RECONNECT

Too often nature conservation fails to connect to and work together with other sectoral policies, people’s interests, land uses and management practices, as well as historical and cultural legacies. This disconnection has led to tensions between conservation, production goals and environmental justice. The project RECONNECT aims to help reduce these tensions and reconnect different values, policies, and ecosystems, and thus support inclusive, cross-sectoral approaches to nature conservation in line with new whole-of-society approach of the new Global Biodiversity Framework.

RECONNECT is an inter- and transdisciplinary research program designed to develop, test, and validate a social-ecological approach for conserving biodiversity in multi-functional, multi-actor landscapes. Different from earlier conservation projects focusing on protected areas and species, we focus on the social-ecological relations between protected areas and larger landscapes and other actors and sectors. We will develop novel tools, methods, and guidance to build policy coherence, and acknowledge plural preferences for navigating trade-offs and conflicts.