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PLUS Changers in the Spotlight 4: The VU Institute for Environmental Studies

In the fourth edition of our series, PLUS Changers in the Spotlight, we introduce the Institute for Environmental Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (IVM-VU).

 About

The Institute for Environmental Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (IVM-VU) has the mission to contribute to sustainable development and to care for the environment through excellent scientific research and teaching. Being the oldest environmental research institute in the Netherlands (est. 1971), IVM-VU is currently one of the world’s leading institutes in sustainability science. A unique feature of the Institute is its capacity to cut through the complexity of natural-societal systems with novel interdisciplinary approaches.

Project Role

As work package leader of WP4: Future sustainable land use strategies, IVM-VU is in charge of simulating the impacts of future scenarios on land and wellbeing. They are also involved in exploring past land use change, including its drivers and related value shifts, and researching the role of behavioural change in planning.  IVM-VU further represents the Amsterdam region Practice Case in the project.

Expectations

Land is one of the pivotal themes of the Institute. Through PLUS Change, IVM-VU hopes to contribute to outlining sustainable land use strategies for Europe, gaining an understanding of the linkages and path dependencies between historical land use & land use change, and current practices & values.

For IVM-VU, the holistic view of the PLUS Change project has great potential for linking different ways of addressing land use, and they are excited to help make transformational change strategies operational in the Practice Cases!