Draft Minutes of the Expert Workshop on the new Global Land Project
25 March, 2004, Bonn, Germany
9:00 – 16:30
Table of Contents:
ROUND OF INTRODUCTION OF PARTICIPANTS ................................................................................. 1
PRE-LUNCH SESSION: QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION ABOUT THE SCIENCE PLAN........................... 6
AFTER-LUNCH SESSION: DISCUSSION ABOUT KEY CONCEPTS AND PRIORITIES ............................. 8
ROUND OF INTRODUCTION OF PARTICIPANTS
(BACKGROUND, RESEARCH AND MOTIVATION TO INTERACT WITH GLP)
Emilio Moran is a social anthropologist with a background in Environmental Sciences and
Geography; works on people and the land in Amazonia as well as population in a broad sense
with a special interest in projects on demography and land use decision-making, modeling, etc.
Dennis Ojima is ecosystem scientist with a focus on ecosystem modeling and biogeochemistry.
He worked on the century and Daicent models and aims at a better integration of human
dimensions in understanding the ecosystem including greenhouse gas mitigation and carbon
sequestration as well as their feedback into societal and policy relevant issues.
Lex Bouwman is part of the team that developed the integrated IMAGE model to assess the
global environment. His research is on agricultural production systems including European
scenarios for trade and economic development as well as the integration of global climate models
and climate variability impact on agricultural and natural systems. He currently works on the
integration of a global climate model to integrate natural system and agricultural production
system (both livestock and crop system) and look at nutrient systems and cycles. A regional focus
is in China which shows that solutions to mitigate nitrification tend to be much more social and
economic than technical. Partners are FAO (projections for 2030); UNESCO oceanographic
committee; Max Plank institute; Wageningen University; Kassel University; and Theme 2 and 3
of the Science Plan would be particularly interesting.
Carlos Machado: works in the team of Nelson Lourenço on management of natural resources
associated with territorial dynamics and the consequences of resource use. Co-ordinates the
activities of nine universities incorporating social and natural sciences to try to understand the
management of land-use systems and the decision making processes of the people: Study driving
forces and how do people react to these forces (adaptation) and their consequences on
ecosystems; Themes 1 & 2
Jorg Priess: Works on regional land use change modeling and shifted to regional scale recently.
Nutrient cycling in the tropics. Long term project in Niger about stability of rainforest margins.
Interdisciplinary group working in Sulawesi/Indonesia (started with Paul Vlek) where their group
provides integrated land-use component. Aims to integrate models and scenarios for
sustainability; human and biophysical integration. Theme 1.4 would be interesting as well as part
of theme 3; informal collaboration with Dennis using DAICENT;
(he mentioned EspON meeting day before trying to harmonize data and methodologies.)
Joe Alcamo: Director of Center for Environmental Systems Research at Kassel University with
three groups: 1) integrated modeling, e.g. Indonesia and Germany (Hessen); 2) global model of
land cover (LandShift); electronic database of irrigated uses (location and water use); motivation
to collaborate: framework is great and really motivating. As a member of LUCC he can say there
is a lot of unfinished business. Priority areas are quantification of land use and cover at the global
scale (where virtually no group is working); reporting on the results of various scenarios and
quantification of products (what is the future of land-cover?). Agent-based models have great
potential as well as integrated models. Research challenges of Kassel: there is a mass of regional
studies and results of social scientists, geographers, economists, anthropologies that have not at
all found their way into our models. Land-cover process on global scale need to be linked to
regional modelling. There is to many global drivers taken into account inconsistently by regional
models and that would need harmonization. It is also time to take the plunge to link land cover
processes with water processes - we can stop guessing where irrigated areas will be in the future
and start taking educated estimates/prognoses; There is some obvious overlap between the land
project with the GWSP and the LOICZ project.
Patrick Bourgeron: his personal expertise is in integrated ecological assessment (e.g. Columbia
River Basin) and problems of cross-cut integration of socio-economic with biophysical variables.
He coordinates a long-term LTER-ILTER collaboration with sub-committees on US urban
ecosystems; Zone Atelier with Sander van der Leeuw. Proposal for urban-rural gradient analysis
in LTER under Biocomplexity. Interest how to manage and facilitate regime change of
knowledge based systems.
