RECONNECT now launched for real

A “walkshop”, hosted and informed by the cultural landscape of Järvafältet, a mixed land use open space combining biodiversity conservation with multiple other functions got the RECONNECT team off the ground. Colleagues from Sweden, Finland, Germany, Belgium, France and South Africa finally got together to share experiences and jointly plan our research.

First, what connections are we talking about when setting up an interdisciplinary project to ‘re-connect in fragmented landscapes’? Fragmentation is a well-known driver of biodiversity loss, and we contend that this is an issue beyond our biophysical landscapes and land uses. Policies are developed and pursued within sectoral silos, practice is disconnected from policy ideals, local to international initiatives do not align, worldviews and value orientations diverge and often end up in conflict. The ropes have not been firmly set yet for how we will approach connections. We will try to both embrace plurality of interpretation and establish ways of making different perspectives more conversant.

Working in four land-use gradients spanning urban to rural or even wilderness, in Stockholm, Grenoble, Göttingen and Cape Town, we will investigate ways to better connect ecosystems, value orientations and organisational practices, with the ambition to develop conservation approaches that actively focus on boundary management and can keep biodiversity protection attune with a changing world. Several previous projects and collaborative experience of partners prepared the ground for RECONNECT, among them PECS (Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society) and the BiodivERsa and the Belmont Forum funded ENVISION, which focused on inclusive conservation.

Slightly less than three years are now ahead of us, and we are looking forward to engaging with our shared research questions, with local actors who we are to some extent yet to get to know and internally, in what is now the true RECONNECT – the team.

Photo credit: Aminta Estrada-Leyva, May 2023

The protected area “Järvafältet”, embedded in the Järva green wedge, will be part of the RECONNECT case study in Stockholm. The mosaic landscape with traditional agricultural areas, as well as wetlands and old forests inspired the initial conversations about conservation in this new researcher team.