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Landscapes in transition: planning for uncertain futures and alternative scenarios in resource-dependent regions

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Kramkowski, Victoria

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Resource-based regions face a unique set of challenges and vulnerabilities regarding environmental, social, and economic sustainability and stability. Such regions are characterized by complex relationships with the landscape and resource industry, a distinctive Northern identity, multiple spatial and temporal scales of planning, complex power relations, shifting environmental values, and high uncertainty. These challenges and dynamics can preclude the utility of long-range environmental planning and the agency to undertake it.

This dissertation examines three key research questions: ( 1) How can regional environmental planning processes address the cumulative, multi-scale challenges inherent to resource-dependent regions experiencing social, economic, and environmental transitions?; (2) How can uncertainty and long-term futures be planned for by utilizing scenarios, and how can scenario planning be integrated into existing environmental planning and assessment frameworks to manage uncertainty?; and (3) How do the diverse values and power relations inherent to a post-productivist landscape shape environmental planning and resultant outcomes?

These research questions were addressed through a case study analysis of the Northeast Superior region utilizing semi-structured interviews, focus groups, site visits, and document analysis. Key findings include the need for: (1) Better recognition of planning participants' complex, multi-dimensional relationships with the landscape and each other; (2) Planning that is both place-based and transferable to other contexts; (3) Transparent planning processes that co-exist with their inherently political nature; ( 4) Governmental commitment to planning outcomes; and ( 5) The incorporation of scenarios into existing approaches to long-range environmental planning to both strengthen these approaches and facilitate acceptance of scenario planning in managing uncertainty.

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