1 Introduction

Research and practice in sustainability transformations often manifest diverging ideas on the nature and origin of sustainability problem(s), their solutions and the division of roles and responsibilities to address these problems. This diversity is underpinned by a plurality of values, forms of knowledge and worldviews (Lang et al., 2012; Pohl & Hadorn, 2008; Wickson et al., 2006). Moreover, these diverging ideas are dynamic, both in interaction with each other and with the sustainability challenges they are addressing (Cuppen, 2018). In the field of (predominantly European) sustainability transformations, some scholars have therefore argued that this plurality of views and ways of knowing ought to be embraced, to be able to do justice to the complexity and emergent character of sustainability challenges (Caniglia et al., 2021; Norström et al., 2020). Transdisciplinary research (TDR) aims to build on this recognition, by transcending the boundaries of academia—which are seen as exclusionary to non-academic actors and their knowledges. TDR therefore commonly takes the shape of a collaboration between a range of relevant actors and can be conducted in different places, both in and outside academic settings (Pohl, 2008; Pohl & Hadorn, 2007).

Providing room for these diverse ideas and bringing them into conversation has proven challenging. It has been argued that policy and research contexts may often be oriented towards the identification of a single problem and corresponding solution, thereby reducing the space for a range of actors’ diverse ways of articulating and resolving it (e.g. De Hoop & Arora, 2021). Similarly, Cuppen (2018) has highlighted how policy and institutions are often unable to continuously provide space to actors’ emergent and dynamic views, again reducing the space for their different ways of articulating and resolving a particular problem. Crucially, scholars in the field of TDR increasingly argue that TDR, too, is frequently conceptualized—even idealized—as a process of integrating diversity into a single problem and solution (Klenk & Meehan, 2015). Such integration takes place during various research stages, including problem framing, stakeholder inclusion and drawing conclusions (Jacobi et al., 2020; Lang et al., 2012; Polk, 2015). Crucially, focusing on integration conceals frictions and paradoxes that are inherent in engaging with diverse and sometimes irreconcilable aims and ways of doing and knowing (Klenk & Meehan, 2015; Wickson et al., 2006). Since such concealment allows dominant norms and values to remain unchallenged, this predominantly tends to favour established interests and actors (Kok et al., 2021; Turnhout et al., 2020).

Second, attempts to address sustainability challenges often rely heavily on cognitive forms of knowledge. A more explicit focus on embodied forms of knowledge—knowledge that emerges through sensory experiences and which informs actions and decisions in a non-cognitive manner—may help to understand stakeholders’ actions and worldviews in different ways. Such approaches may allow, for example, for understanding the social dimension of the problem and questioning of accepted norms, rules, policies and practices (Baron, 2020; Bentz et al., 2022; Ingold & Kurttila, 2000; Leichenko & O’Brien, 2020; Pohl et al., 2021). What is important here is that each of these knowledges—including ‘cognitive’ or ‘scientific’ knowledges—may be considered partial, specific and situated, only to be seen from a particular vantage point (see also Haraway, 1988; Harding, 1991). Hence, we argue that it is pertinent to render explicit not only which and whose knowledges are involved in TDR, but also how these are entangled with specific material and social sites.

TDR has long been concerned with developing tools and research methods to bring together diverse forms of knowing and valuing. Yet, the challenges outlined above mean that it is important to improve these tools and methods to foreground and build on, rather than erase, diversity—not only with regard to whose voices are included in the process but particularly in relation to how those voices get to express themselves and are heard. In this chapter, we therefore explore a relatively unknown methodology, a transdisciplinary walkshop, and reflect on ways in which it may allow diversity to become explicit and to engage with it. A transdisciplinary walkshop combines the act of walking and being at the site where there is a sustainability challenge with a workshop in which multiple stakeholders, including researchers, participate. The method offers the potential to reduce hierarchical relations (Anderson, 2004; Jones et al., 2008; Kinney, 2017; Wickson et al., 2015) among participants and researchers. Moreover, a walkshop may elicit discussions inspired by the material environment, including sights, smells or sounds, which offer data that a room-based setting could not. This may allow for a deeper understanding of how the stakeholders respond not only cognitively to the landscape, but also how they are and experience it (Döring & Ratter, 2021). In their sharing of experiences with a walkshop for discussing the ethics of science and technology, Wickson et al. argue that the hiking together, being together for a prolonged amount of time and using the landscape as a prompt for conversation may elicit discussions in which critique can be considered illuminating rather than threatening (Wickson et al., 2015). However, how that illumination occurs exactly—i.e. how diverse perspectives come to the fore—and how this contributes to (sustainable change) remains obscure.

