Social nature - practical perspectives and integrated policy approaches

Nature conservation is linked to various social issues: Who has access to urban green spaces and recreation areas? Who benefits from ecosystem services such as clean air and flood protection? Whose lifestyle contributes more or less than average to land take, resource consumption, climate change and thus also biodiversity loss? Who participates in civil society activities and influences political decisions on nature conservation?

The project pursues two goals: On the one hand, it develops and strengthen practical cooperation between actors from the nature conservation and social sectors. Existing networks are used for this purpose. On the other hand, the team develops concrete ideas for better integrating social concerns into nature conservation policy. Among other things, the results will be taken into account in the further development of the German Biodiversity Strategy.

To these ends, work package (WP) 1 analyses existing activities in which nature conservation and social concerns are integrated. This includes project cooperations, strategic cooperations and policy integration approaches. In WP 2, four workshops will be held with actors from both fields in order to develop exemplary synergies. The fields of action envisaged are agriculture and food, urban development and housing, energy and health. WP 3 examines the coherence of current nature conservation policy with social policy goals, and develops proposals for policy integration.