MOSAIC

MOSAIC is an EU-funded project that is working to understand and influence how land across Europe can be managed more sustainably. The project aims to address the overexploitation and unsustainable management of land across Europe in order to adapt to and mitigate the climate and biodiversity crises. To address these challenges, the MOSAIC project is researching the motivations and drivers behind land use decisions and to what extent climate change and biodiversity issues are currently incorporated. The MOSAIC project is also establishing six Policy Labs to bring together practitioners, research partners and policy makers in a co-creative process. Each Policy Lab will develop informed policy options and state-of-the-art socio-economic modelling will be used to explore the impact of these different policies. The lessons from MOSAIC’s research, modelling and stakeholder engagement will be made available online through a series of tools, which will support in developing and implementing innovative and effective policies.

The project investigates local land-use challenges within case-studies from Denmark, Belgium, Hungary, Switzerland, Portugal, and European-wide. The learnings thereof feed into a science-practice design loop administered by policy leads and knowledge brokers in the connected Policy Labs. Here, the MOSAIC consortium of 20 European partner organisations will be looking at facilitating a transformative learning dialogue between science and practice. To support sustainable land-use decision-making, MOSAIC´s learnings will be integrated in a digital learning platform, providing local, regional, national, and supra-national support for land-use challenges by land-use decision-making support tools validated and implemented by practice.

PLUS is involved in the development of a digital learning platform hosting MOSAIC’s output, the modelling of land-use competition and its impacts, as well as identification, testing, and development of land-use decision-support tools across various European case-studies including Switzerland, Belgium, and The Netherlands. In addition, PLUS administers the Swiss policy lab in the Kanton of Graubünden working in close collaboration with local partners in support of land-use decision-making in the context of deglaciating areas and the expansion of alpine photovoltaics, shrub encroachment, and ecological protection.