Based on these potential strengths we (the authors) developed our version of the walkshop with the deliberate aim of rendering explicit both diversity in knowing and valuing and the situated emergence of knowledge. In this chapter, we describe this walkshop and reflect the way and extent to which this aim materialized. We organized this walkshop to foster conversations with and between diverse actors with an interest in fire risk-reduction in landscapes under nature management in the Netherlands. These areas are increasingly at risk of uncontrollable fires in the context of climate change and current land- and water-management practices. Such uncontrollable fires have severe consequences for livelihoods, animal life, human health, biodiversity and cultural heritage (De Hoop et al., 2022). This is a rather new problem in the Netherlands, with its moderate northwest European climate. Recent uncontrollable fires, such as the Peel and Meinweg fires in the spring of 2020, led various stakeholders to realize that they are unprepared to handle such fires. These stakeholders—which include various levels of government, land managers and firefighting organizations—are currently attempting to organize themselves and each other around the issue of landscape fire prevention and mitigation. In this context, diversity takes various forms: for example, each of the stakeholders values fires and landscapes under nature management in their own way. Moreover, the increasing risk of uncontrollable fires challenges existing ideas about the appearance, maintenance and indigenous/typical vegetation of a particular landscape.

This issue is also new to Dutch academic institutions, which have historically been concerned mainly with ‘wildfires’ in regions of the world that have long been at such risk (such as countries in the Mediterranean basin, California or Australia). The increasing risk of uncontrollable fires occurring in Dutch landscapes under nature management has only recently attracted academics’ attention. The walkshop we discuss here was part of a pioneering inter- and transdisciplinary research project on this topic, in which scholars in earth sciences, humanities, science and society studies and environmental sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam collaborated with these stakeholders.

First we turn to research in the field of geography look at ways of knowing and valuing landscapes, and go on to explore the literature on how walking may make visible the relationships between landscapes and human beings, and may also reshape relationships between researchers and participants. Third, we describe how we developed our transdisciplinary walkshop for the particular case outlined above. Finally, we answer the question that this chapter deals with, namely: how may a transdisciplinary walkshop make landscape–human interactions visible and allow for meaningful engagements with diverse ways of knowing and doing and its potential for transdisciplinary research.

2 Theoretical Foundations

This chapter draws on two main bodies of conceptual work. First, we explore more-than-representational approaches and relational approaches to landscapes, which inform both our design of the workshop discussed in this chapter and our analysis of the knowledges that emerged from conducting this walkshop in practice. Second, we review existing literature on walking as an important way in which humans interact with the landscape and that, consequently, walking research methodologies emerged. We also discuss, here, how walking research methodologies may be valuable in the light of transdisciplinary research approaches specifically, given the inherent changing relations between researchers and ‘participants’ that are central to such approaches.

2.1 Living and Walking the Landscape

Geographers have long paid attention to the relations between people’s embodied everyday experiences and the socio-material places in which they live (Relph, 1976; Tschakert et al., 2013; Tuan, 1977). In this context, landscapes are seen as integral to human lives, both contributing to and a product of human existence. Experiences in the landscape, and ideas and images about it, are formed through being in the landscape and simultaneously shape it as people determine what is worth preserving or what needs to be changed.

