KARLANDS- integrated landscape planning for sustainable use of nature resources and maintaining the biodiversity (KA 528)
Funded by Karelia ENPI 2007-2013

Objective of the project

The KARLANDS project was aimed for fostering good governance in Karelian landscapes. These landscapes are facing new challenges caused by i.e. globalization, climate change, demands of both more intensive use of natural resources and enhanced protection, international conventions and recreation development. These new challenges override local communities and institutions, cornering them into conflicts, temporary solutions and unsustainable practices.

Main activities

• To develop common spatially explicit database on natural resources: Muezerskiy and Kostomukshskiy regions and municipalities of Ilomantsi, Lieksa and Kuhmo. • To update natural resources and biodiversity data using remote sensing. • To evaluate the impact of nature use intensification in cross-border context. • To develop integrated landscape plan aimed to maximize the utilization of natural resources, biodiversity conservation and recreational use of nature.

Achievements

Finnish-Russian online geospatial database was created to map the current state of existing ecological networks and possibilities for sustainable nature use intensification. Multiple use and conservation are tightly coupled with integrated landscape planning. These were fairly well understood and taken into account on Finnish side before the project implementation, but not at all on Russian side. One of the main project achievements was communication of the approached and developing common combined approach. The Finnish – Russian border area (so called Green Belt of Fennoscandia) makes up a unique formation of forests, mires and waterways consisting of areas on both countries. These areas were planned together for economically feasible and ecologically meaningful results. Cooperation between actors was insufficient before project implementation. There were no discussion and joint actions aimed to improve nature use and ecological functions of the landscapes. The project implementation provided initial data and platform for landscape planning. The project was dealing with requirements of local stakeholders, with regional development plans and with national and international strategies expressed by conventions and directives. The project implementation approach was based on research and updating data, planning and using the results with stakeholders, making it public by extensive local, regional and state level activities. The selected approach allowed developing extensive co-operation and building the continuity on the existing results involving strong organizations. The main result of the project was integrated landscape plan discussed by stakeholders and communicated to the decision makers from Russia and Finland. This was a first time attempt to analyze landscape planning from the combined perspectives of Finland and Russia. The online database is available for project partners in online form and also in the form of database archive available on CD.