Project Details
Projekt
Designing effective policy instruments for sustainable land use transformation
Subject Area
Ecology and Biodiversity of Plants and Ecosystems
Term
since 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 532865719
The rapid expansion of oil palm monocultures in Indonesia has been associated with economic development, but also with major environmental repercussions including land degradation, deforestation and loss of biodiversity. A significant share of oil palm plantations is managed by smallholder farmers, making them key players in a transition towards more sustainable landscapes. In the Collaborative Research Center 990/EFForTS, biodiversity enrichment in oil palm plantations has been identified as one promising strategy to reconcile trade-offs between ecological and economic functions. Yet, such approaches have not been tested with smallholder farmers and have so far been rarely adopted in practice. This project, which is part of the bundle application “Conversion of rainforests: Biodiversity and landscape-scale perspectives”, aims to investigate the role of different policy instruments in fostering a sustainable land use transformation. It is organized in four work packages, each of them building on the previous work developed by project C08 “Designing effective policy instruments to induce sustainable land use” within EFForTS. WP1 focusses on the use of payments for ecosystem services schemes to induce smallholder adoption of sustainable land use practices. Using framed lab-in-the-field experiments, WP1 seeks to investigate the effectiveness of selected payment attributes and to deepen the understanding of motivational crowding effects associated with different schemes. WP2 focusses on the use of experiential learning as a tool to improve the effectiveness of educational campaigns. Building on an agent-based model developed in EFForTS, WP2 aims to evaluate the potential of using agent-based models as experiential learning tools to increase environmental awareness and values as well as pro-environmental behavior. Finally, WP3 and WP4, in collaboration with EFForTS-BEE, EFForTS-ABM and Landscape Scaling of the bundle application, aim to contribute to interdisciplinary analyses of trade-offs between socio-economic and ecological functions and policy-based scenario modeling to identify optimal landscapes that mitigate these trade-offs.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
Indonesia
Cooperation Partners
Professor Dr. Bambang Irawan; Professor Dr. Nunung Nuryartono; Dr. Ir. Rosyani; Professorin Dr. Leti Sundawati
