ActSustainably - Governing sustainable futures in Eurasian grasslands

As climate change accelerates and biodiversity loss continues at an unprecedented rate, societies around the world face the challenge of developing sustainable ways for humans and nature to coexist. Grasslands are among the most important ecosystems on Earth: they support livelihoods, store carbon, promote biodiversity, and strengthen the resilience of socio-ecological systems. Their sustainable management is therefore crucial for the future of both the environment and society.

Against this backdrop, the ActSustainably project explores sustainable development pathways for Eurasian grasslands through case studies in Austria, Hungary, Denmark, and Kazakhstan. At its core is the question of how institutions, social norms, and human-nature relationships can foster sustainable forms of resource use and governance.

Désirée Gmür and Peter Finke from ISEK investigate the cultural values, informal rules, and social practices that shape access to grasslands and influence their use and management. By combining anthropological perspectives with institutional analysis, they examine how community-based forms of resource management interact with state regulations and market mechanisms, and how these dynamics affect local communities and ecosystems.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, archival research, and focus group discussions, they analyze how historical and contemporary changes in land-use and governance systems influence collective responsibility, social justice, and ecological sustainability. Particular attention is paid to cultural understandings of nature, property, and sustainability, which play a crucial role in shaping environmental behavior and resource use.

By comparing diverse social and institutional contexts, ActSustainably seeks to identify key conditions for sustainable resource governance and generate practical insights for biodiversity conservation and the strengthening of resilient grassland social-ecological systems.

The research consortium brings together international scholars from Hungary, Kazakhstan, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, and Germany. Team members contribute extensive expertise in biodiversity, land-use change, institutional dynamics, and natural resource governance, as well as long-standing field research experience in their respective study regions.

The project’s work packages are led by Raushan Bokusheva (ZHAW, Switzerland) and Peter Finke (ISEK, University of Zurich, Switzerland), Katharina Gugerell (BOKU University, Austria), Alexander Prishchepov (Aarhus University, Denmark), Norbert Hölzel (University of Münster, Germany), and Zsolt Molnár (HUN-REN Centre for Ecological Research, Hungary). Désirée Gmür (ISEK, University of Zurich) serves as Senior Researcher within the project.

ActSustainably is a three-year international research project funded through Biodiversa+ and supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the German Research Foundation (DFG), Innovation Fund Denmark, the National Research, Development and Innovation Office of Hungary (NKFIH), and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).