In this session, we welcome abstracts that investigate how spatial planning (as a practice and research topic) is transforming to deliver transformative change for biodiversity. This topic could include how, and with what qualities, planning systems, land governance, and participatory processes contribute to biodiversity outcomes across diverse geographical, cultural, and sectoral contexts. Contributions could address (for example) integrative planning approaches that mainstream biodiversity, policy coherence and cross-sectoral governance, the role of participatory and inclusive planning processes, and empirical case studies of transformative planning. This session is hosted by the PLUS Change project (Planning Land Use Strategies in a Changing World). Due to the focus of the project, we are looking for submissions that consider questions of justice, democracy and participation in planning.
This session aims to contribute actionable knowledge on the role of land use planning in biodiversity-positive land use transformations. We intend to collate lessons learned for broader dissemination into current science-policy considerations, including for example the IPBES assessment on spatial planning and the IPCC report on Cities and Climate Change.
The European Green Deal will have profound impact on European landscapes. Several of these impacts are widely explored, including agricultural transformation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from livestock, increasing production of biobased materials, and afforestation and rewilding. In European regions under high population pressure, this transformation should be combined with planning for an increased housing demand housing. Recently, visions that support shaping pathways for planning such landscapes have been created in participatory processes at multiple scales. The development and translation into planning of such visions however collides with practice regarding utility services, which is problematic given the increased need for utility services under a green transformation, including green energy generation, power stations, high voltage lines, wastewater treatment plants, and data centers.
This study synthesizes how utility services fit in sustainable land use planning. In case studies in the Netherlands, visions for sustainable land use were co-created in a participatory process. Here, integration of utility services in sustainable landscapes was an emerging , that was unpacked to optimize multifunctionality. A scoping review and data inventory provided insight in the extent of utility service demands, and a review of land use visions for the green transition inventoried the inclusion of the topic of utility services. Finally, the possibilities for ex-ante sustainability assessment in spatial planning of high-voltage power stations was explored in a Dutch case study.
Sector specific scenarios and existing plans indicate an expansion of the area needs of utility services, but this is hardly addressed in land use visions underpinning planning processes. While intrinsic to visioning, this does undermine the applicability and credibility of visionary scenarios in planning processes. Ex-ante sustainability assessment of high-voltage power stations requires legal changes in the planning process. The participatory vision cocreation highlighted several options for efficient multifunctional space use that allowed better integration of the utility land required for the green transition. Altogether, the land are required for these services is limited, but because of the profound impact on local landscapes, better ex-ante consideration of utility services is essential for the plausibility and uptake of scenarios on green landscape transitions.
How to cite: Schulp, N. and Nijensteen, I.: Utility land use in the green transition: when visions and practice collide, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-341, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-341, 2026.
Forest landscape restoration in Madagascar requires approaches that reconcile global biodiversity goals with local demands. Yet most restoration efforts fail to meet these aims: by prioritising fast-growing exotic species, they may support short-term livelihood needs but simultaneously risk further eroding the country’s unique endemic biodiversity. To explore how more biodiversity-centred futures could be envisioned locally, we applied a scenario-based approach using participatory mapping across three regions representing Madagascar’s major forest biomes. Through 45 participatory mapping sessions with 450 households, local communities reconstructed past land-use change, assessed current landscape conditions, and developed two 10-year scenarios: a business-as-usual trajectory and a desirable future grounded in their own values, needs, and knowledge systems.
Our results show how local perceptions of key drivers—particularly land-use conflict arising from agricultural expansion and land scarcity, insecure land tenure, and the need for tangible short- to mid-term benefits—shape current constraints on native-tree restoration. Under business-as-usual, communities anticipate a continued decline of natural forests and their conversion into degraded land, alongside an increasing reliance on exotic plantations for quicker returns. By contrast, local communities’ desirable futures emphasise safeguarding and restoring remaining natural forests, improving livelihoods through diversified land uses, agroforestry, and woodlots, and strengthening local land rights and cultural connections to the landscape. These community-generated scenarios highlight the types of institutional reforms, livelihood incentives, and ecological safeguards required for meaningful native-tree restoration. They point to the importance of recognising customary land tenure arrangements, ensuring secure and equitable access to land, and addressing the underlying drivers of land degradation through improved agricultural support and diversified income opportunities.
Our study demonstrates how participatory engagement in envisioning future landscapes can inform multi-scalar scenario development and reveal actionable pathways for policy and governance. It highlights the need to integrate customary institutions, tenure security, and livelihood strategies into national restoration planning to enable community-led native-tree restoration and to advance more biodiversity-centred restoration approaches.
