Dr. Marion Jay

Marion Jay joined the group of Social-Ecological Interactions in Agricultural Systems in early 2023. She studied forestry and environmental sciences in France and Germany and holds a PhD from the forest and environmental policy lab of the Freiburg University. After working on urban forests, values and ecosystem services at the Freiburg University during and after her doctoral studies she joined adelphi, a Berlin based environmental policy consultancy. There she was involved in setting up the emerging biodiversity department which she co-led for almost 5 years. In research and consultancy projects for mainly European and German public authorities she worked on land use conflicts, EU nature conservation policies and their implementation on the ground.

Focusing on biodiversity in but also outside of protected areas, Marion works very closely with a broad range of stakeholders, especially in agricultural and forest landscapes as well as urban areas. She uses social science methodologies and transdisciplinary tools for analyzing social-ecological systems, surfacing conflicts, and identifying leverage points for biodiversity conservation. She works currently within RECONNECT, a DFG-funded research project on the social and ecological fragmentations of protected areas in multifunctionally used landscapes. Fragmentation, contestation, and disconnection can be institutional, ecological and social: in her work she will explore individual and group values of nature and their spatial expression using interviews and a PPGIS study (participatory mapping).

RECONNECT – Reconciling fragmented and contested landscapes

RECONNECT is a three-year project funded through the European Biodiversity Partnership “BiodivERsA+”. To help stopping the ongoing biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation the recent agreement on the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework as well as the European Biodiversity Strategy have set, among others, a clear target of 30% of protected terrestrial areas to be achieved by 2030. While this target has been welcomed by many, fragmentation, contestation, and disconnection between biodiversity conservation and other aspects of contemporary landscapes and societies still mostly prevail, leading to tensions between conservation, equity, and production goals, and to clashing governance priorities and land use practices.

In RECONNECT we interrogate social and ecological fragmentations of protected areas in multifunctional landscapes with the aim to identify key points for reconnection interventions. Our group combines governance and institutional analysis, biodiversity and ecosystem service modelling, participatory value mapping and geo-design stakeholder processes in protected areas in France, Germany, South Africa and Sweden. We work with an interdisciplinary team of research centres and universities such as the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the French CNRS lab of alpine ecology, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and local stakeholders.