Ulla Corzelius: Represents the group of professor Menz, who has several projects fitting into
GLP. IMPETUS is and integrated project for freshwater management in Benin. He is also
involved in the GLOWA Volta project and the ACACIA project dealing with vulnerability of
landscape. Leader of a research group remote sensing and land-scape mapping, including
modelling of urban gowth. Regional focus in South Africa and Namibia; IMPETUS fresh water
works in Benin and Morocco.
Matthias Braun: remote sensing of land use and land cover change; standardizationharmonization. Education of students of geography and agricultural disciplines. Just completed a
state wide inventory of Land-cover change. Coordination of the European working group of
remote sensing institutes and special interest is to link the remote sensing community to GLP
Fridolin Krausmann: Socio-economic material and energy flows (LUCC endorsed project): socio
economic systems seen like biophysical metabolisms with throughput of matter and energy as an
analytical framework; Theorybased approach to link socio-economic system to natural processes.
Longterm perspective to be used for coupled models on land-use change. Can be applied to food
demand, consumption, multi-scale linkages and agent-based models. Trying to link to land use
change; series of projects with long term perspective; transition from biomass to fossil fuel base
is reflected in land use change; coupled models based on energy, consumption, trade, multi-scale
perspective; global matter exchange processes (scalar dynamics); agent-based models; European
LTER implementation of transition from ecological to social domains; Central European (former
Austro-Hungarian Empire countries) - how different social-economic and political frameworks
impact land use and cover change; European statistical material flow data. Motivation: glad with
the integration in the LUCC project because it is good to contribute to a broader frame and get
the feedback. More focus on theme one and three.
John Ingram: Background in agroecology, building on to expand into other areas and looking for
collaborations between GECAFS and Land (more detailed presentation later that day).
John Porter: Formerly head of Focus 3 of GCTE. Went down with the ship in Mexico. Works on
commodity-based simulation modeling and Ecosystem services connected with agroecosystems.
Provide biophysical background to much of the land-use change. Interested how to develop argoecosystem that are multifunctional. Finds the Energy and material flow model very interesting to
be applied to the ecosystem goods and services. Thinks a lot about the relation between
ecological systems and economic systems. If trade is not a 0-sum game, it might lead to win-win
situations. If ecology a 0-sum game we need to worry because the tension between economic
systems and ecological systems as it might hold the key to resource depletion.
Peter Mollinga: Hydrological engineer by training he is now particularly interested in the
interdisciplinary work. Trained as an agricultural engineer at Wageningen, now doing social
dynamics at ZEF; regional focus in Uzbekistan and Ghana/Burkina Faso; He finds the scale of
the project problematic as we need to be modest about what we can do. It is already
overwhelming to take on at a regional scale (the danger of arrogance quite real). Just completed a
World Bank study on integrated approach to drainage - land and not water management
(framework comparable to that of the Land project, but more policy context - how to organize
multi-stakeholder decision-making/planning process to assess tradeoffs)
Christoph Müller: Bios-Ex is concerned with the interaction of the human and natural system
(lifestyles). Land use module around LPJ DGVM (magpie) driven by external demand for
agricultural commodities constrained by process and suitability and resources - goal is to develop
dynamics link between LPG and something else using this Magpie Rather young working group
“with more visions than achievements”, but concerned with the drivers and the feedbacks of
land-use changes. Exchange of data is a crucial issue for the modelling efforts. Open for cooperation.
Matthias Ludeke: Theoretical physics, global ecological modeling; PIK coupled man and
environment modeling with land-use shift. Two methodological paradigms: pattern identification
(typical cause-effect relations/clusters later interactions) syndrome concept, but also applied to
look for typical situations of land system change; should be possible to include qualitative
information; generalization of case studies by qualitative modeling; land use projects: 1)
smallholders in NE Brazil: decision module linked with resource dynamics = 4 typical land use
situations and their successional dynamics for prediction and vulnerability to shocks and
droughts and policy interventions 2) urban sprawl in Europe: comparative study of 7 European
agglomerations undergoing sprawling behavior. Theme 3 quite interesting - questions raised of
great interest on integration and uncertainty.
Tom Veldkamp: Wageningen and LUCC; soil science and geography; landscape, but also
continental and local scale; project in Africa; SE Asia and more recently Europe; feedbacks modeling perceptions; at the moment given the uncertainty, mostly we are producing noise; when
you couple you are mainly producing errors; therefore he advocates realistic modesty.
Challenging part of the land science plan is the integration to get the dynamic feedbacks between
theme one and two going. That requires not the coupling of models but thinking of new models
with new questions, new concepts and new data. We need to think of new projects instead of
linking old approaches.