How to cite: Rajaonarivelo, H. M., Rabenantoandro, N., and Rakotonaivo, S.: Envisioning future forest landscape: local perspectives reveal barriers and pathways to biodiversity-centred tree-based restoration in Madagascar, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-858, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-858, 2026.
Spatial planning is increasingly vital for biodiversity-positive transformations, yet planning education often reproduces epistemic biases that marginalise nonhuman life. Dominant anthropocentric paradigms narrow planners’ imaginations, limiting their capacity to design land-use systems that account for ecological interdependence, justice, and more-than-human agency. This paper examines how planning education can expand its transformative potential by integrating more-than-human perspectives into studio pedagogy.
We present insights from two Master-level studios taught at Warsaw University of Technology (Poland) and Aalto University (Finland) between 2024 and 2025. In both courses, students analysed planning contexts and designed spatial interventions through the lens of nonhuman species, ecosystems and processes – treating them not as passive objects of regulation, but as legitimate “users” with needs, spatial preferences and rights to thrive. The pedagogical aim was to unsettle anthropocentric assumptions and position biodiversity as an active participant in planning. The two studio iterations provided a basis for comparing how students in 2024 and 2025 responded to more-than-human framing when introduced with differing pedagogical approach.
Drawing on reflections from the teaching teams and student surveys, our comparative analysis reveals how more-than-human pedagogies shift values and enhance ecological literacy. To ensure ethical integrity, the study draws exclusively on anonymised, aggregated student survey data collected at the end of both studio years. Students reported a transition from human-centred thinking toward perceiving the planning areas as shared, multispecies environments, evidencing an increased sensitivity to the non-human needs and the complexity of interspecies relations. Exposure to post-anthropocentric concepts prompted students to question ingrained defaults and articulate a growing responsibility for the long-term ecological consequences of design. Notably, students observed that more-than-human lenses began influencing their everyday perceptions of the built environment. However, they also acknowledged the difficulty of sustaining this perspective in professional practice, citing tensions between ecological ethics, existing planning tools, and established professional norms.
Situating these findings within debates on transformative planning and participatory justice, the paper demonstrates how more-than-human education offers actionable knowledge for land-use transitions. The research suggests that even modest pedagogical and curricular adjustments can equip future planners with interspecies awareness, strengthening the ethical grounding, and ecological effectiveness of planning decisions.
How to cite: Czarnecka, A., Eräranta, S., and Piotrkowska, M.: Transforming Planning Education through More-than-Human Perspectives, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-874, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-874, 2026.
In Europe, spatial planning is being asked to reconcile biodiversity restoration, climate mitigation and social needs at the same time. In practice, however, European scale planning often fails to align with locally defined values and priorities that emerge in participatory processes. In this contribution, we compare a SSP-scenario with a scenario from local visions for future landscapes to explore where spatial planning can create biodiversity positive and socially just transformations. For twelve case studies in Europe, stakeholders co-developed “Possible Landscapes” that articulate place-based visions for vital, biodiverse and liveable landscapes.
These two contrasting 2050 land-system scenarios (SSP vs. local visions) are simulated with the CLUMondo model to model land-system futures for Europe. From the resulting land-system maps, spatial indicators are derived for a diverse range of outcomes: high level restoration (nature area, patch size and connectivity including mosaics), agriculture and climate mitigation (changes in emission relevant land uses such as peat soils and forest loss, and food production), local wellbeing (access to green space near cities) and environmental safety (shifts toward green land uses in drought, flood and erosion prone areas).
The indicators are then compared with the local needs and values, with data from Eurobarometer surveys that reflect how people value biodiversity, climate action and landscape based wellbeing. For each indicator, we compare how strongly current landscapes and future scenarios deliver on these needs and map where priorities are structurally under served or improved across scenarios.
The results will provide a typology of European regions in terms of agreement and conflict between biodiversity goals, climate-related land uses and local values. By creating quantitative scenarios from co-produced local visions, we reflect on changing roles of science and society in spatial planning and highlight implications for justice, democracy and participation. We will discuss how this knowledge can support more democratic and biodiversity sensitive spatial planning.
How to cite: Nijensteen, I. and Schulp, N.: Mapping where biodiversity goals meet local values in European land use futures, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-660, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-660, 2026.
This study presents insights from the EU Biodiversa+ NatureScape project (2025–2028). The project offers a new perspective for understanding nature-based solutions (NBS) in cities by focusing on the post-implementation phase, in which environmental justice in urban planning is put to the test.
