
Marine ElbakidzeLviv University | ivan franko
Marine Elbakidze
PhD
About
128
Publications
47,168
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Introduction
Marine Elbakidze is a researcher whose work focuses on sustainable landscape management, forest governance, and the social-ecological systems approach to environmental conservation. Her research emphasizes the integration of ecological, economic, and social dimensions in landscape planning to support biodiversity, ecosystem services, and community resilience, especially in areas impacted by both human activity and natural processes.
Publications
Publications (128)
Agroforestry systems provide multiple benefits for human wellbeing and biodiversity; however, their diversity and spatial distribution has sharply declined across Europe. This study focuses on agroforestry farms in Sweden. The aim of the study was to explore farmers' motivations to start agrofor-estry, what benefits farmers attributed to their agro...
Strengthening positive human–nature relationships is seen as a way to more pro‐environmental behaviour and leads to a greater environmental sustainability. Therefore, understanding human–nature relationships has attracted increasing attention among researchers. Nature connectedness is a concept developed to measure such relationships. Since nature...
The services provided by green infrastructures may lead to a decrease in climate-related ecological, social, and health risks, especially in the urban environment. Consequently, the best guarantee to make this environment as safe as possible is to increase the extent of green areas, taking into consideration the functional importance, and climatic-...
Agroforestry systems provide multiple benefits for human wellbeing and biodiversity; however, their diversity and spatial distribution sharply decline across Europe. This study focuses on agroforestry farms in Sweden. The aim of the study was to explore farmers' motivations to start agroforestry, what benefits farmers attributed to their agroforest...
Addressing the pressure that population growth puts on the environment has become a high‐level policy priority. Less discussed is the role of population decline in either enhancing or degrading the natural environment, and how the reshaping of it can help new forms of de‐peripheralization and de‐marginalization. A long‐term trajectory of marginaliz...
Forest certification has expanded rapidly in boreal forests as a means to verify responsible management. It was spearheaded in the early 1990s by civil society organizations concerned about the negative impacts of industrial forestry on biodiversity and the rights of Indigenous and local communities. Certification standards are agreed by multistake...
Adaptive governance is considered to be a key element of the transition to sustainable forest management. Numerous top-down and bottom-up initiatives have attempted to advance adaptive governance for sustainability, ranging from new formal policies and policy tools to non-governmental market-driven instruments. Many of the newer arrangements incorp...
Urban greenspace (UGS) is important for human wellbeing, particularly physical and mental health, and is claimed to support social cohesion. However, the expansion and densification of urban centres in recent decades has occurred largely at the expense of UGS. This risks its attractiveness for users. Although recent research has identified various...
This study identifies and analyses multiple factors that impact people’s interactions with urban greenspace in Sweden. An unrestricted, self-selected online survey was used to collect the data. The survey questions were related to individual characteristics of respondents, including socio-demographic characteristics, self-reported nature connectedn...
Our work focuses on the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), one of the most stringent, but also contested certification schemes for sustainable forestry. Responding to criticisms concerning inconsistency at the national level, FSC-International recently increased the prescriptiveness of its international standards, including the development of biodiv...
This study identifies and analyses multiple factors that impact people’s interactions with urban greenspace in Sweden. An unrestricted, self-selected online survey was used to collect the data. The survey questions were related to individual characteristics of respondents, including socio-demographic characteristics, self-reported nature connectedn...
An increasing number of sustainability standards integrate the principle of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) as a requirement to ensure respect for the rights of Indigenous peoples. FPIC remains a contested norm, due in part to divergences of interpretation and gaps in implementation. Drawing on a typology based on FPIC conceptions, this pap...
Agroforestry landscapes are crucial to human wellbeing; however, they are in sharp decline across Europe. Improved understanding of the complexity of agroforestry landscapes within different biophysical, social-cultural, economic and governance contexts is essential for designing effective policy and management interventions that are more tightly a...