We use the term ‘landscape’ to refer to physical territories, to forms of governing regions, as well as to symbolic and representational meanings, for example in the form of landscape painting (Olwig, 2019). As any type of representation can be considered as a deliberate act or practice, the materiality and representations of landscapes may be strongly intertwined (Seamon, 2018). Such an approach engages with discourses, representations and ideas about landscapes in relation to the bodily, sensory and emotional experiences of them (Lorimer, 2005). Stressing this intertwined nature are so-called more-than-representational and relational approaches to landscapes.

More-than representational and relational approaches to landscape have the advantage that they can bring the ‘being in the landscape’, with all its affective, social and relational aspects, together with representational ways of researching landscapes based on analysing them as ‘text’, using sources like maps, images, and written text. They allow researchers to grasp how people make sense of and understand the world around them, include body–landscape relationships, in their analysis, and serve to include the role of embodiment, performance and practice in the ways subjectivity is shaped (Harrison, 2000; Macpherson, 2010; Wylie, 2002). More-than-representational approaches enable researchers to come to understand the landscape as a ‘lifeworld’: an understanding of the inhabitants’ social practices and physical activities that co-constitute a landscape’s cultural and natural aspects (Döring & Ratter, 2021).

How might landscape be relevant to studying sustainability challenges? In the broader field of research on climate change geographers started to draw attention to how changes in the climate affect embodied engagements with place and landscapes. For instance, Brace and Geoghegan (2011) focus on landscape to understand how climate change may be both an ‘intellectual artifact and an embodied and experiential process’ (p. 296). Their approach, they argue, makes visible how those who live and work in the landscape feel and sense climatic changes in their everyday life and considers local knowledge to be a valuable means to make sense of climate change where scientific ‘facts’ (original quotation marks, p. 295) fail to inspire action. In the UK, Köpsel and colleagues analysed the relations between people and place in the face of climate change and distinguished between four different narratives among those responsible for landscape management about what this landscape—in this case Cornwall—means and constitutes. Each narrative implies different directions for how the Cornish landscape ought to be managed and adapted in the face of climate change. Although the authors emphasized the differences between the narratives, they also described how all actors—regardless of the narrative they construct—express feeling attracted to the visual appearance of the Cornish landscape, feeling strongly connected to Cornwall as a place and considering its landscape paramount to the regional identity. As such, they conclude, constructive dialogue on landscape management should make use of this love for the landscape (Köpsel et al., 2017). In Denmark, Nina Baron studied controversies about dyke building and maintenance in the face of climate change. She discusses how these controversies are about much more than finding the ‘right’ solution based on proper calculations and technical solutions—rather, they are about people’s diverse valuations of the landscape and embodied knowledges in relation to the dyke (Baron, 2020). More-than-representational approaches thus allow researchers to bring abstract and cognitive ideas about landscapes together with immediate experiences of and emotions related to landscapes under (climate) transformation. These landscapes in themselves both evoke and are affected by these ideas and effects.

As such, we, too, use a more-than-representational approach to landscape to create space for understanding landscapes and humans as inextricably linked and to create space for stakeholders’ diverse experiences in and understandings of the landscape. We acknowledge that the sustainability challenge of fire risk-reduction in the Veluwe is both a cognitive process and an embodied and experiential process (in the words of Brace and Geoghegan). Especially when scientific facts cannot inspire action (given the scientific uncertainties in this case and is considered inherent to sustainability challenges) the relations between people and the landscapes they live in and move through may produce a narrative about what aspects are important in the landscape and deserve preservation or require changing. For each actor, this can be a different narrative. In the next section we look at walking research methodologies as a way to study such relations and narratives.

2.2 On Walking Research Methodologies

A specific form of perceiving and living the landscape is through walking. In European history, the activity of walking came to be characterized as a form of ‘modern corporeal reflexivity’ during the Romantic period (Edensor, 2000, p. 82). This means that walking may allow one to become reflexively aware of one’s body, senses and self. Walking reveals ‘distinctive ways in which we express ourselves physically, simultaneously performing and transmitting meaning while sensually apprehending ‘nature’ and sustaining wider ideologies about nature and the role of the body in nature’ (Edensor, 2000, p. 82). The pattern of how humans walk in a given space creates place-specific ‘place ballets’. Such ‘place ballets’ can be understood as local knowledge, shaped throughout time: people decide (not necessarily (fully) consciously) which landscapes are particularly suitable for walking and create signs and paths within them (Seamon, 1980, cited in Buttimer & Seamon, 2015). Our case-study area, for example, the Veluwe, is an intensely used leisure area, where walking for pleasure has shaped and reshaped the landscape for several centuries (Neefjes, 2018).