Anette Reenberg: Agricultural geographer; Coordinating an integrated project (SEREIN) on
sustainable NRM in the Sahel including all kinds of disciplines and acquired some experience in
the difficulties of interdisciplinary integration. Part of the research in her department: LUCC
endorsed project to shape the land-use data and results into LUCC vision. Worked on regional
studies but has taken advantage of data on a larger scale and can contribute to Land with linking
regional to global scale data. Remote sensing and GIS; soil science; environmental history;
Bottom-up approach in developing countries in SS Africa and SE Asia; interested to carry on
from LUCC to Land.
Eric Craswell: EO GWSP just opened IPO here at ZEF; couldn’t find the word water very often
in the Land document; GWSP Activity 1.2 “Land cover changes and the global water system”.
GWSP has a broad definition of “water system” and has clearly a very close relation to land
management and land use.
Debra Meyer-Wefering: IHDP liaison to LUCC. Please take advantage of our network of 77
National Committees.
Richard Dikau: PAGES-Lucifs representative (focus 5); rebuilding/reactivating the program;
reconstructing sediment fluxes 7000 - 9000 years e.g. Rhine catchment; fluvial system responses
to changes in climate and land use (challenge to separate); controls on water and sediment fluxes
in regions, globally; spatial and temporal variability; long term processes effects presently; water
fluxes and GEC in general; Kates et al 1993 modes and characteristics of regional environmental
changes e.g. industrial regions; developing/rapid industrialization; pioneer settlement; finding
conception, maybe models, where we can explain in these different regions how sediment is
mobilized at the slopes and transported to the ocean through the fluvial system; very long time
lags between initial mobilization and final entrance into the oceans. Especially interesting in the
light of emerging properties especially if you talk about very large systems. There are a lot of
interesting topics to collaborate and he would like to discuss how important it would be to work
on these issues.
Paul Vlek: Director, ZEF; “sort of an older version of Tom Veldkamp”. Sort of an older version
of Tom Veldkamp. ZEF is a huge experiement in integration and interdisciplinarity and he
learned that it is good to start a new institute all over instead of merging old departments. ZEF
has a strong ecological mandate: 4 projects: 1) Eastern Amazon - the forest as a system; 2) west
Africa - water and climate variability; 3) Uzbekistan desertification; 4) Ethiopia biodiversity and
coffee. Research found that many of these issues in the end has a strong connection to land-use
issues and land-management. Though biodiversity was a whole new thing, it turned out that
coffee diversity was dependent on forest, which was dependent on management, which
immigrants didn’t understand, so they ended up looking at land again; same thing in the Volta thought they were looking at water, it turned out to be land use again. Misery likes company as
the integration and coupling are not so easy. We are all trying to get a grip around these coupled
systems and struggle very much. Land is a very ambitious document and there needs to be a great
process of prioritisation to make it manageable. This includes pooling resources and focusing and
taking the document a step forward.
Bill McConnell: LUCC focus 1 officer, worked on meta-analyses of key peer reviewed literature
for LUCC and links them now to much more detailed variables and regional studies of the
community. Land-cover classification system (not perfect but the best system they found out
there). Will certainly undergo modification.
Sander van der Leeuw: national level co-ordinator of a new CNRS programme in France on
society and the environment; a bit like US LTER but with much better integration of social and
ecosystem dynamics; part of European project to start up later this year ALTERNET. To bring
about integration we need to base research in different regions with a much stronger socioeconomic component to it and force people to work together and integrate. This includes
questioning our conceived world views and building trust. Chairing Dept. of Anthropolgy at
ASU with specific mandate to transform school into an social science institute focussing on
sustainability and socio-environment system. Interested in transition between rural and urban
societies.
Gregor Laumann: works for the IHDP and co-ordinates the Land and urbanization activities.
Organizer of the workshop.
PRE-LUNCH SESSION: QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION ABOUT THE SCIENCE PLAN
After the introduction John Ingram gave a short presentation on the Global Environmental
Change and Food Systems project (GECAFS) as an example of a joint project of different
programmes within the Earth System Science Partnership (ESS-P).
The discussion started by addressing the principle aim of these programmes to bring together the
research projects, identify the gaps and bring the research community closer to understand the
drivers and feedbacks. GECAFS e.g. synthesizes existing research and defines on the basis of the
Science Plan areas for place-based field research to implement the plan. GLP would certainly
achieve its specific objectives by starting with linking existing relevant research and include it in
the programme.
