Stefan Heiland
Professor and Chair
Technical University of Berlin, Department of Landscape Planning and Development
Biography
Stefan Heiland has studied Landscape Management / Landscape Ecology at Technical University Munich. He then worked as an environmental planner, supervised sustainability processes in municipalities and worked as a scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER) in Dresden. Since 2006 he is Professor for Landscape Planning and Development at TU Berlin. One of his main research interests has been investigating the impacts of climate change on nature conservation, landscape and spatial planning and their possibilities to contribute to climate change adaptation. He was head of the working group responsible for preparing of the German Federal Green Infrastructure Concept, the first (informal) comprehensive nation-wide plan on nature conservation. Current research activities concern societal effects of digitalization and their impact on nature conservation and planning, the need for sufficiency to combat climate change and biodiversity loss and the evaluation of German National Parks. He has further training as a mediator and technical journalist.
Rutgers Climate Bridge Panel 3: Impact on Policy
Abstract
The presentation is structured in three parts:
Firstly, it briefly introduces the legally based German planning system, putting a focus on the two strands of comprehensive spatial planning and landscape planning. Both comprise are-wide plans on federal state, regional and municipal level. It has to be emphasized that the term Landscape Planning has a special meaning in Germany, since it covers scales from 1:500 to 1:300.000 and formulates aims and measures to protect and develop not only “landscape,” but also biodiversity, water, soil, air and climate. Consequently it could also be named as “environmental land-use planning.”
Secondly, it is shown that climate change adaptation on regional and local level is widely discussed and planned in informal so-called climate adaptation concepts, which can cover a broad range of issues but also concentrate on the specific situation of the respective area. These concepts are neither legally required nor binding; therefore the question arises whether they have to be and are integrated in formal landscape or land-use plans.
Thirdly, it has to be stated that there are a good legal basis, enough knowledge and appropriate methods to include issues of climate change adaptation in formal landscape and spatial plans. However, first studies show that planning practice has not yet taken full advantage of the existing possibilities.