Experts’ Perception of the Key Drivers of Land-Use/Land-Cover Changes in Serbia from 1990 to 2012

Abstract

Negative trends in land use and land cover changes (LULCCs) are embodied in environmental, economic and social problems, keeping entire societies away from sustainable development goals (SDGs). This recognition incites a need for securing comprehensive and transdiciplinary knowledge on the complex interplay between LULCCs and their drivers. It should inform land use policy makers and produce adequate sustainable social responses. However, fragmentation in both academic and governmental arenas is an important impediment to the needed application of sustainability to land use policy. With this regard, the study offers a transdisciplinary, bottom-up and reproducible framework for understanding key drivers of LULCCs at the national/regional level where sustainable land use policies should be defined. Its main component is the repeated measure ANOVA of the experts’ survey data. The analysis allows aggregation of experts’ different disciplinary, professional and experiential perceptions and produces comparable results. It is tested in Serbia in three sub-periods during post-socialism. Main results confirm that LULCCs and drivers are complexly intertwined and need to be analysed within a comprehensive and transdisciplinary framework. Furthermore, the study should enable the transdisciplinary discussion, learning and knowledge coproduction that are required to inform land use policy makers about the needed trans-sectoral coproduction of policy responses towards SDGs.