Participative planning processes – workshops on sustainable development of the mountain agriculture within the UNESCO biosphere reservation Entlebuch
2006-07-14
This project was researched in 2005 by a team of experts commissioned by CIPRA as part of the Future in the Alps Project. The contents are not being updated.
- Best Practice
- Topics
- New forms of decision-making
- Regional value added, Governance capacity, Protected areas, Policies and instruments
- Short description
- The project included regular workshops during the last two years with the participation of interested farmers, nature protection groups, tourism organisations and communal, cantonal and federal authorities. The participants developed strategies for the sustainable development of the mountain agriculture. Members of the EU-funded projects Lacope and VisuLands accompanied the workshops and developed instruments for adequatley supporting the decision making process.
- Project executive
- Project Lacope: Unesco Biosphäre Entlebuch (UBE and Landwirtschaftliches Bildungs- und Beratungszentrum Schüpfheim (LBBZ); Project VisuLands in Switzerland: Institut für Raum- und Landschaftsentwicklung, Eidgenössisch Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich.
- Participants
- VisuLands-Team of ETH Zürich: Ulrike Wissen, Olaf Schroth, Prof. Eckart Lange, Prof. Willy A. Schmid;Lacope-Team: Andrea Boltshauser, Dr. Engelbert Ruos, Dr. Pius Hofstetters; local stakeholders: farmers, nature prtection groups, communal authorities; cantonal administration: GIS-KO Luzern, Amt für Umwelt und Energie, Amt für Landwirtschaft und Wald; federal authorities: Landwirtschaftsamt; external cooperations: Forschungsprojekte: Lenné3D(http://www.lenne3d.de)
- Objectives
- The project's objective is a substantial participation of the interested population during the strategy development process as a basis for a sustainable development of the mountain economy. For this purpose, planning instruments that support the public participation process in the evaluation of landscape modifications are developed and evaluated. The instruments are measured firstly by whether they contribute to an improvement of the decision making process itself. The hypothesis says that the decision making proces is gaining quality if the shared actors are better informed. Secondly the instruments applied in the workshops are supposed to contribute to a qualitative improvement of the participation process. That means, that they should contribute to the common problem analysis, scenario evolution, consens finding and decision-making process.
- Activities
- Based on a basic investigation, indicators and objectives for a future-capable mountain agriculture as well as future scenarios were elaborated in five Workshops until June 2005. Here, key effects on the cultivation of the summering areas due to changed political and economical contexts were analysed and the realisability of different cultivation systems was checked. The task was supported through the application of a non linear model to analyse the system dynamics as well as through the visualization of the mutual dependencies and relationships of the most important indicators and their effects on landscape development. The evaluation of the workshops occurred with the application of qualitative methods provided by empirical social sciences.
- Results
- The site analysis and definition of future challenges led to an increased sensitization for the current situation and possible future developments. Workshops, visualization and modelling of the indicators facilitated and enhanced the communication over and the understanding of the complex situation of nowadays mountain agriculture. Within the workshops, the discussion could be concretized and further project ideas and areas were developed. The experiences with the decision support instruments in the workshops are used as important information for their further development and application.
- Evaluation
- The evaluation of the workshops occurred with the application of qualitative methods provided by empirical social sciences.
- Difficulties
- Workshops require a high measure of active participation, motivation and engagement. The communication between the actors necessitates an mutually understandable language. Moderators have to facilitate this communication process and at the same time realise their leadership. From socio-technical viewpoint, possibilities and limits of the applied instruments had to be discovered. For example, open discussions bring the participative visualization onto their boundaries.
- Budget
- 230 807 (VisuLands); 185 140 (Lacope) (Euro)
- Financial backer
- Both projects: Schweizer Staatssekretariat für Bildung und Forschung (SBF).