Wetlands are complex social-ecological systems, which provide both important habitat for species, and multiple tangible and intangible benefits for people. Sustaining long-term benefits through restoration, conservation, and sustainable use is often linked to integrative and adaptive approaches to wetlands management. Such approaches assume democra...
This paper interrogates how the increasing stringency of international rules on Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), as reflected in the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)’s certification standards, is shaping the rights afforded indigenous and local communities in Russia. Viewing the FSC as a ‘global governance generating network’ (GGN) that gain...
Aspects of governance of non-wood forest products (NWFPs) include institutional rules, stakeholder arrangements, and decision-making processes that govern production systems from access to resources, their use, and to markets. Compared with other forest products, few studies have investigated the governance of NWFPs in European post-socialistic cou...
Context
Place-based transdisciplinary research involves multiple academic disciplines and non-academic actors. Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research (LTSER) platform is one concept with ~ 80 initiatives globally.
Objectives
As an exercise in learning through evaluation we audited (1) the siting, construction and maintenance of individual LTSER platf...
Implementing sustainable forest management (SFM) policy on the ground is not straightforward, and depends on the social-ecological context. To meet the need for place-based stakeholder collaboration towards regionally adapted knowledge production and learning in support of SFM an integrated landscape approach can assist. Hosting most of the circumb...
The objective of IPBES, the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, is to provide Governments, the private sector, and civil society with scientifically credible and independent up-to-date assessments of available knowledge to make informed decisions at the local, regional and international levels. This reg...
Landscapes are maintained and changed through combinations of actions and decisions which in turn are based on what Hägerstrand has termed territorial competences. Today these competences are primarily linked to individual landowners and users; in modern rural landscapes these are first of all the farmers. Farmers’ landscape practices are to a larg...
Using an economic valuation approach, we assessed people's stated preferences for policy aimed at enhancing restoration of functional networks of naturally dynamic boreal forest habitats as a public good. Active landscape restoration can improve the functionality of boreal forest habitats as green infrastructure, which is essential for biodiversity...
Agroforestry homegardens have been the dominant farming practice in the southern part of Ethiopia, delivering multiple products important for food security and livelihoods of rural households. This traditional farming is based on the labour force of both men and women in the household, however, with unequal rights to access and control over land an...
Securing land management systems that maintain land covers is important for sustaining human livelihoods in Africa; however, simultaneously maintaining a viable natural environment is a serious challenge. Aggravated by rapid population growth and biodiversity loss, Ethiopia is an illustrative example of this issue. Stressing the need for a bottom-u...
There are currently competing demands on Europe's forests and the finite resources and services that they can offer. Forestry intensification that aims at mitigating climate change and biodiversity conservation is one example. Whether or not these two objectives compete can be evaluated by comparative studies of forest landscapes with different his...
Sustainable landscapes and regions require both stewardship and management to sustain the composition, structure and function of ecosystems as a base for delivering human benefits. This complex is captured by the topic of ecosystem services. To deliver these, the concept green (or blue) infrastructure emerged as a tool for spatial planning of netwo...
Natural capital is the foundation for delivering multiple ecosystem services important for biodiversity and human wellbeing. Functional green infrastructure (GI) is one of the land management approaches to secure the sustainable use of natural capital. This chapter presents the outcomes of a integrative research for knowledge production and learnin...
The policy term green infrastructure highlights the need to maintain functional ecosystems as a foundation for sustainable societies. Because forests are the main natural ecosystems in Europe, it is crucial to understand the extent to which forest landscape management delivers functional green infrastructures. We used the steep west–east gradient i...
The aim of this chapter is to assess evidence of the status and trends of the drivers that affect biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people. There are three wider categories
of nature’s contributions to people: regulating, material and non-material contributions, that are similar to, but not identical to classifications of ecosystem service...
