Monika Suškevičs

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• PhD in Environmental Conservation
• Professor (Associate) at Estonian University of Life Sciences

Generative AI (GenAI), particularly text-to-image (TTI) models, is reshaping landscape representation by transforming textual descriptions into visual outputs. However, these models often reinforce biases embedded in their training datasets, shaping how landscapes are perceived and represented. This research examines the biases in GenAI-generated l...

Integrated approaches for managing natural resources are said to meet increasing demand for water, energy, and food, while maintaining the integrity of ecosystems, and ensuring equitable access to resources. The Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus has been proposed as a cross-sectoral approach to manage trade-offs and exploit synergies that arise among t...

Citizen science (CS) entails different citizen engagement levels in research. It is not well-known how these levels affect protected area (PA) governance. This review systematically maps and analyses how the empirical scientific literature has constructed the links between three CS engagement levels (contributory, collaborative, co-created CS) and...

Semi-natural grasslands (SNGLs) in Estonia are threatened by abandonment. This threat is leading to concerns about the degradation of biodiversity within grassland communities. Despite the high relevance of economic incentives in this context, how such incentives influence land managers’ decision-making regarding the agricultural use of SNGLs has n...

The ‘Aarhus Convention’ – regulating access to environmental information, public participation and justice in environmental decision−making – is a key international agreement with a long history and a considerable number of signatory countries. While implementation has been studied nationally, there is little comparative research at the transnation...

Many studies have explored farmers' perspectives on biodiversity and ecosystem services, but fewer qualitative and cross-country comparisons exist. We develop a socio-ecological system to analyse agricultural landscape services, biodiversity, and drivers that have affected these services in recent decades. Via a systematic stake-holder mapping and...

Systematic literature syntheses are a key element in the scientific realm, considering the steadily growing amount of available knowledge. Involving stakeholders in the research process brings a wide range of advantages, like broadening the perspectives on the problem in question, increasing the relevance of results for policy- and decision-making,...

The marine and coastal ecosystems of the Baltic Sea are exposed to an intensification and diversification of anthropogenic activities and related environmental pressures. Human interest in marine resources and space often overlap with environmental protection objectives, causing conflicts. Research can assist capacity building to enable knowledge-b...

The importance of public and stakeholder participation in environmental assessments (EIA and SEA) has been increasing in the EU, international, and national policy contexts. However, to date, no synthesis of the literature that analyses the performance of participation in different EU countries has been conducted. This review aims to contribute to...

Background While the unique marine and coastal environment of the Baltic Sea provides numerous ecosystem services, its ecosystems are under pressure due to the intensification and diversification of anthropogenic uses. This present work constitutes a systematic map of the evidence of the impacts of ecosystem services and disservices on human health...

This study investigates the collaborative ties between rural and urban tourism enterprises and their networks in the post-communist Pärnu region of Estonia. For that, two research questions were answered: what is the nature of collaborative ties between entrepreneurs and sub-networks in a tourist region and how different ties between regional touri...

The aim of this chapter by Mart Külvik, Monika Suškevics, Mireia Gascon, Lewis R. Elliot, Jekaterina Balicka, Marina Cervera Alonso de Medina and Frederico Meireles is to present the ways in which co-design and public participation can be undertaken, with examples of stakeholder and local community involvement using the BlueHealth case studies in P...

Citizen Science (CS) based environmental monitoring has become popular in many countries, but implementing CS projects in Eastern European countries is often challenging due to their socio-political transition histories, low social capital, and relatively short traditions of civic participation. CS in Eastern Europe has received little academic int...

In the IMAGINE Cookbook n° 4, ‘Green infrastructure management for ecosystem services’ (De Blust and Heremans 2020b) we analyze the functioning of a GI patch as a service providing unit based on required ecosystem attributes and the factors which may influence this. The information can then be used to determine the most appropriate management measu...

