PROGRAMME

DAY 1: MONDAY 10th of OCTOBER

DAY 2: TUESDAY 11th OCTOBER

DAY 3: WEDNESDAY 12th OCTOBER

SESSION CONTENTS

Session 1: Meeting the challenge of sustainable multifunctional landscapes in a changing climate

Roland Jansson (Umeå University), Julian D. Olden (SLU Umeå), Ann-Kristine Vinka (Biosphere Reserve Vindelälven Juhttátahkka), Yann Clough (Lund University), Cecilia Akselsson (Lund University), Pål Börjesson (Lund University)

Sustainable multifunctional landscapes envision landscapes as socio-ecological systems able to maintain critical ecosystem functions that support flows of ecosystem services and contribute to biodiversity protection. A long-standing question is whether this goal is achievable in practice, especially in the light of rapid climate change? This session focuses on the opportunities for biosphere reserves to function as springboards for the creation of multifunctional landscapes, able to inspire land-use practices in general. Key concepts, modelling paradigms and case studies are presented that demonstrate the role of climate change in challenging aspirations to simultaneously provide human well fare, livelihood opportunities, maintenance of species and ecological functions, and fulfil cultural, amenity and recreational needs. Presentations also highlight how the achievement of sustainable multifunctional landscapes requires transdisciplinary engagement and co-production of knowledge among diverse stakeholders and scientists.

Each of the actors have their rights and perspectives on the problems and opportunities ahead. It is easy to say that all actors should be involved for outcomes to be successful, but legal frameworks, conflicts of interest and power inequalities may be obstacles, some of which are compounded by climate change. Here we discuss what needs to be done to meet the challenges and strategies to achieve the goals.

Session 2: Reconciling Global biosphere goals within local community realities

Irina Mancheva, (Umeå University ), Johanna Alkan Olsson (Lund University)

With the launching of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, an increased focus has been placed on the importance of actions at the local level. To mitigate and adapt to global challenges, inhabitants and other stakeholders in local communities are set on route towards modifying their lifestyles and tuning their efforts to harmonize with the goals. Urban, rural, southern and northern communities are expected to solve global problems using similar approaches, despite diverse local environmental conditions, social contexts and cultures. The actions needed to achieve the goals without creating new ones, however, not only put responsibility and pressure on local communities and administrations. Actions required to move away from old habits put pressure on communities that already face multiple challenges, as well as on the local ecological systems that provide the essentials for sustainable life.

How do local communities cope with the demands posed from the global and national levels, while being affected themselves by challenges such as migration, an aging population, unemployment, long commuting distances and climate change? This session provides a variety of local challenges and solutions towards a sustainable future.

Session 3: Combating loss of biodiversity, ecosystem services and natures contributions to people

Johan Svensson (SLU Umeå), Bengt-Gunnar Jonsson (Mid Sweden University), Henrik Smith (Lund University), Pål Axel Olsson (Lund University)

Locally, nationally and globally, exploitative resource extractions compromise the persistence of populations and species, thereby threatening societies’ moral obligation to preserve biodiversity. This also threatens the ecological basis for sustainable land-use by degrading habitats resulting in loss of ecosystem functions underpinning human well-being. This concerns both the material benefits from nature that depend on multiple supporting and regulating ecosystem services, and the relational value of nature that are affected both by perceived wilderness and traditional land-use legacies and cultures. In the context of the “UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration” and the Sustainable Development Goals, however, back-tracking to as well as innovations for alternative and sustainable land-use systems points out ways forward to adapt and mitigate threats. As nature is intrinsically dynamic and resilient, nature harbors an embedded capacity to recover and to support alternative land-use systems.

This session will highlight problems and solutions for sustainable and multiple-use land uses across land covers and various biogeographical and socioeconomic gradients, by displaying already existing cases as well as potentialities in Biosphere Reserves. These cases will form the basis for a discussion on their generic applicability and what is needed to anchor a development process to alternative and non-exploitative avenues.

Session 4: The role of youth in advancing Biosphere reserves as learning and collaborative arenas for sustainability

Sara Brogaard (Lund University), Kerstin Jakobsson (ARNA), Ann Åkerman (Lund University), Elisabeth Nyström (SLU Umeå), Dimitris Athanassiadis (SLU Umeå)

At the heart of sustainable development is the mission to make our planet life sustainable for future generations. Young stakeholders in their daily life and education are key to sustainability transformations, both as active participants that push transformations forward, while also being vulnerable to being left behind. Climate change means that we as a society urgently need new knowledge on nature-society interlinkages to guide our decision-making.  However, many young people experience that climate change is not giving them the required time; a crisis may be immediate and they will need to react on the consequences.

In this session we aim to bring up academic training, research and experiences of important sustainability perspectives and values from youth, how to communicate sustainability challenges and solutions to young people, and not the least how to integrate the next generation in action and development processes. This knowledge can contribute the process of developing biosphere reserves as platforms where young people can be involved in the work for sustainable development and see education and science as means for them to participate in the ongoing transformation.

Horizontal theme: Social innovations and transformative change

Sweden’s rural areas face a wide range of interconnected demographic, socio-economic, and environmental challenges. At local levels, rural challenges have triggered the emergence of social innovations, solving problems and developing own solutions where regional or national administrations have failed to support local needs. Such social innovations can, for example, be new networks and reconfigured social practices amongst local communities, civil society as well as private persons such as small-scale farmers and non-industrial forest owners, which generates a more diversified service provision and income streams and leads to reduced vulnerability. As the pressure on natural resources and societies continues and as solutions on sustainability challenges appears distant, social innovations may provide promising ways forward.

Mötesplats Biosfär discusses the contribution of social innovations to societal development, opportunities and constrains in enhancing and scaling up social innovations, and the role of communities and society in innovation development in Biosphere Reserves, Sweden.