D3.3 – Handbook on developing integrated scenarios to explore sustainable land use strategies

Deliverable D3.3 – Handbook on developing integrated scenarios to explore sustainable land use strategies, was submitted by University of Ljubljana with contributions from KnowlEdge Srl and Biobased in August 2024. The description of the deliverable is available below and the full deliverable is at the end for download.

PLUS Change investigates how to achieve sustainable future land use. One of the methods for understanding how future land use might contribute to wellbeing, biodiversity and climate goals and how to implement this are scenarios. There are two types of scenarios in the PLUS Change project. Through Possible landscape sessions, a participative bottom-up scenario is created for each practice case participating in the project. Through policy analysis, a policy-driven top-down scenario is also created for each practice case. These two types of scenarios are however not represented in the same form and do not necessarily focus on the same objectives and topics. However, to better understand how territorially specific policies on land use should be and how aligned participative aspirations are with policy intentions, how they can support each other or how conflicting they are, there is a need to describe all of these in a unified, harmonized way.

The harmonization is achieved through a standardized form for describing each scenario using the following structure:

1. Territorial and temporal boundary conditions
2. Problem statement and objectives of the scenario
3. Overall narrative of the scenario
4. Impactful driving forces
5. Priority land use and policy systems
6. Description of changes by land use system:
   • Agriculture
   • Forestry
   • Natural areas and green infrastructure
   • Water and blue infrastructure
   • Settlements
   • Industry and commerce
   • Energy infrastructure
   • Transport infrastructure
   • Other systems
7. Key actors and institutions
8. Uncertainty and limitations

Contribution of each scenario to selected Sustainable Development Goals and practice case-specific objectives are also evaluated, as well as conflicts and synergies between different land uses.

A harmonized description of scenarios further allows their integration. For each case, differences and similarities will be analysed using cross-system matrixes, which show how elements across both scenarios (objectives, land use changes etc.) relate to one another. The observed differences between participative and policy scenarios will be resolved to produce one integrated scenario per practice case. By identifying development patterns across practice cases, storylines of future land change will be generated and applied to different European territories through territorial clustering and spatial modelling in later tasks of the project.