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Institut für Sozialwissenschaften des Agrarbereichs

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    Landscape stewardship in under-use contexts : a transdisciplinary social-ecological analysis of common pastures in the Black Forest Biosphere Reserve
    (2024) Brossette, Florian; Bieling, Claudia
    The common pastures of the UNESCO Black Forest Biosphere Reserve are the ecological hotspot, identification element and key feature of the cultural landscape in the southern Black Forest, Germany. In the second half of the 20th century, the Black Forest has witnessed an ongoing decline in grazing activity and pastureland, so that diverse actors of civil society, politics and science are concerned with how the social-ecological importance of the Black Forest common pastures can be sustained. Declining land use and the abandonment of traditional land-use practices constitute an important threat to cultural landscapes not only in the Black Forest, but also in many places all across the world. However, sustainability sciences have been mostly concerned with questions of overexploitation so far. Research addressing the social and ecological drivers of under use, and their interplay, is still lacking. Recent studies on under-used cultural landscapes offer insights into governance arrangements. Still, the consideration of relationships between people and their environment, a key approach to analyse and lever sustainability, are yet missing in the context of under use. Against this background, this cumulative dissertation draws on common pastures in the Black Forest Biosphere Reserve as a case study to develop social-ecological perspectives for cultural landscapes threatened by under use. The three research articles that form the basis for this dissertation explore the diverse interactions between humans and their environment to ask the question what changes in terms of adaptations and transformations are required to sustain the common pastures. The dissertation asks how conceptual insights on organizational design of common pastures, adaptive governance and social-ecological resilience help to grasp and to advance farmers’ perspectives on future pathways for grassland which is endangered by under use. Furthermore, the dissertation poses the question on how resonance theory, a qualitative analysis of relationships between self and world, contributes to a better understanding of the different types of relationships that characterise action in pursuit of landscape sustainability, referred to by the term landscape stewardship. This dissertation follows a transdisciplinary research approach, in the sense that practitioners motivated this research, provided data and validated the findings. The author’s practical experience as staff of the Black Forest Biosphere Reserve links research, practice and landscape stewardship. The dissertation is rooted in social-ecological systems thinking. The notion of social-ecological systems understands common pastures in terms of interlinked social and ecological elements and processes. The research articles make use of the concepts of Ostrom Design Principles, Social-Ecological Systems Framework, social-ecological Resilience Principles, relational approaches in social-ecological thinking and Resonance Theory. Resonance characterizes the occurrence of meaningful relational encounters that potentially transform self-world relationships. The notion of landscape stewardship refers to the diversity of meanings that motivate action in pursuit of landscape sustainability. Landscape stewardship thus serves as a frame to connect the different concepts and research articles of the present work. Rooted in empirical social research, this dissertation adopts a qualitative methodology but includes quantitative data to illustrate and support qualitative findings. Given the rich conceptual foundation and transdisciplinary approach, the results of this dissertation allow for both conceptual advancements and practical recommendations. The results of the research articles show that place-based practical perspectives and social-ecological concepts reinforce one another. Practitioners’ central assertion that diverse small-scale farming initiatives are required to sustain common pastures illustrate and substantiate the conceptual groundings of adaptive governance, resilience, and Resonance Theory. Concerning adaptive governance, this research finds that a central element of organizational design in the under-use context of the Black Forest common pastures is to include all actors that take advantage of the cultural landscape. This implies to motivate and incentivize diverse actor groups, such as tourism and local population, to contribute to landscape stewardship in a way that corresponds to their benefits. Relational and resilience arguments emphasize the importance of multiple and diverse structures in grassland farming. This implies that specific support to match the needs and challenges of initiatives such as landcare groups, common pasture organizations or small-scale farming is required. The resilience perspective adds to this in highlighting that polycentric governance should find stronger application to encourage reciprocal learning and maintain the social-ecological diversity connected to common pastures. The introduction of Resonance Theory into social-ecological research provides important contributions to the debate on sustainability transformations. By emphasizing the uncontrollable and unpredictable character of meaningful relationships, Resonance Theory shifts the practical and conceptual focus on agency towards the quality of relationships. The axes of resonance provide a framework to analyse different types of relationships between self and world that are present in initiatives of landscape stewardship. From the perspective of Resonance Theory, adaptive governance should be directed towards enabling or favouring the emergence of meaningful relationships between people, livestock and the landscape. The practical and conceptual recommendations to sustain common pastures call for changes in terms of adaptations and transformations. The importance and consequences of these key changes, such as improved commercialization of pasture products, the integration of local people into landscape stewardship, or to fit the administrative frameworks and support schemes to the social-ecological reality of common pastures, depend on the social-ecological perspective of analysis. As grassland farmers or public administration have their specific view on common pastures, the anticipated effects of and the required commitment to these changes differ, so that they may appear as adaptations to one group, while constituting transformations to another. To conclude, this dissertation shows that the application of different social-ecological concepts to rich contextual data advances both conceptual and practical understandings of under use and the interconnectedness of humans and their environment. In bringing together science and practice, biosphere reserves are particularly suited for transdisciplinary approaches. For supporting landscape stewardship, the Black Forest Biosphere Reserve will need to include more actors benefiting from common pastures to contribute to their sustenance. Moreover, it is important to create conditions that enable meaningful relationships and resonance in landscape stewardship. There is a need for further place-based research in under-use contexts to provide more knowledge of the organizational and relational aspects that characterize under use. To benefit from the full potential of the resonance perspective, it is necessary to show how contextual, institutional and cultural conditions that foster or inhibit resonance can be accounted for in social-ecological research.