TerraNova resealed its second White paper: "Why do we need stakeholders' engagement in knowledge production?"
European landscapes can provide key opportunities to respond to the ongoing climate and biodiversity crises. Success towards these challenges implies changes in landscape uses that are likely to affect a wide range of stakeholders and landscape users. These changes can affect the way we perceive and interact with our environment, and sometimes, conflict with beliefs, values and traditions. This is why, to ensure success of interventions that promote sustainable human-environment interactions, with nature restoration and transitions sustainable land uses, it is necessary to understand the characteristics of local contexts by engaging with local stakeholders.
Photo: Catherine Fayet
IUCN Europe Regional office is a partner organisation to the project TerraNova, the European Landscape Learning Initiative, an Innovative Training Network consortium of the European Union’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. TerraNova is a research programme that trains 15 early-stage researchers (ESRs) to envision ‘nature-based’ landscape developments for Europe, relying on an integrated and multidisciplinary approach. To support restoration of ecosystem functions and the transition to a low carbon society, TerraNova ESRs explore European past and future landscapes, alternative low-intensity land uses, and human-environment interactions.
The second White paper of TerraNova presents the project and ESRs’ vision on the needs to engage with stakeholders in landscape research to produce relevant and applicable knowledge for policy makers, landscape managers and the general public beyond academia. The first part of the paper presents the theoretical background on the benefits of engaging with stakeholders in landscape management. The second part provides the results of a workshop organised part of a TerraNova training week, where ESRs discussed with practitioners in nature conservation to learn from their challenges to integrate interdisciplinarity in practice.
The conclusions and recommendations outline that scientific research has the highest chances of being relevant and accepted by local users if it responds to their needs and fits local context characteristics. Success of landscape management and nature conservation actions also requires good communication skills to adapt, translate, and transfer efficiently scientific and technical language to policymakers and the public.
The IUCN Europe Regional office hosts one of the TerraNova early-stage researchers, Catherine Fayet, who is studying opportunities in abandoned farmlands in Europe to develop land trajectories to respond to current environmental, social and climate challenges, with a focus on Nature-Based Solutions.
TerraNova project website: https://www.terranova-itn.eu/
TerraNova blog: https://www.terranova-itn.eu/:/blog/
IUCN Nature-Based solution page on TerraNova: https://www.iucn.org/regions/europe/our-work/nature-based-solutions/terranova
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