In recent years, cities have increasingly pursued NBS in urban development projects such as community gardens, green roofs, and temporary green spaces to support biodiversity while simultaneously improving human well-being. Despite growing recognition of NBS in urban planning, their potential for cities' socio-ecological transformation remains constrained by overlooked post-implementation challenges. While the planning and implementation of NBS already receive considerable attention, critical dimensions of environmental justice – distributive equity, accessibility, and procedural justice for continuous public participation and stakeholder engagement – become apparent only in the post-implementation phase. This phase is characterized by dynamic interactions between social and ecological components, shaping whether NBS are consolidated and sustained in ways that contribute in the long term to transformative effects and environmental justice, or whether they instead undermine these aims.
NatureScape addresses this critical transition and its challenges in urban planning. Through transformation laboratories (T-Labs) in seven cities (Oslo, Dublin, Riga, Milan, Lisbon, Lublin, and St. Gallen), the research team explores two central questions: (1) What enablers and barriers in urban planning shape the post-implementation stewardship of urban NBS? (2) What governance mechanisms, strategies, and measures lead to the successful integration of urban NBS into urban planning to unfold their transformative potential for biodiversity-positive transitions and environmental justice?
Initial findings from the T-Labs reveal crucial barriers. The post-implementation phase is often reduced to technical maintenance. Insufficient incorporation of NBS into urban planning is associated with fragmented institutions and responsibilities, weak strategic and instrumental anchoring, financial insecurity, and the erosion of institutional and political support.
The project identifies interconnected governance mechanisms that could successfully integrate NBS into urban planning: adaptive planning processes, institutional anchoring that fosters shared ownership among stakeholders, co-management approaches with formal agreements, public planning frameworks, and institutional structures that support integrated action. Together, these mechanisms highlight stewardship as a pivotal principle for achieving just and biodiversity-positive urban futures.
How to cite: Kemper, R., Castaldo, A. G., Dace, E., Lemes de Oliveira, F., and Liu, H.-Y.: Environmental justice in urban planning through post-implementation governance of nature-based solutions, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-786, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-786, 2026.
In this presentation, I explore framings of land use planning as a practice and paradigm within the context of transformative change. Land use is an interesting perspective to take on transformative change; it can be a driver of biodiversity loss and climate change, but can also offer opportunities for mitigating or adapting to change. It is also a site through which the social interacts with the physical by shaping how people interact with land, with what outcomes. In particular, I flag that land use planning can shape decisions that have the potential to address or exacerbate injustice within transformative change, for example in influencing who is impacted by environmental problems, and who benefits from interventions. Within this framing, land use planning must bridge understandings of social and physical systems, often incorporating multi-level, multi-sectoral requirements, and providing a key mechanism through which scientific and democratic processes combine for decision-making.
I draw on experiences from across the PLUS Change project. The project is a transdisciplinary collaboration with regional and local stakeholders in 12 practice cases across Europe. It brings together perspectives from ecology, social sciences, economics, governance, and creative arts to understand how decisions about land are made, and how they can contribute to objectives relating to climate change, biodiversity loss and social well being. I particularly look towards work in the project that explores how planning actors are engaging with citizens, what kinds of decision-making processes are being used, and how these shape the way in which planning is navigating the space between the physical and the social, and the technical and the participatory.
I present 3 key, interrelated tensions that we argue shape the role of planning in transformative change.
- The challenge of scale, whereby local innovations and visions sit in contrast to national and international policy trajectories.
- The challenge of data, whereby innovations and local scale dynamics are not reflected in large scale datasets for decision-making.
- The challenge of politics, whereby questions of power, responsibility and politics are hidden within questions of technicality and process.
How to cite: Leventon, J.: Planning Land Use Strategies for Transformative Change in a Changing World, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-818, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-818, 2026.
Across Europe, biodiversity decision-making increasingly relies on the assumption that more and better monitoring data will translate automatically into better land-use decisions. Yet in practice, local planning authorities and conservation actors operate within political, institutional, and social contexts that shape the use of data. In particular, scientific evidence is one variableiatic decision making, alongside legal mandates, diverse values, sectoral priorities, citizen needs and wants, and limited capacities. Drawing on insights from the ENABLElocal project (Biodiversa+), this contribution challenges the persistent “data deficit” narrative by showing that institutional fit, governance frictions, and mismatched value systems constrain planning outcomes more strongly than data gaps themselves.