This raised the question of how to focus the GLP. Both IHDP and IGBP find the document too
brought as it is and want to have it focussed around a couple of flagship activities. They hope to
have a number of regional meetings to help establishing these priorities. The door is open to all
kinds of activities but we need to find out on which to focus in the next couple of years and direct
efforts in the near-term.
There are a lot of ongoing activities that could be recruited and brought into the framework of the
Land Project. Many of the research institutes do process-based disciplinary studies rather
narrowly but there are some examples of integrated research, too. GLP needs to identify the
important gaps, inform community and move towards greater integration.
One way to focus could be to contribute to the activities within the ESS-P projects developing
integrated regional studies. The study currently discussed is the Monsoon Asia integrated
regional study.
Another suggestion was to bring about interdisciplinary integration around real problems defined
by the policy making community rather than through a purely science driven process. However,
there was a plea not to mix up research programs and assessments, with the latter being designed
to address policy questions using the science whereas research addresses basic questions that may
or may not have policy relevance. It was stated that to date the Land project is science driven, but
that funding agencies might increasingly ask how this might be possibly used.
The discussion continued about appropriate mechanisms to implement theme 3 of the science
plan and make the integration between disciplines as well as translation of results into the policy
arena happen. There was a plea not to underrate the fact that scientists are driven by finding
questions and policy makers are driven by finding solutions. The only way to let them find
together would therefore be to bring them together regionally. It was not expected to be a
question of finding common themes but research hotspots where you find the right set of people
and problems, which can only be solved by working together quite intimately.
It was clarified that vision of the Amsterdam declaration, which formed the foundation stone of
the Earth System Science Partnership (ESS-P), promoted the notion of policy relevance, which is
not policy driven or policy centred. The necessity was identified to have clear selection criteria
for regional cases expounded in the document to make sure comparability from the outset.
Subsequently, the question of feasibility of integrated regional studies within the framework of
the GLP was addressed. They were an important part of the original design, but dropped out
because it looked unlikely that and appropriate level of funding would be available for the GLP.
The transition team therefore decided to look around for critical masses of physical and social
science communities doing integrated studies at various scales and encourage them to work even
more closely together than presently. It was even questioned, whether the front of integrating
disciplines we are ready for co-operation in large groups or whether it would not be more
appropriate to start with small groups focused on the integrative, interface activities that advance
our understanding. In the longer term it might have very major yields for the project, as we do not
really know what human-environment relations really are at the moment. There were suggestions
to start with a synthesis of what we know already to identify such novel focus areas including a
major search of the information and the gaps, map them out, and examine where there are nearly
regional studies. This exercise could build on the synthesis work provided by GCTE and
currently carried out by LUCC. One other integrative activity suggested was a state-of-the-art
assessment of integrated modelling.
Finally, the question of training and competence development was identified as an important area
not fully covered in the Science Plan. European experiences suggested that even though some
institutes are pushing integrative education strongly particularly at the doctorate level, the science
community is still not honouring interdisciplinary training very much, which in turn means a real
investment of the students. The result is a real problem in the job market. However, recognition
of the value-added is growing, particularly outside academia, and it might be a question of
changing generations. There was agreement that it would have to be seen as an investment in the
future. To convince people that it is worth the effort, it is important to show that some questions
simply cannot be answered without interdisciplinary research. One priority might be integrated
modelling (combine insights of anthropologists, geographers, sociologists, soil scientists, …).
AFTER-LUNCH SESSION: DISCUSSION ABOUT KEY CONCEPTS AND PRIORITIES
The session was structured by three short interventions on key concepts of the science plan and
the challenge of integration.
Presentation of Anette Reenberg: Conceptualising Decision Making
The presentation aimed at unpacking the “Decision Making” box of the science plan diagram to
explicate human response options. Decisions where described as often driven by events and rapid
changes (tenure, rainfall, gender). It was clear that techniques to analyse this area need to be
more complex than those normally used to assess issues of different scale and hierarchy and
particularly include qualitative methodology. The real challenge would be to model this kind of
information, which could only be achieved through close collaboration. The work would
certainly start site specific in order to be able to define the different aspects of decision making,
stratify and sample. Once a tested framework is in place, one could start to aggregate or
extrapolate to broader scales. There was an argument for picking some agro-ecological zones as a
basis of analysis, however, a “problem-shed” was proposed as an alternative, new way of
selecting a study area, as physical units do not always make sense for this kind of study. Agent
heterogeneity was seen as crucial to an understanding of the processes analysed.
