Knowledge Brokerage for Impact Assessment of Land Use Scenarios in Inner Mongolia, China: Extending and Testing the FoPIA Approach

While land serves numerous societal functions and contributes to sustainable development, it is often unclear how these functions are affected by political decisions and common drivers of land use change, such as economic development, climate change and demographic change. This study evaluates alternative land use scenarios in reference to a rural region of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (China), where various processes and decisions have historically triggered unsustainable development. The scientifically tested “Framework for Participatory Impact Assessment (FoPIA)” method is developed further to address specific features of the case study region, and its function as a knowledge-brokerage (KB) tool is evaluated. Three scenarios are developed and analysed in expert workshops. “Land intensification: Agriculture” and “Land intensification: Mining” scenarios are found to have mainly negative environmental and social effects and positive economic impacts, while the “Environmental conservation and tourism” scenario is found to more positively affect all three sustainability dimensions. Assessments of methodological phases show that the FoPIA primarily serves to establish the KB process and that the framework particularly benefits from early examinations of scientific results by policy makers.