In this IMAGINE cookbook n° 3 ‘Assessing detailed GI habitat quality for biodiversity and ecosystem services’ (De Blust and Heremans – this report) useful landscape metrics are proposed and a GI habitat typology and related attributes are described that may be used for an assessment of habitat quality. By avoiding regional nomenclature or unclear d...

We define policy coherence as an attribute of policy that systematically reduces conflicts and promotes synergies between and within different policy areas to achieve the outcomes associated with jointly agreed policy objectives (Nilsson et al. 2012). Policy coherence can be achieved at three levels: vertically (e.g., between EU and Member states),...

This cookbook (no. 7) addresses the key topic, “to propose models for evaluating alternative design and management options of GI at landscape level”. The cookbook presents the development of a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) model to combine and integrate knowledge obtained from other key topics (especially key topic 1-3) into a social-ecological sys...

In this IMAGINE Cookbook n° 2 ‘Assessing GI vulnerability to ecosystem degradation at the landscape scale’ (Heremans and De Blust 2020 – this report) we present a methodology to calculate the vulnerability of landscape patches to disturbances caused by external pressures. For this, we use landscape metrics because they can be assessed at the landsc...

Collaboration is important for fostering tourism in a region and the creation of a shared collaborative identity facilitates this process. This paper explains the role of individual identities in the process of creating a shared tourism collaborative identity in a post-communist environment. To this end, it uses multi-grounded theory to analyse 37...

Background The Baltic Sea ecosystems supply many benefits to society, termed ecosystem services. These depend upon a healthy marine environment requiring marine and relevant land-based policies integrated with public health policies. Until recently marine environment protection policies have largely focussed on human impacts on the environment and...

Citizen science (CS) is an increasingly topical field that can potentially contribute to the achievement of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Europe. However, most of CS research to date is still focused on West-Europe. CS in East-European countries, which have recently undergone political and socioeconomic transitions, can be expected to...

Citizen science evolved through multiple disciplinary manifestations into a new field of study and a participatory method of enquiry. While most citizen science projects take place within problem-focused natural sciences, social sciences and humanities help understanding the human dimension and open a broad methodological spectrum for enriching sci...

This report aims to enhance our understanding of stakeholder mapping for co-created citizen science initiatives. It presents and discusses findings from an international two-day stakeholder mapping workshop with researchers, event organizers, communication experts, and artists realizing citizen science activities. Participants identified examples o...

This paper uses the tripartite place attachment framework to examine six rural parishes across Estonia and Latvia. Existing analyses/frameworks on participatory processes often neglect the complexity of relationships that rural residents have to their local environments. From a qualitative analysis of face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with c...

Qualitative research related to the human dimensions of conservation and environment is growing in quantity. Rigorous syntheses of such studies can help develop understanding and inform decision-making. They can combine findings from studies in varied or similar contexts to address questions relating to, for example, the lived experience of those a...

Estonian rural tourism partnership sustainability is analysed according to the tourism partnership life cycle model, which employs qualitative methodology. Leadership, confusing aims, decreasing communication, time availability, uncertain funding, institutional changes and lack of collaboration with urban centre – trigger deceleration of partnershi...

Inadequate Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is often thought to hinder adaptive management of socio-ecological systems. A key influence on environmental management practices are environmental policies: however, their consequences for M&E practices have not been well-examined. We examine three policy areas - the Water Framework Directive, the Natura...

Despite a long-term focus on learning in natural resource management (NRM), it is still debated how learning supports sustainable real-world NRM practices. We offer a qualitative in-depth synthesis of selected scientific empirical literature (N=53), which explores factors affecting action-oriented learning. We inductively identify eight key process...

The successful transition towards renewable energy (RE) technologies is closely intertwined with various societal aspects. Wind energy (WE) is one of the most controversial RE-types, possibly due to the multiplicity of related public concerns. Although some European country-comparisons exist, research concerning acceptance factors in different poli...

