2020 - Models for Innovative Collaboration in sustainable land use issues (MIC. SULU)

A key challenge for agricultural landscapes is to sustain people's livelihoods while maintaining or enhancing flows of ecosystem services. This challenge is exacerbated e.g. through the establishement of windmill parks.

This project develops new ways of collaborating on sustainable land use issues. It works with case studies where agricultural landscapes and their communities are faced with the establishment of windmill parks. These new investments not only change land use but they require new forms of collaboration among stakeholders at different levels and with different land use interests. The project develops computer simulation models that support stakeholders in experimenting, in a virtual environment, with the consequences of alternative land use activities, practices and management styles on a range of sustainable development indicators. It also develops knowledge and tools for how different stakeholders with different interests and perspectives can collaborate constructively. Collective challenges such as climate change, green transportation, or sustainable land use are rarely referred to within studies of creativity and innovation.

This proposal brings together knowledge and experience from different fields with an aim to contribute with new models of collaboration on sustainable land use issues.