INTEgrated Landscape Assessment for Sustainable Resource Management (INTERact)

INTEgrated Landscape Assessment for Sustainable Resource Management (INTERact)
In the past 25 years, political upheavals in Central and East Europe as well as Southeast Europe (CEE-SEE) have led to significant landscape changes. Ethnic, religious and economic conflicts shape landscape pattern, which manifests itself in abandoned agricultural areas or increasing urbanization. Applying integrated spatial planning in CEE-SEE countries need to extend cross-border approaches by intercultural methods and new communication technologies. Against this backdrop, INTERact addresses the question how to combine the ecological and social system for a sustainable development of neighbouring regions. For this purpose, the project aims at building a consortium in order to address following challenges:

• How to involve different research institutes and regional stakeholders for an integrated analysis?
• How do cultural, political and societal changes affect the landscape pattern?
• How to develop strategies in spatial planning for a sustainable resource management?

Due to the partnership between INTERact and the European Land-Use Institute (www.eli-web.com), already existing cooperation in CEE-SEE countries can be used and subsequently expanded. The outcome of phase one is to establish a motivated consortium, while in the second phase international cooperation will be set up to elaborate project proposals.