The data presented in this DiB article provide an overview of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) carried out for 3 European environmental policies (the Water Framework Directive, the Natura 2000 network of protected areas, and Agri-Environment Schemes implemented under the Common Agricultural Policy), as implemented in 9 cases (Catalonia (Spain), Esto...

final recommendations

Wind energy has been one of the most controversial renewable energy types considering its acceptance by the public and different stakeholders. This chapter first discusses the role of different acceptance concerns of wind energy. Then examples are provided about most relevant acceptance concerns across Europe based on the results of a recent expert...

This chapter discusses the concept of public participation in the context of renewable energy planning. Against this background, examples of over 20 innovative participatory planning practices in Europe are given. Furthermore, the chapter also provides some more detailed illustrative case studies of innovative practices. More info about the book:...

https://www.jovis.de/en/books/details/product/renewable-energy-and-landscape-quality.html Abstract of the whole book: In response to climate change and limited fossil fuels, renewable energy is being heavily promoted throughout Europe. Despite general support for green energy, perceived landscape change and loss of landscape quality have featured...

This chapter gives a brief overview of the situation of renewable energy production in Estonia, and provides a short introduction about its relation to landscape-related topics.

Learning is considered as a promising mechanism to cope with rapid environmental change. The implications of learning for natural resource management (NRM) have not been explored in-depth and the evidence on the topic is scattered across multiple sources. We provide a qualitative review of types of learning outcomes and consider their manifestation...

Climate change will impact forests and may impair their ability to provide essential ecosystem services in the decades to come. Addressing this challenge requires adjustments to forest management strategies as of now, but it is still unclear to what extent this is already in progress. Using data from surveys of 1131 forest owners and managers from...

The report is summarising the preliminary findings: Blackstock K.L. et al. (2017) Monitoring and Evaluation for Ecosystem Management (MEEM), Technical Report, James Hutton Institute, 96 pages.

The number of collaborative initiatives between scientists and volunteers (i.e., citizen science) is increasing across many research fields. The promise of societal transformation together with scientific breakthroughs contributes to the current popularity of citizen science (CS) in the policy domain. We examined the transformative capacity of citi...

The Estonian concept of ecological networks (the Green Network) is implemented at different administrative levels by including multiple stakeholders. Building ecologically coherent Green Infrastructure is also one strategic aim of the European Union's environmental policy. An embedded case study shows that contradictions between governance levels a...

The global concern for biodiversity loss and degradation has called for concerted action in the form of international and continent-wide policies for biodiversity conservation. Yet, various discourses for conservation can be distinguished at the international level, giving basis and shaping different approaches to practical conservation at national...

Legitimacy is regarded as one critical aspect of biodiversity management and nature conservation arrangements. Multi-level governance is claimed to pose several challenges to legitimacy. The aim of this paper is to review some legitimacy challenges in multilevel governance contexts, and to analyse empirically biodiversity governance in different EU...

Legitimacy is one critical aspect of effective biodiversity governance. However, multi-level governance contexts can pose several challenges to achieving legitimate governance solutions. This paper reviews some legitimacy challenges in multi-level governance contexts, and analyzes eleven biodiversity governance case studies from different EU countr...

Across the European Union, the Natura 2000 network is among the most important measures for preventing the biological degradation of landscapes. However, land-use conflicts in several member states show that the designation of Natura 2000 areas has not been an effective process, foremost due to insufficient public and stakeholder involvement. This...

Public and stakeholder participation has been shown to have the potential to enhance the quality and the public legitimacy of decisions. It also has the potential to motivate a potentially diverse range of participants to learn from each other, and can even simplify the implementation of public policies. Our focus in this policy briefing is to outl...

The first phase of implementing the Natura 2000 network included several activities to introduce the concept to different stakeholders and to involve them in the decision-making process. A number of EU member states have experienced considerable opposition from several stakeholders to the designation of Natura 2000 areas. As the next step of the Na...

The Estonian concept of ecological networks aims at ensuring sustainable use of landscapes and is being brought into practice through various land use sectors. Taking stakeholder analysis and actor network approaches as starting points; we first identify stakeholders related to ecological networks and explore the relationships between them across d...