Presentation of John Roy Porter: Conceptualising Ecosystem Goods and Services
(prepared by Sandra Lavorel)
The discussion around with the question raised before whether ecology was a 0-sum game
whereas economic activities where not, and whether we therefore the tension between economic
systems and ecological systems might hold the key to resource depletion. In this context it was
affirmed that one could assume that the provision of work and income is an ecosystem service.
(no further minutes of the discussion available).
Presentation of Sander van der Leeuw: Integration of knowledge. Epistemological and
methodological challenges
The discussion started of with the statement that just integration as the goal would not lead
anywhere as long as there is no shared goal to work towards. It was added that we basically have
the wrong expectation of integration. We juxtapose and assume we achieve something different
as what we juxtapose. However, we tend to reach the smallest common denominator.
“Disciplines are a kind of self-imposed islands in a sea of knowledge” was one of Sanders
comments, claiming that any kind of data can lead to any kind of knowledge if studied in
different conceptual contexts. It would therefore be important to try to harmonise differences by
highlighting and conceptualising them. It requires mutual trust to show not only the success but
also the weaknesses and deliberately expose it to the others to deal with them.
The discussion continued with the question to what extent it would it be appropriate to begin to
identify existing groups of scientists working throughout the world, find out what data they have
collected, and who are willing to work together?
The discussion continued with the question if we can identify existing groups of scientists around
the world and find out whether they could develop an integrative perspective on the place. This is
having colleagues ask you the questions you yourself never asked you, and having the trust in one
another to work to another view of the world, which fundamentally differs from the one they had
before. The chosen sites might not necessary be the appropriate ones to work on the questions,
however, the team seemed to be most important rather than the location.
The question was raised how it comes that it is not happening that people trust, develop a
common language and expose the weaknesses, even though most of the points are pretty obvious.
The reason seemed to be that it is uneasy to leave the basis, which one has acquired through a
curriculum and university career. If integration is taken serious it would have repercussions for a
whole lot of areas related to professional careers and societal perspectives. The process was
described as having accelerated immensely over the last couple of years but still at the beginning.
However, inter-disciplinarity was seen not as one out of a number of approaches but the only one
possible.
After coffee break Emilio asked for input as to what are possible sources for data pooling and
which would be some of the questions the community would like to see prioritised in the GLP.
There are a number of sites that have been studied richly which would need to be identified to see
about encouraging those researchers to work more closely together. The integrative (synthetic)
framework of the GLP would need to be sufficient for carrying out studies in a comparable
manner. LUCC and GCTE would certainly be one source to look at. Other major areas of
interests over the last couple of years or data pools on Land-use projects:
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to mine could be
the Columbia river basin (particularly data rich and in the public domain)
the Great Plains
CGIAR (be aware that some data sets have been processed beyond recognition)
IMMI (benchmark basins Challenge Program on Water and Food. Offices in each basin
(Nile, Ganges, etc.) water as well as soical data)
ASB programme
CIFOR (data on forests as well as agricultural systems)
Millenium Ecosystem Assessment has sub-regional syntheses.
Mountain Research Inititiative
PERN
ILTER (worth looking at the Chinese sites - Chinese Academy of Sciences)
Rice network (New Delhi)
Priority issues to be addressed where:
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The whole questions of environmental governance were addressed as overarching topic,
which would certainly be the most important issue to deal with next to globalisation and
sustainability. It would be about what kind of environment we like to have, what needs to
be negotiated and what institutions at which level help to govern the resources? It would
certainly be something to be addressed in close cooperation with IDGEC.
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Rapidly changing transition economies, manifesting new ways of land management
where seen less prominent as they should be in the plan.
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Rising incomes in developing countries and increasing demand for animal proteins where
put forward. It was asked whether this would not rather be a GECAFS issue, even though
one of the fundamental differences between GECAFS and Land might be that GECAFS
will not be looking through the lens of ecosystem services (Intensification vs.
extensification). But one needs to avoid a European view on Ecosystem goods and
services.
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A reasonable priority for theme 1 might be long term consequences of current events
including the state of the art of vulnerability research as long term impact of frequent
events.
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In many parts of the world the transformations wrought by rapid urbanization are a major
issue on the rural side as well. This would possibly an issue to be addressed in
cooperation with the new project on urbanization coming up in IHDP.
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Rates of change is the most interesting thing to model.