Events

Land Degradation and Humanity

09 February 2024, 13.15-14.45
Hybrid: IRI THESy, Rudower Chaussee 12B, and on Zoom

An interdisciplinary dialogue with Claire Kelly (University of Plymouth, UK) & Panos Panagos (JRC, Italy), organized by Mina Karamesouti (HU Berlin, IRI THESys).

Land serves as the ultimate source of wealth and the foundational basis for civilizations. Consequently, it is imperative for society to protect land resources and mitigate degradation, ensuring the satisfaction of human needs across present and future generations while simultaneously safeguarding the Earth's ecosystems.

However, understanding and interpreting land degradation remains an important challenge. Primarily, land degradation manifests in diverse types across different human-environment systems. Secondly, knowledge about land degradation is not only shaped by various socioeconomic conditions but is also subject to differential perceptions within these diverse systems. Social groups, ranging from farmers to high-level decision-makers, share the ultimate goal of mitigating land degradation; however, the trajectories to achieve this goal might even be competing.

In our discussions with experts from distinct communities, we aim to unravel aspects of land degradation in terms of understandings, responses, knowledge production paradigms, and tensions across different spatial, temporal, and contextual levels.