We thus consider landscapes and humans as constantly shaping and being shaped by one another. The practice of walking offers dynamic interpretations of both. Walking interviews and methods have often been used to study people’s responses to the landscape. In such studies the landscape is considered to be a ‘background’ or scenery rather than interacting with the human beings who live with them (e.g. Adevi & Grahn, 2012, cited in Macpherson, 2016). In contrast, in more-than-representational and relational approaches to landscape, walking research methods have been used to study interactions with the landscape, the dynamic and constant becoming of bodies, minds and landscapes (Döring & Ratter, 2021). Walking, while talking about the landscape, can generate ‘thick data of emplaced interactions’—data that is inspired by the context in which this takes place (Döring & Ratter, 2021, p. 320). For example, Döring and Ratter show how smells and sounds become part of their data through their walking interviews. Hence, a walkshop may be used as a research tool to not only gather data on cognitive experiences of the landscape, but also sensory data which may reveal how people experience the landscape in non-cognitive ways.

Particularly relevant for TDR is that walking research methods can also be a means to reshape relationships among participants, including researchers and non-academic actors. These methods may allow for more spontaneous conversation and facilitate interaction and also afford participants a greater degree of control, by placing the emphasis on particular locations, or moving to others. Walking methodologies are thus also seen to help reduce power differentials, allowing participants to speak more freely and create a more even relationship between researchers and participants (Anderson, 2004; Jones et al., 2008; Kinney, 2017). Accordingly, a walkshop may also create a more even relationship among participants when there is distance to political environments and when they are physically away from their respective organizations. However, we acknowledge that walking interviews—like all research methods—require careful consideration and selection as a research method as the potential advantages may very much depend on who the participants are or what are the political tensions: for instance, in particular landscapes such political tensions may also be more prominent than in a room-based interview.

Thus, we explored relations between landscapes and humans, as understanding this relation is pertinent to comprehending how stakeholders know and value landscapes that are prone to fire management and how differences may arise. We furthermore explored walking research methodologies as valuable in understanding these relationships. In the following sections, we explore how these methodologies can contribute to the challenges in TDR that we outlined in the introduction: making diversity in knowing and valuing the landscape explicit and engaging with this. First, however, we turn to our methodology.

3 Methodology: Developing and Analysing a Transdisciplinary Walkshop

Here, we elaborate on how we used walking as a research method and tool to develop our walkshop. Moving through and experiencing the landscape can allow stakeholders to use and refer to it in their conversations and discussions (Anderson, 2004; Jones et al., 2008; Kinney, 2017; Wickson et al., 2015). This may contribute, as argued above, to bringing out and understanding how actors variously think about and live in/with the landscape, the different problems they encounter and their diverse views on ways of addressing these problems. A transdisciplinary walkshop aims to bring social and scientific practice together and seeks to co-create knowledges that are relevant to the issues they face, while also reflecting on which and whose interests are served in doing so.

The aim of our walkshop emerged from our observations from interviews we had conducted with nine stakeholders of a particular landscape under nature conservation in the Netherlands, namely the Veluwe area. Based on these interviews, we learned that stakeholders had various needs in order to develop more effective tools and measures for fire prevention, which were: (a) revaluation of landscapes and fire in the context of climate change and increasing risks of uncontrollable fires; (b) new, more collaborative and place-based modes of governance; and c) inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge situated within the area’s specific characteristics (see also De Hoop et al., 2022). With our walkshop, we sought to contribute to these three needs by bringing stakeholders and researchers together to discuss fire risk-reduction strategies within the landscape, explore possibilities for collaboration and identify knowledge questions.

