Suchergebnisse

The objective of this report is to provide an overview of agricultural land market regulations in the EU MS. This report builds upon the framework developed by Swinnen, Van Herck and Vranken (2014a) to provide comprehensive and structured analyses of the different agricultural land market regulations across MS. The report describes the situation of land market regulations as it was in 2020 in 22 MS. The analyses of agricultural land market regulations provided in this report are based on information obtained from the MS country experts using the following three tools: (i) structured questionnaires, (ii) semi-structured group interviews and (iii) country reports. The input compiled by land market experts through these tools is based on MS legislation and other relevant documents (e.g. official documents and academic literature) that contain information on agricultural land market regulations and/or their implementation.

The European Union quickly incorporated the concept of nature based-solutions (NBS), becoming a key promotor. This was achieved through financial support for both academic research and city implementations. Still, the processes of institutionalization are yet to be fully explored. This study aims at assessing how the scientific literature regarding NBS is addressing institutional aspects and how it is constructing the NBS narrative. This research is divided into two stages. First, it undertakes a quantitative analysis of the discourse, considering a set of preselected search terms organized into five categories: Actor, institutional, planning, policy, and regulation. Second, it adopts a qualitative analysis considering both a group of the most cited articles and of articles highlighted in the previous stage. The results indicate that the NBS concept is still shadowed by other environmental concepts such as ecosystem services. Despite being an issue promoted at the European level, the results of this exercise express the lack of concrete planning and policy recommendations, reflected by the absence of terms such as "planning objectives". This pattern occurs in all other major categories, being the institutional category the least mentioned of all five categories. The results highlight the need to address both policies and planning recommendations more concretely, studying the institutional arrangements able to promote NBS. ; published

Estuaries are one of the most productive and complex types of ecosystems supporting a wide range of economic activities. Departing from a set of governance problems and emergent goals, such as sustainability or climate change adaptation faced by an estuarine case study area, Ria de Aveiro, in Portugal, this article assesses the adequacy of alternative governance models under the existing water resources legal framework and traditional political culture. It shows that apart from the centrally-based compliance model, all other alternatives require high degrees of institutional reforms. Moreover, although the model based on a dedicated new agency, long preferred by many users of Ria de Aveiro, is the most understandable and focused, it does not assure the pursuance of adaptability or collaboration, which are considered essential for estuary governance. As it relies on collective action and multi-level and multi-agent contexts, estuarine governance may require a new institutional design. Where one begins a process of institutional change, however, is not a simple issue to address and demands a deeper analysis, particularly on the types of required institutional changes, as well as on their impacts on policy and decision-making outcomes over estuarine environments and associated socio-ecological networks ; published

According to the European Commission's working definition of Nature Based Solutions (NBS), these are diverse solutions inspired and supported by nature, delivering co-benefits in the triple bottom line. Properly implemented, NBS work as modular vehicles for ecosystem services (ES). To test the effectiveness of NBS in urban climate resilience strategies and to mainstream them towards a 2050 scenario, the H2020 UNaLab project provides cities across the world with know-how, tools, technical assistance and network support.To address the challenge's complexity, UNaLab calls for the participation of diverse stakeholders in prospective planning exercises following the Roadmapping Methodology (RM). Previously, researchers and practitioners have affirmed the capacity of the RM to increase participation, develop ownership, and make more just decision-making processes. These features are relevant when stakeholders aim to give place to commonly shared ES in their city – i.e. urban commons. The present research studies the potential of the RM to enable stakeholder cooperation beyond the planning stage and, thus, providing an alternative approach to taking ownership of and managing the urban commons.A literature review framed the conceptualization of urban ES as urban commons, and allowed a clear understanding of the RM principles and modes of implementation. Then, surveys and interviews with UNaLab RM practitioners allowed to assess the actual implementation of the RM and its potential for cooperative engagement and democratic community development. Results show that good practices, such as the importance of soft-skills for facilitation to enable stakeholder participation and visual media to support sense-making, and areas of opportunity such as a methodic approach to address biases in stakeholder selection and allowing participants to influence the RM activities to locally-attune them, are relevant to enable the potential of the RM to deploy collective action for managing urban commons created by NBS.

