Learning Landscape Partnerships

This project seeks to build ‘learning landscape partnerships’ between researchers and protected area management organisations.

Despite many decades of research within protected area landscapes, many protected area management organisations struggle to use scientific expertise in their management and decision making processes. The project has been funded by the Macaulay Development Trust

Project Objectives

This project seeks to build ‘learning landscape partnerships’ between researchers and protected area management organisations, such that research is better tailored to the end users’ needs and becomes a process of co-producing knowledge to help protect and enhance protected areas.  The project is focussed on identifying the main factors that might support these partnerships and developing recommendations for the future.

Methodology

It will progress through three stages: a Scottish workshop, a pan-European workshop and an international workshop. The Scottish workshop was held on 28^th April 2014, where participants from state agencies, NGOs and academics discussed factors derived from the literature, good practice in knowledge exchange and knowledge gaps.  The results will be further discussed by participants from 12 European countries at a workshop in Germany on 15- 18^th September 2014. The outcomes from the German workshop will be discussed by international delegates at the annual EUROPARC Conference in Killarney, Ireland from 28^th September to 1^st October 2014.  The resulting recommendations will be available around December 2014. The project is funded by the Macaulay Development Trust. It began in January 2014 and runs for a year.

Key Results

Some early findings can be found in the report of the Scottish workshop which was held on 28th April 2014.

The Scottish workshop findings were elaborated and extended by a group of European managers and researchers at the Siggen Workshop, held in Germany 15-18th September 2014.

The main messages from the project can be found here.

A paper authored by workshop participants has been published: McKee et al., 2018, Developing learning landscape partnerships: why and how to work with protected area managers, Parks Journal 24.2. Open access, click here for the paper.

Staff Involved

Kirsty Blackstock, Annie McKee, Robin Pakeman

Key Contact

Kirsty Blackstock