The PLUS Change workshops have begun in Practice Cases, starting with Three-Countries Park (Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands) and Kaigu Peatland (Latvia). This first round of workshops brings together relevant stakeholders to introduce the project and start discussions on key land use challenges in each of the Practice Case areas.
Over the course of the project, eight multi-actor, participatory workshops will be held in each of the Practice Cases. Tailored to the specific contexts of the different areas, these workshops are geared towards facilitating an ongoing process of transdisciplinary co-creation with stakeholders. In alignment with the project’s workplan and trajectory, the workshops are designed to enable a collaborative approach to conducting research. This allows us to engage with various actors in designing research questions, generating data, sharing knowledge and experiences, and validating findings.
While the content of the workshops is adapted to each Practice Case, a focus of Workshop 1 is to further identify and catalogue stakeholders to be considered in our analyses of core land use challenges. We will also include these identified stakeholders in future PLUS Change activities, with an overarching goal being to ensure that as many voices as possible are heard throughout the project.
Following Workshop 1, we will hold workshops covering topics related to historical and future land use change, understanding behaviour change, policy simulations, piloting interventions of change, creating roadmaps for implementation, and developing planning toolkits.
So far, Workshop 1 has been conducted in four Practice Cases, including Kaigu Peatland in Latvia. Check out the recaps of Kaigu Peatland below!
Kaigu Peatland
On January 10th, Kaigu Peatland held their first workshop (online, due to winter weather conditions), led by the Baltic Studies Centre. Participants represented local governance, commercial peatland enterprises, researchers, and NGOs.
During the discussions, several land use challenges were recognised, including the pressing question of how to sustain the economic benefits of peat extraction while also aligning with objectives for biodiversity and climate sustainability. Participants also discussed the need for a national legislative framework for evaluating carbon emission portfolios, and the economic and environmental sustainability of different recultivation and re-naturalisation measures.
For future workshops and PLUS Change activities, additional key stakeholder groups were identified, including regional-level and national-level decision makers, landowners, local communities members, and media representatives.
