I am Executive Officer of the Global Land Programme, Senior Scientist at the Centre for Development and Environment at the University of Bern, and Assistant Research Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. In addition to my work coordinating the GLP community, my research interests include governance of distally connected socio-ecological systems (telecoupling); land tenure and relation to land use and cover change; forest governance and conflict; and carbon conservation schemes such as REDD+ in the context of global climate change policies and development issues. I am also Principal Investigator on a recently awarded grant from the NASA Land-Cover and Land-Use Change (LCLUC) program, “The Global Rush for Land: A Socio-Ecological Synthesis” Principal Investigator (2017-2020) and a Senior Fellow of the Breakthrough Institute.
Themes
Telecoupling of land use systems, Land governance, Urban-rural interactions, Land use and conflict
This recent article in Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability (COSUST) was written by members of the GLP community for an upcoming GLP Special Issue in COSUST. The paper argues that normative positions are increasingly required of sustainability science and lays out principles that served to guide the themes and organization of the 4th GLP Open Science Meeting.
From 24 to 26 April 2019, over 600 leading scientists from all over the world will meet in Bern for the 4th Open Science Meeting of the Global Land Programme (GLP). Its theme: Transforming Land Systems for People and Nature – What research and policies are needed to achieve ecologically, socially, and economically sustainable land systems? Ariane de Bremond, senior research scientist at the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) of the University of Bern and executive officer of the GLP International Programme Office, discussed the role of the conference.
A grand, integrated theory of land system change remains elusive. Yet, this paper shows that middle-range theories – defined as contextual generalizations that describe chains of causal mechanisms explaining a well-bounded range of phenomena, as well as the conditions that trigger, enable, or prevent these causal chains –, provide a path towards generalized knowledge of land systems. This knowledge can support progress towards sustainable social-ecological systems.
There are no accepted guidelines for detecting biases or logical gaps between 'generalized knowledge claims' (GKC’s) and the evidence used to produce them. In this important new article in Global Environmental Change, several GLP Members propose a typology of GKCs based on their evidence base and the process by which they are produced.
