INTERact (INTERact)

In the past 25 years, political upheavals in Central and East Europe as well as Southeast Europe (CEE-SEE) have led to significant landscape changes. Ethnic, religious and economic conflicts shape landscape pattern, which manifests itself in abandoned agricultural areas or increasing urbanization. Applying integrated spatial planning in CEE-SEE countries need to extend cross-border approaches by intercultural methods and new communication technologies.

Against this backdrop, INTERact addresses the question how to combine the ecological and social system for a sustainable development of neighbouring regions. For this purpose, the project aims at building a consortium in order to address following challenges:

• How to involve different research institutes and regional stakeholders for an integrated analysis?
• How do cultural, political and societal changes affect the landscape pattern?
• How to develop strategies in spatial planning for a sustainable resource management?

Due to the partnership between INTERact and the European Land-Use Institute (www.eli-web.com), already existing cooperation in CEE-SEE countries can be used and subsequently expanded. The outcome of phase one is to establish a motivated consortium, while in the second phase international cooperation will be set up to elaborate project proposals.