Due to anthropogenic alteration of stand composition and landscape pattern in Swedish forest landscapes managed for industrial wood production, remnant patches of deciduous forests and woodlands do not form a functional green infrastructure for biodiversity conservation. We assessed if large herbivore browsing hampers the restoration of deciduous f...
Green infrastructure (GI) policy encourages the spatial planning of natural and semi-natural areas to deliver biodiversity conservation and a wide range of ecosystem services (ES) important to human well-being. Much of the current literature relies on expert-led and top-down processes to investigate connections between landscapes’ different land co...
Summary
Ecosystem Services aim to embed ecological goals onto political-economic decisions. However, they fail to capture the complexity in social-ecological interactions, leading to fragmented land-use decision-making and valuation. Consideration of landscape´s multiple dimensions represents a pathway forward. This symposium will discuss the adva...
Indigenous communities in South Africa are severely affected by land degradation and global climate change, which lead to decline in the provision of multiple ecosystem services (ES) important for rural livelihoods. Spatial planning towards functional ecological infrastructure (EI) for sustainable rural livelihoods requires evidence-based knowledge...
Spatial segregation of different forest landscape functions can accommodate rival forestry objectives more comprehensively than integrated approaches. Russia has a unique history of forest zoning separating production and environmental functions. However, the Russian Forest Code of 2006 increased the focus on wood production. We reviewed the histor...
Due to a long history of intensive land and water use, habitat networks for biodiversity conservation are generally degraded in Sweden. Landscape restoration (LR) is an important strategy for achieving representative and functional green infrastructures. However, outcomes of LR efforts are poorly studied, particularly the dynamics of LR governance...
Maintenance of functional ecological (or green) infrastructure is threatened by habitat conversion, fragmentation and loss, water scarcity, invasive species, climate change, resource extraction, poor policy implementation and societal inequity. Using South Africa as a case study, our transdisciplinary team identified actions likely to be effective...
Increased demand for natural resources and economic transition threaten natural and biocultural capital and thus ecosystem services for human well-being. We applied an evidence-based approach to strategic planning of functional green infrastructure in a European biodiversity hotspot: the Ukrainian Carpathian Mountains. We (1) described how potentia...
Transboundary nature protected areas constitute a considerable proportion of all the existing spatial
forms of biodiversity protection. One prominent example is the Białowiez˙ a Forest, shared by Poland and
Belarus. There is a considerable literature on allocation of funds to preserving nature shared by several
countries. Some of this literature as...
Transboundary nature protected areas constitute a considerable proportion of all the existing spatial forms of biodiversity protection. There is a considerable literature on allocation of funds to preserving nature shared by several countries, though less research on the economic benefits that citizens attach to protected transboundary land nature...
The functionality of forest patches and networks as green infrastructure may be affected negatively both by expanding road networks and forestry intensification. We assessed the effects of (1) the current and planned road infrastructure, and (2) forest loss and gain, on the remaining large forest landscape massifs as green infrastructure at the EU'...
Ecosystem services (ES) research is currently widely utilized. However, qualitative approaches and socio-cultural valuations of ES are still limited. This may undermine future landscape conservation initiatives because important services for people may not be captured. We performed 29 face-to-face semi-structured interviews to capture stakeholders'...
Ecosystem services (ES) research has rapidly gained momentum in environmental policy and practice. However, qualitative socio-cultural approaches are still limited, and therefore, ES important for people, are currently not commonly captured. We performed 34 face-to-face semi-structured interviews to describe stakeholders' appreciation of ES from de...
Loss of large carnivore populations may lead to increased population densities of large herbivores, and subsequent cascading effects on the composition, structure and function of ecosystems. Using a macroecological approach based on studies in multiple boreal forest landscapes in the Baltic Sea region and Russia, we tested the hypothesis that disru...
Russian forest policy stipulates that intensified wood production is part of sustainable forest management. Swedish forest practices form a role model for this ambition. However, are the biophysical conditions for tree growth the same in northwest (NW) Russia and Sweden? We compared growth rates of young Scots pine (Pinus silvestris L.) and Norway...
