Land Use Dialogues - a methodology for planning sustainable land and water use
The Land Use Dialogues methodology initially focused on the restoration of natural pastures. Today, the project is expanding its scope to explore how its tools can be adapted to a wider range of landscapes and become accessible to more users.
In partnership with the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the initiative is now entering a new phase where we investigate how the various tools in Land Use Dialogues can be made available to other types of landscapes and a broader group of users.
Field assistant Lars, who has been involved in the project since the start, has his own experience as a landowner of weighing different decisions about land use against each other.
– When I started working at the County Administrative Board, I met others with the same questions on a daily basis. There was a need to find new forms of cooperation, but there was no method or project on how to do it. In 2007, we began working on a platform for Land Use Dialogues, a methodology that allows us to jointly identify the potential of a place.
One example is Hällan in Färgelanda municipality in Dalsland. A landowner contacted Lars Johansson, which eventually led to a dialogue including four neighbors. The common goals for land use only came clear after a few meetings.
– The challenge is to find the parts that are unique to the place: Which species, what environment, social needs and resources are found here? Which of these topics do we need to dig more deeply into? What measures should we implement? It is the sum of all this that constitutes the place's potential to deliver different types of qualities and values. The work in Hällan led to an application for funding to restore 25 hectares of natural pasture.
Land Use Dialogues is a collaboration between SLU Competence Centre for Advisory Services and the County Administrative Board of Västra Götaland.
The project is led by Magnus Ljung, state consultant and operations manager for SLU Competence Centre for Advisory Services, who has extensive experience in research on advisory methodology and collaborative methods for sustainable use of natural resources. The field work is led by Lars Johansson, advisor and project manager at the County Administrative Board of Västra Götaland and one of the origonal developers of Land Use Dialogues.
The Dalsland a catalyst group is also linked to the project group, with representatives from the municipalities, LRF, agricultural companies, the Swedish Forest Agency and student associations. This group works together to support sustainable land use in Dalsland.