ENABLElocal implements parallel living labs in three contrasting European settings—Křivoklátsko (CZ), apple orchard meadows in Hesse (DE), and sandy-soil bee habitats in southern Sweden (SE). Through stakeholder workshops, in-depth interviews, and a cross-case survey, we examine how diverse planning actors attempt to integrate biodiversity data (in its broad definition) into local conservation and land-use decisions. Across all cases, a consistent pattern emerges: existing biodiversity data are often abundant, but not institutionally legible, politically relevant, or operationally feasible within real planning processes. Local authorities, NGOs, land managers, and regional agencies negotiate data within landscapes shaped by power asymmetries, contested mandates, legal ambiguity, and deeply embedded place-based identities. Participation and co-production—central to the ENABLElocal living lab approach—are simultaneously enabling and challenging: while they build legitimacy and mutual understanding, they also surface plural values, local knowledge, and divergent expectations that are poorly accommodated by dominant indicator frameworks and spatial planning tools.
By comparing findings across three governance systems, we consider how planning can move beyond technocratic reliance on data provision toward transformative, justice-oriented, and context-sensitive biodiversity governance. We provide suggestions for integrating monitoring data, plural valuation approaches, and co-produced insights into land-use planning systems in ways that strengthen democratic legitimacy, reduce institutional friction, and improve biodiversity outcomes.
How to cite: Stella, D., Zvěřinová, S., and Leventon, J.: More Data, Less Decision? Why Biodiversity and Decision-making Fails Without Local Realities, Institutional Fit, and Plural Values , World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-820, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-820, 2026.
Spatial planning can regulate land-use change and play an essential role in addressing biodiversity loss. However, spatial plans alone have limited capacity to respond to the many needs and dynamics of a territory. Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is a complementary tool that supports the integration of sustainability considerations into planning, with a strong participatory component.
This study examines how plural knowledge and interests are included in spatial planning in Chile to support transformative actions for biodiversity. A set of key just-transformative planning principles was identified, covering views, structures, practices, multi-actor engagement, and diverse forms of justice. SEA environmental reports from more than 100 spatial plans were reviewed, and their components were coded according to the key principles and biodiversity realms. The analysis involved environmental elements, problems, conflicts, objectives, governability and policy landscapes, sustainability criteria and priority issues, and management and governance guidelines. Selected cases in different geographical and cultural contexts were studied in depth to observe the practical implementation of the actions.
Preliminary results show that the plans are co-created with diverse actors, mainly community-based organisations, NGOs, businesses, and civil security. Representatives of the transport, energy, public works, social development and housing ministries, and the tourism authority, are the most active public actors. A major gap is observed in the participation of Indigenous peoples. Although they are consulted in an initial stage, they are often not included in the broader participatory process. Thus, their knowledge, needs and governance roles are rarely reflected in the plans. In areas of high ecological value, nature and biodiversity are recognised, but from an instrumental perspective, which means that non-human interests remain absent.
Community-led actions appear particularly relevant for achieving biodiversity-positive outcomes. However, multi-level coordinated governance, capacity-building and financial support are essential. Sustainability criteria and management and governance guidelines show the strongest transformative potential, but their implementation depends on intersectoral collaboration, the management of socio-environmental conflicts, and the priorities of the government in power.
SEA supports plurality in spatial planning from an environmental perspective, but important gaps remain. This work contributes to identifying opportunities to strengthen actionable and just spatial planning for biodiversity.
How to cite: Díaz General, E.: Indigenous and non-human voices: the systematically missing actors in spatial planning for biodiversity in Chile, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-573, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-573, 2026.
Engaging citizens in biodiversity and nature-focused decision-making processes has been limited in scope and design to date. Increasing polarisation is occurring, especially between resource users and environmental activists on questions of biodiversity protection and restoration, while latent support for biodiversity is not well quantified, but appears much higher than publics are aware of. There is extensive experience developing of facilitating living lab approaches to innovation and problem solving, and other dialogic approaches to multi-actor learning are emerging that have a focus on place-based restoration and protection of nature and can inform spatial planning. Such transdisciplinary approaches are complex in practice, and struggle to resolve or overcome power inequalities. We will reflect upon methodological innovations and author's fieldwork experiences in facilitating living labs and social learning processes in contexts of complex power dynamics. Deliberative approaches have been applied more widely to other topics, such as climate change, rather than on biodiversity, nature and societal futures in specific places. A notable exception being the Irish Biodiversity Citizen Assembly. More experimentation is required in deliberation to give space to plural ontologies, epistemologies and practices, as well as increased investment in the evidencing outcomes. Finally, there are newly emerging creative approaches that engage the arts to provoke participants in terms of challenging dominant hegemonic assumptions and thereby to generate rich new future possibilities. Across all these spaces of citizen engagement in decision-making on biodiversity, nature and societal futures in contexts of climate change, the rise of AI creates new possibilities and raises new ethical concerns. This paper offers a typology of citizen engagement approaches, explores a range of cases cutting across these approaches to distil key insights and lessons on justice, power and plurality, and the potential of these deliberative, dialogic and creative approaches to citizen engagement for sustainable nature and people futures. We distil key insights from emerging evidence and outline new directions and challenges including with respect to other-than-human as well as human agency and values.