Russia sees the need to increase wood production. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of barriers and bridges in social and ecological systems for intensification of wood production in NW Russia. This requires that past development trajectories are understood. Using a local logging frontier in Russia's Komi Republic as a cas...
Biosphere Reserves aim at being role models for biodiversity conservation. This study focuses on the unsuccessful conservation of waders (Charadrii) on wet grasslands in the Kristianstad Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve (KVBR) in southern Sweden. Predation on nests and young has been proposed as one reason contributing to the decline of waders. We expl...
The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) forest certification system is a globally widespread market-driven mechanism that aims at responsible use and governance of forests, and its application is growing. However, the extent to which forest certification contributes effectively to maintaining forest biodiversity is an unresolved issue. We assessed the...
Traditional agroforestry homegardens deliver multiple products and benefits, including food security and livelihoods for rural households in Ethiopia. However, this land use has been changing towards monoculture production of khat (
Catha edulis
). This study analyses the development trajectories and causes of change in agroforestry homegardens. In...
Forests provide a diversity of non-wood forest products (NWFPs) as a resource base for regional and rural development. NWFPs have been used for food, medicine, fiber, energy and other products that sustain local human communities for Millennia. However, managing forests, including NWFPs, in a certain landscape in a sustainable way is a challenge an...
This book brings together information about Europe's forests and how they have developed since the last Ice Age. The first part (Chapters 1-4) gives an overview of Europe's woods and forests in space and over time; the second part (Chapters 5-9) looks at how they have been managed; the third part (Chapters 10-15) deals with how plants and animals h...
There are many ethnobotanical studies on the use of wild plants and mushrooms for food and medicinal treatment in Europe. However, there is a lack of comparative ethnobotanical research on the role of non-wood forest products (NWFPs) as wild food and medicine in local livelihoods in countries with different socio-economic conditions. The aim of thi...
International and national policies stress the importance of spatial planning for the long-term sustain- ability of regions. This paper identifies the extent to which the spatial planning in a Swedish region can be characterised as a collaborative learning process. By combining qualitative interviews and systems thinking methods we analysed the mai...
Natural capital is ultimately the base for economic, social and cultural sustainability. To tackle the increasing loss and fragmentation of habitats for wild life and humans in rural and urban landscapes there is a need to protect, manage and restore sufficient amounts of functional networks of representative land covers. Good examples on the Europ...
Voluntary cooperation and the support of stakeholders carry a major importance in the development of Model Forests. The identification of the support level of local organizations as stakeholders in the Bucak Model Forest initiative, located in the Mediterranean region of Turkey, constitutes the theme of this study. Within this scope, the views of t...
Voluntary cooperation and the support of stakeholders carry a major importance in the development of Model Forests. The identification of the support level of local organizations as stakeholders in the Bucak Model Forest initiative, located in the Mediterranean region of Turkey, constitutes the theme of this study. Within this scope, the views of t...
This article describes the transformation of old-growth forest to managed forests, in North (N) Sweden and boreal regions of North-West (BNW) Russia, from economic, social and ecological perspectives. Whereas in BNW Russia, the logging frontier could be kept moving into unharvested regions, N Sweden earlier had to develop solutions where large-scal...
Naturally dynamic forests have a high proportion of biotopes with old large trees, diverse vertical and horizontal structure at multiple scales, and much dead wood. As such, they provide habitat to species and ecosystem processes that forests managed for wood production cannot provide to the same degree. Whether termed old-growth, ancient, virgin,...
Sustainable development as a process towards sustainability requires collaboration among societal actors and stakeholders at multiple levels. A key issue is to provide them with that they have comprehensive and transparent knowledge base representing the state and trends of different dimensions of sustainability. This study addresses the need to an...
This article describes 14 different case studies in Sweden, Norway, Scotland and Ukraine. It is about solving various prob