DKN (Deutsches Komitee für Nachhaltigskeitsforschung) Future Earth Working Group: Positive impacts through land use change


Regional disaggregated strategies to foster positive human impact through land use change

The international scientific discourse on land use change is dominated by publications on negative human impacts. The alerts are necessary to arise awareness of negative human behavior and to develop policy strategies. But to stimulate civil societies to get more involved, an international and interdisciplinary research strategy to transfer positive role models seems to be essential.
The central aim of the working group is to conceptualize an integrated interdisciplinary approach on evaluating positive human impacts on land use change and subsequently assess, measure and describe important points for ecological and social systems.
The working group is following the hypothesis that negative effects of land use change are based on temporally young and spatially wide transformations, whereas positive effects are related to long cultural landscape development in comparatively smallholder landscapes. The working group will challenge the ?common sense? on negative human impacts. Starting with reviews filtering positive effects of land use, the working group will investigate show cases of land use in Europe and USA, and in tropical regions such as Brazil and Indonesia. Along with the rethinking of patterns of human impacts on land use the working group will work together with stakeholders to develop new strategies and new ways of thinking in land use research.

Working Group Members

Prof. Dr. Hermann Jungkunst, Universität Koblenz-Landau, Physische Geographie
Prof. Dr. Heiko Faust, Universität Göttingen, Humangeographie
Dr. Regine Schönenberg, Freie Universität Berlin, Politikwissenschaften
Dr. Lisa Schüler, Universität Göttingen, Paläobotanik
Dr. Jörg Bofinger, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege (Stuttgart), Archäologie
Jürgen Trautner, Arbeitsgruppe für Tierökologie und Planung (Filderstadt), Landschaftsökologie (Planungsbüro)
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Tobias Rothmund, Universität Koblenz-Landau, Politische Psychologie
Prof. Dr. Jan Börner, ZEF Bonn, Economics of Natural Resource Use
Prof. Dr. Oliver Frör, Universität Koblenz Landau, Umweltökonomie

Time period: 2015 - 2016 (18 months)