Exploring the interdisciplinary potential of the Agenda2030—Interactions between five Danish societal demands for sustainable land use

Abstract

This article explores the potential of the SDG framework for interdisciplinary research. The aim is to illustrate the process of creating a shared platform of operation by the clarifying the positive and negative interactions between societal demands for land use on a national and local level. The research question is answered by making use of the systemic approach introduced by Niklas Luhmann including his arguments about autopoietic communication systems reproducing themselves. An interdisciplinary research group is firstly applying the SDG framework to the demands for sustainable land use by activating the land consolidation in Denmark. By doing so a ‘national framework’ anchored in the SDG framework is created. Secondly, the national framework is applied to a multifunctional land consolidation project in a Danish case area. The findings from the mapping of interactions between societal demands on a concrete case area revealed that some indicators and societal demands are more prone to conflicts than others but also on the local level there may be variations. Thus, a localised and contextualised SDG framework has shown useful insight for future projects on sustainable land use including land consolidation projects. The paper concludes that the SDG framework may be used for facilitating interdisciplinary research, however there is also a need for guidelines and examples on how to integrate the framework in academia. The paper offers a suggestion for integrating the Agenda2030 and the SDG framework in projects about sustainable land use.