The GLOBALANDS project has taken major steps forward. On 27 May 2013, the first international expert workshop took place at the Ecologic Institute in Berlin. With inputs from high-level experts from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the European Commission, the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) and others, the participants discussed the status and perspectives of sustainable land use governance at the international level. Together with Franziska Wolff from the Öko-Institut, Ecologic Institute's Stephanie Wunder presented the results of a global screening of land use policies conducted under the project. A discussion paper as well as all presentations can be downloaded.

The aim of the GLOBALANDS project is to identify promising existing land use policies and to develop possible governance tools towards a more resource efficient and sustainable global land use. The working process specifically provides for exchanging ideas with external experts and policy-makers, also in order to gain supporters for the development of an international land use governance approach.

The workshop was the first opportunity to receive critical feedback on the preliminary working results and to widen the perspective on aspects that have not been (sufficiently) addressed in the project. 

Current international governance of land use: key findings from GLOBALANDS

In their presentation, Stephanie Wunder (Ecologic Institute) and Franziska Wolff (Öko-Institut) gave an overview of international policies, which have a direct and indirect effect on land use and identified current windows of opportunities for an international approach for sustainable land use governance. Major parts of the presentation were based on the discussion paper Governance screening of global land use [pdf, 430 kB, English].
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Valuable input for the finalisation of the governance screening

The expert presentations and the subsequent discussions provided valuable input for the finalisation of the governance screening and the first conceptual framing for an international land use governance approach. The discussions showed that the GLOBALANDS team followed in principle the right direction in the project and addressed most of the relevant aspects in sustainable land use at global scale.  However, additional issues were touched upon, which deserve further consideration in the ongoing work, for example the role of policy coherence and multiple levels and the perspective of societal transformation.

All presentations are available for download.