Evaluating transformative policies in complex land-use systems

Nils Droste, Huntley Brownell, Dalia D'Amato, Hanna Ekström, Alexia Fridén, Teemu Harrinkari, Bogomil Iliev, Wilhelm May, Ayonghe Nebasifu and Marianne Thomsen

Ecological Economics, 2025, vol. 238, issue C

Abstract: Policies that facilitate sustainability transformations require knowledge about the dynamics of complex socio-ecological systems, including biophysical mechanisms and diverse human-nature relationships. Such a comprehensive evidence base can only be built by integrating multiple types of knowledges. Ontology, epistemology, and semantics are a well-established terminology to structure and facilitate such knowledge integration. Co-creation with societal knowledge-holders can furthermore generate a more robust understanding of societal processes. Here, we present an approach that we call integrated policy assessment and use the case of Nordic forest policies to illustrate how such an integration can look in practice. We present three guiding principles to coordinate such transdisciplinary socio-ecological modelling: 1) a theory of change as a shared ontological ground about the structure of the system and causal mechanisms therein, 2) a modular architecture that integrates epistemologically distinct approaches and operationalizes data flows between various models, methods and scales, 3) a co-creative procedure that can create a shared problem understanding to semantically integrate knowledges from multiple stakeholders and address societal challenges in a relevant and legitimate way. The general idea of such co-creative modular architecture for integrated policy assessments can in principle be applied to any land use policy nexus.

Keywords: Socio-ecological systems; Methodological pluralism; Integrated policy assessment; Land use change; Transformation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800925002174
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:238:y:2025:i:c:s0921800925002174

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2025.108734

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().