LAWI301487 Special aspects of landscape planning

Type
Lecture and seminar
Semester hours
2
Lecturer (assistant)
N.N., ,
Organisation
Landscape Planning
Offered in
Sommersemester 2026
Languages of instruction
Deutsch
Content

BEYOND BOUNDARIES: COLLABORATIVE GOVERNANCE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

The course will be taught in the summer semester of 2026 by Professor Edella Schlager from the University of Arizona. The course will be held in English.

Environmental challenges like watershed degradation, climate change adaptation, wildlife conservation, and public lands protection refuse to respect jurisdictional, sectoral, or disciplinary boundaries. Governance institutions for addressing such challenges often remain fragmented and redundant across international, federal, state, and local levels. Within these complex contexts diverse actors such as public agencies, private landowners, nonprofit organizations, communities, and resource users are engaged in conflictive, competitive, and cooperative relations. This course examines how the expansive field of collaborative governance offers promising approaches for bringing diverse stakeholders together to solve complex environmental problems that no single organization can address alone. Drawing on theories of common-pool resource management, polycentricity, and network governance, students will explore when and how collaboration works in natural resource setting and when it doesn't.

Through North American case studies ranging from community-based forestry to multi-state river basin compacts, from Indigenous co-management agreements to public-private conservation partnerships, students will develop practical skills for analyzing, designing, and evaluating collaborative environmental governing arrangements. The course addresses critical questions facing environmental professionals: How do you build trust among stakeholders with competing interests and worldviews? What governance structures enable effective decision-making in networks spanning multiple organizations and jurisdictions? How can collaborative processes achieve both ecological outcomes and social equity? Students will engage with real-world challenges including power imbalances, accountability tensions, and the difficulties of sustaining collaboration over time. By the end of the course, students will be equipped to critically analyze collaborative governance arrangements and apply evidence-based strategies to advance environmental sustainability in their own professional contexts.
Previous knowledge expected

Knowledge in Governance
You can find more details like the schedule or information about exams on the course-page in BOKUonline.