Development foci of WSL ¶

WSL has identified in its Strategy 2035 four societally relevant and scientifically promising development foci for the coming decade. They build on WSL’s research and expertise in the five core thematic areas, integrate across themes and disciplines, and enhance WSL’s contribution to important global challenges.

Global change is drastically impacting the Earth system at large, including ecosystems and society. Understanding global change is key for projecting its impacts and providing solutions for mitigation and adaptation. Building on decades of research and monitoring campaigns in its core thematic areas, WSL will make a decisive contribution to addressing this challenge.

WSL will develop novel approaches to: 

• understand, quantify, and predict the impacts of global change and the risks to environment and society; 
• identify tipping-points and key factors for increasing resistance and resilience; 
• apply and test mitigation and adaptation strategies; 
• implement solutions for early-warning systems; and 
• analyze options to foster behavioral changes.

Rapid urbanization is taking place globally, with most of today’s population living in urban areas. Sustainable urbanization addresses the design, renewal, development, and management of urban spaces, as well as the economical use of land and resources. Its goal is to create and maintain socially inclusive, environmentally responsible, economically viable, and biodiverse and healthy cities that are resilient to climate change. With its experience in the core thematic areas, WSL is well equipped to take the next step in researching and understanding urban spaces and to develop appropriate solutions.

WSL will focus on enhancing its system-level understanding and developing sustainable solutions for:

• health, recreation, and other needs of ageing, growing, and more diverse societies; 
• biodiversity conservation and management of ecosystem services and risks; 
• public participation in planning livable cities; and
• interactions between urban and non-urban systems.

Management of the environment remains a major governance challenge. A thorough understanding and critical assessment of the key elements of governance are essential for improving decision-making processes, forms of collaboration, formal and informal regulations, and policy implementation. Based on a long history of complementing natural science research with social science studies, WSL will systematize environmental governance research to further increase the effectiveness of its research in all fields.

WSL will

• strengthen the knowledge and skills at WSL regarding environmental governance;
• deepen the understanding of environmental decision-making;
• support effective environmental policy elaboration and implementation; and
• contribute to the development of governance structures for new fields of action, such as climate change adaptation.

Pressing demands on landscapes and ecosystems include the provision of food, housing, and energy, protection from natural hazards, long-term environmental conservation and restoration, and sustainable carbon sequestration. The complex interactions of societies with their physical and biological environment manifest themselves in interconnected multifunctional landscapes and ecosystems across Switzerland, from the lowlands to high-alpine regions. This development focus will build on WSL’s extensive experience in researching natural resources, ecosystem services, multifunctionality, and land-use conflicts, as well as physical and perceived landscapes.

WSL will develop and synthesize approaches to:

• identify multifunctional interactions, synergies, and dependencies within and between landscapes and ecosystems; and 
• propose options to reduce trade-offs between the diverse landscape types and functions along the urban–rural gradient and from lowlands to high-alpine regions.