The design of the walkshop was as follows. First, we welcomed the participants with a lunch at our main venue of the Radio Kootwijk historic building, giving all of us a chance to get to know each other. This, we argue, is relevant to create a more even relationship between researchers and participants, and among participants (Anderson, 2004; Jones et al., 2008). Second, we introduced ourselves and gave a brief overview of the scientific context in which our research took place, by referring to predicted fire risks in research on climate change and current policy-relevant research and research reports (Jones et al., 2022; UNEP, 2022). We also highlighted the findings from our interviews (De Hoop et al., 2022). Third, we split up into three groups (which we determined in advance, to create heterogeneous groups of stakeholders and knowledge from the area) and walked to three specific sites by which we aimed to incite a discussion towards a specific topic, while creating space for stakeholders’ own interpretations and understandings of the landscape.

Our theoretical foundations made that we paid in particular attention to the site of the walkshop and the specific locations in which we wanted to facilitate discussions. We chose the Veluwe area and the area around Radio Kootwijk for its suitability for walking, measures already taken, the history of the area (see also De Hoop et al., 2022; Neefjes, 2018) and the practical option to have a lunch location in the building of Radio Kootwijk. To choose sites for conversation, we visited the area with the authors upfront to explore the area. We identified one location as an interesting site for conversation as it provided a good view of the Radio Kootwijk building, which we used as a steppingstone to (try to) instigate a conversation on the history of the area and the desirable future in this landscape given the changing conditions. With this, we aimed to elucidate how human–landscape interactions are informed by perceptions of the past and how this affects what is experienced and valued in the landscape today (which, in turn, affects desirable futures). The second location we chose marked a relatively harsh transition between heathlands and forest, allowing us to provoke a discussion on why such a transition is (not) important and for whom—given various values of biodiversity, cultural value and fire prevention. The third location we chose was a road along which there are some homes and where fire-prevention measures had visibly been taken (felling of conifers and growing deciduous trees), which prompted us to ask why these measures had been taken and what else could or ought to be done to reduce fire risks—here, or elsewhere in the area—and how such measures would relate to each other. Lastly, after the walk and all three groups had covered all three locations, we headed back to the main venue and briefly discussed what stakeholders had taken away from these discussions and what would be the next steps for policy and research.

Our previous interviewees were the first to be invited to the walkshop and were also asked to invite their colleagues. Through this, several additional organizations were reached, such as the relatively new Working Group Fire Prevention (organized by the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality) and the Interprovincial Council (the collaborative organization of the 12 Dutch provinces). In total, the walkshop consists of 20 participants, including firefighting organizations, policymakers, land managers and researchers (see Table 9.1).

Table 9.1 Overview of the walkshop participants
Full size table

Given to the dynamic character of the walkshop we chose not to rely on audio-devices to record our discussions. Instead, the discussions during the walkshop—including those held in break-out groups while walking—were led and followed by at least two researchers actively participating in the discussion and another researcher taking field notes. These notes were written up more extensively within 24 hours (for memory purposes) and edited and complemented by the other researchers who were in the discussions. There were several iterations by all participating researchers within the same week to ensure we ended up with a comprehensive and detailed account. The notes covered what was said as well as the visual and auditory cues that prompted these comments. Photos were also taken at spots that sparked particular interest, to have visual data of what had prompted it. As such, we were able to gather ‘thick data’ in which the interactions and discussions were related to the landscape and place in which they were situated in (Döring & Ratter, 2021). The data was analysed in relation to how the participants perceived the walkshop, how it made visible the diversity in knowing and valuing the landscape, and how being in the landscape and participating in the walkshop allowed for engaging with this diversity. The analysis was conducted iteratively by the two first authors who checked each other’s interpretations.

4 Transdisciplinary Walkshop in Practice

In this section we analyse the discussions in our transdisciplinary walkshop as to answer our research question: we answer the question that this chapter deals with, namely: how may a walkshop make landscape–human interactions visible and allow for meaningful engagements with diverse ways of knowing and doing and its potential for transdisciplinary research? As such, we evaluate how the walkshop contributed to engaging with diverse ways of knowing. We first provide a brief overview of the participants’ gathering at the start of the walkshop and highlight some interactions that illustrate the scene and the mood of the afternoon.

