Transdisciplinary challenges for sustainable management of mediterranean landscapes in the global information society

Zev Naveh

doi:10.3097/LO.200914

Authors

Zev Naveh Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Division of Agricultural Engineering, Technion, Israel; Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3097/LO.200914

Keywords:

Chaotic ecological and socio-economic transformation, Fire and fuel management, Homeorhetic flow equilibrium, Mediterranean uplands conservation and restoration, Sustainability revolution

Abstract

The present chaotic transformation from the industrial to the global information society is accelerating the ecological, social and economic unsustainability. The rapidly growing unsustainable, fossil energy powered urbanindustrial technosphere and their detrimental impacts on nature and human well-being are threatening the solar energy powered natural and seminatural biosphere landscapes and their vital ecosystem services. A sustainability revolution is therefore urgently needed, requiring a shift from the "fossil age" to the "solar age" of a new world economy, coupled with more sustainable lifestyles and consumption patterns. The sustainable future of viable multifunctional biosphere landscapes of the Mediterranean Region and elsewhere and their biological and cultural richness can only be ensured by a post-industrial symbiosis between nature and human society. For this purpose a mindset shift of scientists and professionals from narrow disciplinarity to transdisciplinarity is necessary, dealing with holistic land use planning and management, in close cooperation with land users and stakeholders. To conserve and restore the rapidly vanishing and degrading Mediterranean uplands and highest biological ecological and cultural landscape ecodiversity, their dynamic homeorhetic flow equilibrium, has to be maintained by continuing or simulating all anthropogenic processes of grazing, browsing by wild and domesticated ungulates. Catastrophic wildfires can be prevented only by active fire and fuel management, converting highly inflammable pine forests and dense shrub thickets into floristically enriched, multi- layered open woodlands and recreation forests.

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