LAMASUS – Land Management for Sustainability

LAMASUS develops an innovative governance model based on collaborative work by policy makers, land users, and researchers. LAMASUS creates an open access modelling toolbox to build sound land use policies in the framework of the European Green Deal.

LAMASUS is a Horizon Europe project working to ensure that the European Union’s climate neutrality target is met. We are creating an innovative modelling system that can anticipate the potential impacts of different agricultural and forestry policies. By using our tools, policy makers can evaluate the economic and environmental benefits of different policies over the mid-term and long-term. This will help to better inform decision making and create a more sustainable future.

Project Objectives

The overall ambition of LAMASUS is to create tools for an innovative governance model to support the development of policies in the framework of the European Green Deal. To achieve this, the consortium will:

GUIDANCE – build a multi-level stakeholder dialogue including EC, national, and local policy makers, land users and other stakeholders. This stakeholder engagement approach will help identify data needs and develop policy relevant scenarios that will benefit the EU and its citizens, and aims to ensure that policies and modelling tools are accepted by those affected by them.

BUILD EVIDENCE – provide open access to land-use mapping and monitoring. High-resolution data on land-use, land use management, and policy information will be made comparable across the EU. Once online, data will be regularly updated using associated databases for European land-use, land management, agricultural- and forest-related policies combined by state-of-the-art remote-sensing and European statistical datasets

IMPROVE UNDERSTANDING – provide guidance on land use management dynamics, drivers, and impacts, especially EU land-related policies – and close knowledge gaps in the economic and environmental impacts of associated farming/forestry practices.

DEVELOP SCENARIO TOOLS FOR POLICY MAKING – create a modelling toolbox that can help anticipate the potential, economic and environmental impacts of different agricultural and forestry policies on land-use and land-management. This toolbox can be used by policy makers to evaluate the mid- to long-term benefits of agricultural and forestry policies across the EU, country, and regional levels.

Petr Havlík, PhD, LAMASUS Principal Investigator, IIASA

“LAMASUS will create a new level of societal engagement in which local actors contribute to the design of effective and efficient EU policies for climate neutrality and serve as an exemplar for other policy processes within the European Green Deal”

Tamás Krisztin, Scientific Coordinator, IIASA

“We recognize that decisions on how land is used are made at the local, regional, national, and EU level. These decisions are informed by their impacts on climate change, food security, biodiversity, and agricultural income. All of these policies are particularly relevant and require the necessary scientific tools to lay out long-term policies in the current economic situation”

Video interviews recorded at the 2024 LAMASUS Annual Meeting in Seville

A series of video interviews of project partners and stakeholders recorded at the 2024 LAMASUS Annual Meeting in Seville.

LAMASUS at the SOILGUARD final event: From Soil Science to Policy – harnessing the Biodiversity Beneath Our Feet for a Climate-Resilient Future

LAMASUS members attended the final event of the SOILGUARD project on harnessing the biodiversity beneath our feet for a climate-resilient future.

LAMASUS at the 99th conference of the Agricultural Economics Society

Several members of the LAMASUS project attended the 99th Annual Conference of the Agricultural Economics Society in Bordeaux, France.