4.1 Getting to Know Each Other in the Landscape

As we mentioned earlier, the participants were welcomed with a simple lunch. During this informal start, many participants expressed their appreciation that the event was dedicated to fire prevention because they felt this issue needed more widespread attention. They also particularly welcomed the participation of so many people with such diverse institutional affiliations: the number of participants seemed to underline the importance of the issue and their diversity was an opportunity to exchange thoughts with people with whom they did not regularly converse. Some participants, especially those who came from outside the Veluwe area, said that it was a relief to talk to other people about this issue, as they were sometimes the only one in their area or organization working on fire prevention. During and after the workshop, participants particularly valued the ‘ability to get to know each other’—to get to know stakeholders from other organizations, and in different positions (such as people in executive positions and in more strategic, managerial positions). Participants felt that this ‘getting to know each other’ was crucial as they thought that although many stakeholders might have heard of each other and may know names of who works where, language and priorities were seen to differ enormously between organizations and most interactions between stakeholders had to date been relatively brief—and online during COVID-19. For example, after the walkshop one firefighter said he had learned a lot about land managers’ views of the landscape and their considerations regarding land management. Asking how he experienced the workshop, a firefighter who coordinated fire-prevention measures smiled as he explained that ‘this afternoon was exactly what was needed for everyone to get closer—physically and experientially—together’. From this, we understand that the walkshop thus helped to facilitate interactions among stakeholders, indeed corresponding to literature on walking research methodologies (Anderson, 2004; Jones et al., 2008; Kinney, 2017).

As we arrived at the venue the anxiety among the firefighters was palpable. As one of them arrived, he almost immediately explained to us that the coming weekend was going to be ‘tense’ owing to the dry weather and the expected high winds. Although the firefighters acknowledged not minding an occasional fire in nature areas, this weekend would present difficult conditions if there was a fire and they had therefore thoroughly prepared their materials and equipment. The tension here was not only felt at the start, but was brought up repeatedly throughout the discussions: on several occasions, the firefighters referred to the weather forecasts for the coming weekend. This shows how a walkshop can help to allow for spontaneous conversation and incite conversation topics that are at the forefront of stakeholders’ minds but not of researchers’ (see also Wickson et al., 2015).

At the same time, the firefighters emphasized that the participants in the walkshop were also apprehensive about potentially uncontrollable fires—especially people who were already working on the issue—and found it important that they were invited and made the effort to participate. Such consensus contrasted with their daily discussions as political and social fears about uncontrollable fires was generally limited to moments such as these—where heat, drought and high winds coincide. Once these weather conditions recede, several walkshop participants said that attention dropped off regarding the potential problems of fires in nature areas. This was considered problematic because it means that there is less attention paid to structural and long-term measures, such as re-designing (parts of) the landscape or training in how to deal with fires in nature areas.

4.2 Making Diverse Ways in ‘Knowing and Valuing the Landscape’ Visible

During the walkshop, stakeholders interacted with the landscape for instance by taking particular spots as a prompt for conversation or listening to the sounds in the landscape. As different stakeholders took different cues from the landscape and constructed a different narrative about what is important, there, and why, we consider this as diverse ways of knowing and valuing the landscape coming to the fore. We distinguished affective, operational and policy-based ways of understanding and valuing the landscape.

The affective aspect was illustrated in the walkshop approach as participants were able to point out particular trees (e.g. the tree in Fig. 9.1). This happened, for example, in discussions on what type of trees could or should be felled, and for what purposes. In this context, land managers (and a firefighter who was being trained in nature conservation and one who was particularly attached to the area) argued that ‘characteristic’ pines were not to be felled. They referred to pines that are older and thought to be well-proportioned, for instance with branched trunks or with serpentine-shaped branches. Other trees, for instance oaks, could also be characteristic according to these participants, but the pines were considered more prominent in this area. The way participants introduced these characteristic pines allowed us to see their particular values: what they considered beautiful and authentic in the landscape—and how older trees came to be deemed more valuable. In addition, the focus on these tree types and the value they constituted for the landscape was a topic that we had not expected to feature so prominently in the context of fire prevention. Indeed, the locations at which we stopped for group discussions during the walkshop were not chosen to focus on these trees, nor did we steer the conversations in this direction.