How to cite: Nelson, V. and Hausner, V. H.: Critical reflections upon emerging approaches to citizen engagement for sustainable and just people and nature futures., World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-886, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-886, 2026.
Achieving biodiversity-positive land use transformation requires planning frameworks that integrate scientific evidence, governance structures, and the participation of local landholders. In Chile, the persistent gap between restoration prioritization and on-the-ground implementation illustrates this challenge. In the Maule Region, a database of 1,922 hectares of restored land between 2017 and 2024 reveals that only 12.7% of restoration took place within government-prioritized zones, while 87% occurred on lands owned by smallholders. These findings highlight the decisive role of local landowners in determining where restoration actually happens and underscore the need for planning systems that align ecological priorities with social and governance realities.
The Huge Forest initiative emerged as a direct response to this mismatch. It is a free and open-access digital platform that enables rural landholders to register areas suitable for native forest restoration through georeferenced ecological and legal data. The system facilitates connections between small and medium landholders, public restoration programs, and private actors. Since its launch in 2023, more than 50 landholders have registered over 300 hectares across central and southern Chile, supporting the design and prioritization of new restoration projects in collaboration with communities and partner institutions. These efforts contribute to restoring native vegetation in landscapes affected by fire and land-use change, improving ecological connectivity while enabling local people to reconnect with biodiversity and actively participate in restoration decision-making.
By integrating spatial data, local participation, and multi-level governance, Huge Forest generates actionable knowledge on how digital tools can enhance land-use planning for biodiversity. The platform reduces barriers between land availability and institutional demand, strengthens transparency and traceability, and provides a replicable model for participatory restoration planning. It illustrates how the co-production of knowledge between science, society, and practice can improve territorial governance and accelerate biodiversity-positive transformations.
Keywords: restoration governance, participatory planning, digital platforms, biodiversity, smallholders, Chile
How to cite: Bravo-Monasterio, P.: Integrating local governance into biodiversity-positive planning: lessons from Chile, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-85, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-85, 2026.
Reversing the biodiversity crisis requires not only the protection of existing ecosystems but also the strategic creation and restoration of habitats. Restoration on post-industrial or potentially contaminated land presents opportunities to expand biodiversity, improve community health, and address persistent deficits in access to nature. Yet the combined social and ecological outcomes of these spaces remain poorly understood, and benefits may be unevenly distributed, with risks of green gentrification and the reinforcement of socio-spatial inequalities.
This research addresses this gap by analysing how restored sites differ from protected ones in their ecological performance, social effects, distributional patterns, and governance conditions. The study integrates national-scale spatial analyses, regional case studies, and qualitative inquiry to generate a holistic understanding of how restoration functions across socio-ecological scales.
At the national level, spatial modelling will assess the distribution of protected versus restored sites in relation to deprivation indices, health and crime statistics, accessibility, and legacies of industrial land use. This analysis will identify whether restored sites are disproportionately located in communities with greater environmental and social need, and protected sites in more affluent areas.
At the regional level, detailed case studies will compare biodiversity outcomes, management approaches, and levels of public engagement across restored and protected sites. Longitudinal national monitoring datasets will be used to evaluate biodiversity trajectories, while residential property valuation data will be analysed to examine whether different site types are associated with measurable off-site changes.
A qualitative component will investigate the experiences, motivations, and challenges of actors involved in ecological restoration, including private developers, NGOs, governmental bodies, and community-led initiatives. This will provide insight into how different governance models shape ecological outcomes and community relationships with restored landscapes.
Together, the project aims to advance understanding of who benefits from habitat creation, how restored sites function relative to protected ones, and how future restoration strategies can maximise biodiversity and equity for greater socio-ecological resilience.
How to cite: Bell, D.: Multi-Scale Socio-Ecological Analysis of Restored vs Protected Sites with a Focus on Potentially Contaminated Land, World Biodiversity Forum 2026, Davos, Switzerland, 14–19 Jun 2026, WBF2026-568, https://doi.org/10.5194/wbf2026-568, 2026.