All over Europe, it is a known fact that cities are shrinking. One of the main causes is population decline, but the consequent reduction of urban area is neither immediate nor easy to foresee spatially. Questions arise such as where do cities start to 'shrink' first? What are the most fragile areas that face the risk of becoming derelict? What are the most vulnerable social groups? And how does this affect real estate values across the city? Existing models for projecting the effects of shrinkage have been criticized for lacking spatial-explicitness, being excessively data-dependent, and failing to incorporate various socio-economic, urban and environmental aspects in the assessment of attractiveness of urban areas and of decisions by households. In this article, we attempt to overcome this criticism by applying the spatially-explicit Sustainable Urbanizing Landscape Development decision support tool (SULD), based on hedonic pricing theory, in two cities in southern Europe (Aveiro, Portugal and Imperia, Italy). SULD is used to project, assess and compare changes in land-use, household type distribution, real estate values and household densities, in three different scenarios of population decline (−5%, −10% and −15%). Results quantify the amount of contraction of urban area, housing quantity and living space; highlight the most problematic areas; and uncover low income households as the least affected, whereas the relocation of high income households may cause gentrification of medium income households in some areas of the historical city centre.

The objective of this report is to provide an overview of agricultural land market regulations in the EU Member States (MS). This report builds upon the framework developed by Swinnen, Van Herck and Vranken (2014a) to provide comprehensive and structured analyses of the different agricultural land market regulations across MS. The report describes the situation of land market regulations as it was in 2020 in 22 MS. The analyses of agricultural land market regulations provided in this report are based on information obtained from the MS country experts using the following three tools: (i) structured questionnaires, (ii) semi-structured group interviews and (iii) country reports. The input compiled by land market experts through these tools is based on MS legislation and other relevant documents (e.g. official documents and academic literature) that contain information on agricultural land market regulations and/or their implementation. ; Published ; Este informe es el resultado del trabajo conjunto de los autores principales, Liesbet Vranken (KU Leuven), Ewa Tabeau (Wageningen Economic Research (WEcR)) y Peter Roebeling (WEcR), basado en aportes de expertos de 22 países. Pavel Ciaian (Centro Común de Investigación) revisó el informe y contribuyó con análisis adicionales en diferentes partes del informe. Los expertos de los países contribuyeron conjuntamente con los informes de los países, completaron los cuestionarios de los países y proporcionaron otros materiales, incluidas fuentes legales, referencias, publicaciones relevantes o partes de los mismos. Participaron en discusiones de grupos focales y fueron coautores de la sección con las descripciones cualitativas a nivel de país de las regulaciones del mercado de tierras.

The intensification of the human activity in urban areas as a result of the increasing population has contributed to the air pollution worsening in cities. To reverse this trend, the European Commission established a legal framework to improve the air quality. Thereby the Member States need to develop air quality plans (AQP) for zones and agglomerations where air quality limit values are exceeded, in order to implement pollution control strategies and meet the legal requirements. Understanding the reasons for the levels of air quality non–compliance as well as evaluating available and commonly used tools to predict the air quality and their effects, is crucial for the decision–making process on air quality management policies. Based on a compilation of regional and local AQP, a review of assessment capabilities and used modeling tools to evaluate the effects of emission abatement measures on the air quality and health was performed. In most cases, models are applied to estimate emissions and to assess the resulting air quality from both reference and emission abatement scenarios. Air quality's impacts on the health and environment are rarely quantified. Regarding the air quality assessment, beyond the modeling, monitored data for validation of simulations are also used. Some studies, however, do not include the use of air quality models, considering the monitoring network as spatially representative of the study domain (e.g. Lisbon Region, Riga, Malta). In order to overcome methodological limitations for quantifying the impacts of emission abatement measures, economic evaluation techniques or even Integrated Assessment Methodologies (IAM) have been developed. IAM, already applied in some AQP or case studies, namely for Antwerp and London, are used for assessing how reductions in emissions contribute to improve air quality, reduce exposure and protect human health.

Following the challenges of the European Union (EU), member states have adopted circular economy (CE) plans and strategies, with objectives and measures to foster circularity. Although the concept of CE refers to various natural resources such as water and land, little is known on how current CE policies are integrating these environmental resources. This article assesses how water and land concerns are embedded in the EU CE action plans issued in 2015 and 2020 and a set of nine member states' subse- quent national plans. The assessment used a content analysis based on two variables, the frequency of water and land' related terms and the consistency of their inclusion within the plans. The findings reveal that neither water nor land emerge as major concerns in the CE plans, in comparison to materials or waste. Also, they are not consistently associated with the typical components of the plans namely problem-showcase, objectives, strategies and measures, stakeholders, and CE performance indicators. Nevertheless, the embeddedness of water is more evident in the plans of southern countries, whereas land concerns are much more erratic. If water and land concerns, are to be at the forefront of the transition to circularity, as the literature recommends, and if these plans are expected to offer an inte-grated approach of the CE concept, further efforts should be made to ensure their embeddednes. ; published

