Research project Legal perspectives on landscape planning for a sustainable climate change transition

Sweden has set ambitious energy and climate goals to achieve international commitments and mitigate and adapt to climate change. Achieving these goals requires a societal transformation. This can be expected to take over large areas of land and lead to conflicts of interest. Without a holistic view of balancing interests, there is a risk that the change will take place at the expense of other sustainability goals, such as preservation of biological diversity and cultural heritages values. Loss of such values can be costly or, in the worst case, impossible to recover. It can also lead to failing international commitments.

A potentially effective instrument for achieving such a holistic view in this societal transformation is landscape planning. There is extensive research, and a great deal of political agreement, on the need for a holistic view of land and water management. Nevertheless, there is a great lack of knowledge about how landscape planning can be implemented legally to contribute to a sustainable climate change transition. This project aims to fill this knowledge gap.