environmental data. Funded by the Science and Technology Center for Phosphorus Sustainability (STEPS) Center (National Science Foundation Grant No. CBET-2019435), our interdisciplinary project seeks to confront these challenges head-on. We aim to address the dual concerns of environmental equity and nutrient management. This effort is crucial for developing actionable frameworks for effective collaboration and co-creation of knowledge among diverse stakeholders, enhancing environmental monitoring, and improving data accessibility in vulnerable communities. These steps are vital for informing equitable policies and models dedicated to mitigating the adverse effects of climate change and ensuring sustainable nutrient management.
Our comprehensive approach merges a thorough review of existing literature with the identification and application of best practices in stakeholder engagement. By integrating considerations of social vulnerability and environmental justice into environmental monitoring regimes—especially water quality monitoring—our project aims to disrupt the cycle of environmental injustice. Through fostering an inclusive environment for collaborative research, we offer cost-effective strategies for engaging diverse stakeholders in addressing the complex, intertwined challenges of environmental degradation and critical resource management, thereby contributing significantly to sustainable interdisciplinary research and the global conversation on environmental equity and resource sustainability.
Jorien Zevenberg (University of Groningen) Henny van der Windt (University of Groningen)
Short abstract:
Integrating nature and agriculture is difficult because of stakeholder differences. To research and support an inclusive nature-agriculture transition aimed at sustainable land use, we are developing a serious game for stakeholders to explore and share new perspectives.
Long abstract:
To improve sustainable land use in the Netherlands, multiple stakeholders (e.g. farmers, municipalities, nature conservation organizations) need to cooperate. Due to diverging interests and ideas of these stakeholders, nature-agriculture transition is difficult. We want to explore to what extent a serious game can contribute to navigating these stakeholder differences and what criteria and settings are needed for this. We are developing a serious game in which we use different options for sustainable land use and integrate different stakeholder roles. We hypothesize that the balance between fictional and real game elements invites stakeholders to explore other perspectives, while ensuring applicability of the game in reality. With our game we aim to contribute to the development of a shared responsibility for sustainable land use. In our contribution we would like to explain the development of the game and reflect on the question to what extent researchers and stakeholders can and should contribute to the process of making a transformation (possible) and doing the actual transformation, and what the potential role of serious games is herein. We anticipate that a workshop format, in which the conference attendants can explore the game themselves, would be most suitable for our contribution, but we could also explain our game in an interactive presentation format.