Participative planning processes – workshops on sustainable development of the mountain agriculture within the UNESCO biosphere reservation Entlebuch
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).