FR: Les espaces verts et bleus sont mis sous pression alors que les zones urbaines se densifient, sedéveloppent et évoluent. Pourtant, il est avéré que ces espaces fournissent des servicesécosystémiques essentiels - dont la gestion des eaux de ruissellement (inondations), la constructiond'abris pour la faune et la flore (biodiversité) et l'amélioration du cadre de vie (esthétique et récréatif).Ces solutions basées sur l'ingénierie écologique pour des risques d'inondation sont une priorité pourla recherche et dans l'agenda politique européen. La mise en place de ces solutions peut toutefoisconduire à la gentrification des quartiers, où une demande accrue immobilière des ménages àrevenus plus élevés conduit à une augmentation des valeurs immobilières et au déplacement desménages à faible revenu. Cette étude vise à évaluer et à comparer les impacts sociaux etéconomiques des solutions écologiques dans un projet de requalification urbaine à La Confluence(Lyon, France), en utilisant un modèle de simulation hédonique (SULD). Les résultats montrent troisgrandes tendances en ce qui concerne la mise en place de ces solutions dans les paysages urbains:i) l'augmentation de la densité de population, ii) l'augmentation des prix de l'immobilier, et iii) lechangement dans les modes de distribution démographiques. Ces effets de gentrification peuvent êtreatténués par, entre autres, la requalification simultanée des grandes infrastructures routières quipeuvent réduire les déplacements des ménages à faible revenu. ; Urban green and blue spaces are put under pressure as urban areas grow, develop and evolve. It isincreasingly recognized, however, that green/blue spaces provide critical ecosystem services -including regulating (flood control), habitat (biodiversity) and cultural (aesthetic and recreational)services. These so-called nature-based solutions for flood risk adaptation are a key priority on theEuropean research and policy agenda, given their contribution to welfare and human well-being. Theestablishment of nature-based solutions may, however, lead to gentrification where increased realestate demand from higher-income households leads to increased real estate values and thedisplacement of lower-income households. This paper aims to assess and compare the social andeconomic impacts of nature-based solutions in an urban-requalification project in the Confluence(Lyon, France), using the Sustainable Urbanizing Landscape Development (SULD) hedonic pricingsimulation model. Results show three major tendencies regarding the establishment of nature-basedsolutions in urban landscapes: i) population densities increase, ii) real estate values rise, and iii)demographic distribution patterns change. These gentrification effects may be dampened by, amongstothers, the simultaneous requalification of major road infrastructure that leads to reduceddisplacement of lower-income households.

FR: Les régions et villes européennes doivent faire face à des nombreuses questions liées à l'eau :gestion des eaux pluviales, qualité de l'eau, impact des sécheresses sur les milieux aquatiques. Pourrépondre durablement à ces questions, il est évident que l'eau doit être intégrée dans ledéveloppement urbain et dans les politiques d'aménagement du territoire. L'objectif général du projetpour la coopération interrégionale Aqua-Add (Mieux intégrer l'eau dans les projets urbains) est dedéployer le potentiel de l'eau dans les paysages urbains (potentiel économique, social etenvironnemental). Dans ce contexte, l'approche hydrologique et un modèle hédonique des prix sontintégrés et appliqués afin de vérifier les effets hydrologiques et socio-économiques des différentessolutions pour la gestion des eaux de pluie, et de faciliter le débat avec les acteurs de l'aménagement.L'objectif de cette étude est d'évaluer les effets hydrologiques et socio-économiques des espacesverts/bleus pour la gestion des eaux de pluie dans les villes moyennes. Nous présentons et étudionsici plus particulièrement l'étude de cas de Imperia (Italie) ; European regions and cities face important challenges related to water management, includingstorage, discharge, quality and periodic stress. To address these challenges, it is evident that watermust become an integral part of urban planning policies and their implementation. The internationalco-operation project Aqua-Add (Deploying the added value of water in local and regionaldevelopment) aims to deploy the potential of 'water' (economically, socially and environmentally) inurbanized landscapes and to improve the implementation of water measures in local and regionalurban planning. In this framework, hydrologic and hedonic-pricing simulation modelling approachesare integrated and applied in order to demonstrate the potential environmental, social and economicimpacts of different water management scenarios as well as to facilitate more informed decisionmaking across stakeholders. The objective of this paper is to assess the hydrological as well as socioeconomic implications of green/blue space projects for storm water management in medium-sizedcities. In particular, the case study of Imperia (Italy) is here presented and discussed.