Globalisation and Land-Use workshop
On the 24th of October 2007 GLP hosted a workshop at the University of Copenhagen with the title:'Globalisation, impact on regional and local land-use decisions and practices'
NEWS: Webcasts of this event are online here!
Purpose
One of the three main themes of the Global Land Project Science plan (Theme 1) outlines GLP’s strategy to advance the understanding of the dynamics of Land Systems.
This theme contributes to understanding how human activities and global environmental changes affect land-ecosystems. The science plan suggests to: “develop and synthesise
knowledge on the proximate and underlying causes of land use change (and hence ecosystems), with particular attention to the role of broader demographic, economic, social
and political forces, in shaping land use decisions.”
One of the implementation challenges for GLP is given in Issue 1.1 (the first of three Issues of Theme 1): “How do Globalisation and Population Change Affect Regional and Local Land Use Decisions and Practices?”
By inviting a small number of experts from different scientific backgrounds to contribute their insights in the broad topic of this workshop, we aimed to clarify and shape the research agenda for the Global Land Project relating to Issue 1.1. We aimed to inspire a discussion on how to tackle the difficult challenges at hand. More specifically the objective was to advance our understanding on:
Speakers
Short abstract: According to UNWTO statistics there were 842 million international tourist arrivals in 2006. This represents an average 6.5% growth per annum between 1950 and 2006, with the forecast being that there will be 1.6 billion international tourist arrivals by 2020. As impressive as these numbers are indicating the scale of human international movements, they also reveal that tourism may be of relevance in other globalization-related contexts. The presentation will provide an overview of various processes, and illustrate the use of land for tourism based on the ecological footprint analysis. It will also discuss some of the complexities associated with tourism development in terms of cultural change.
Short abstract: Local and regional effects of globalisation on land use: Insights from postsocialist transformations in Albania and Romania. Post-socialist countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and East Asia have experienced radical transformations in the political and economic factors affecting land use. These transformations are part of broader changes at the global level, such as the move to western-style democracies, market-based economies, and increasing flows of goods, capital, and people across national boundaries. These presentations explore the effects of different kinds of political economic changes on regional and local land use in Albania and Romania. It draws on the results of satellite image classification, spatial econometric analysis, and local in-depth studies conducted since 2003.
Working at a global scale: Challenges for a worldwide tropical forest monitoring system
Modelling land use change
Short abstract: As we look forward to a future many think will be full of climate surprises, it is helpful to remember that there have been many such surprises in the past and that these lessons may provide a template for us to learn from. As a result, this talk will present results from a comparative assessment of three historic cases where communities were unable to adapt even minor environmental problems. These cases are: (1) the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s that was caused when an unusually rainy year created ideal conditions for a fungal pathogen to spread; (2) a series of famines in India caused by El Niño induced problems with the monsoon during the late Victorian period, and; (3) the drought-triggered Ethiopian famines of the 1970s and 1980s where the meteorological record suggests that droughts were very minor in terms of rainfall anomaly. In terms of results, these studies suggest that although the social contexts and environmental triggers were different, a number of common threads run through all three examples.
More information regarding the specific outcome of the workshop is to be announced soon on this website