Fig. 9.1
A photograph of a pine tree with a thick trunk and branches, surrounded by dry grass and shrubs, with a sunny sky in the background.

A ‘characteristic pine’, as indicated by one of the participants. Photo was taken by one of the authors upon this prompt

Full size image

Another example of affective understanding and valuation of the landscape became visible when one of the participants, walking from location B to the main venue, spoke about how he preferred the heathlands here to others in the vicinity. He argued that the heathlands in this particular area are ‘extremely beneficial’ for biodiversity as they were relatively varied, with some trees and sand between the heath. Being in the landscape, it was possible to sense this biodiversity, according to this participant: ‘just listen to the sound of all these birds, you don’t hear that in all places’. Moreover, this participant maintained that the variation in vegetation plus the sand was also beneficial in preventing fires, as fires slow down on sand and may also do so when there are also vegetation types with a higher moisture content than heath. In contrast, he felt less warmly about the heathlands in the vicinity, which have a high density of similar-aged heath but with no other vegetation. Such heathlands are less beneficial for biodiversity or fire prevention, he argued, but because visitors find it attractive when all the plants flower at the same time he referred to them as ‘heathlands for tourists’.

Operational ways of knowing and valuing the landscape were made clear when the conversation revolved around the dryness of the vegetation. When one of the researchers provoked a discussion about a non-native tree species in the area (the Prunus serotina or black cherry) and whether it would be better appreciated if it had the potential to reduce fire risk, one of the firefighters promptly pulled a moisture-content meter out of his pocket and started measuring the plant’s moisture content. Touching the plant, he also remarked on its other characteristics, such as the plumpness of the leaves. Land managers and firefighters both responded that the moisture content is not always important: ‘everything burns’ if the weather conditions are ‘right’. Along this line, participants argued that many trees are not in leaf in the spring—making this a vulnerable period in this area. Moreover, the participants who experienced the Peel fires in 2020 shared what they witnessed during the fire-suppression efforts: the fire brigades encountered situations where fires spread directly over damp and wet areas, even a canal. For them, this also illustrated that moisture levels on the ground at that time were not always relevant in preventing fire. The discussion on dry vegetation further prompted land managers to discuss their operational concerns about how (often) to water new vegetation that could—in the long run—contribute to fire risk-reduction and their considerations about (not) felling trees. For example, they argued that felling certain trees may help to reduce the risk of fires as it reduces the possibility for fire to spread uncontrollably, but that doing so also potentially increases other vegetation’s exposure to the sun, thus rendering the area more vulnerable to droughts and fires simultaneously. This discussion illustrates how the same ‘source’ of information (vegetation dryness) generates diverse reactions (from immediately measuring moisture content to thinking about land management) and expectations of what should be done.

Lastly, the discussion highlighted how policy, in this case European policy, may inform some understandings and valuations of the landscape. For instance, on arriving at one of the locations, one participant immediately categorized the heathlands in their particular Natura 2000 type. From this, they inferred that the priority in this area was to ‘keep the area open and remove trees’. However, at other points in the discussion some participants referred to the Climate Agreement as applicable to the entire area, which is part of the Dutch climate-mitigation policy and requires the total tree cover in the Netherlands to increase by 10% by 2030. From this, it was assumed that felling trees should be avoided if possible. During the discussions, participants said that although these policies seem restrictive in terms of what is possible for fire-prevention measures, they are sufficiently flexible to allow for such measures, provided that they are mainly on an ad-hoc basis, as there is as yet no policy that integrates these frameworks to ensure that there are structural agreements regarding fire prevention and between different parties such as the fire departments and land managers, and that these are not structurally financed.

In sum, in this section we distinguished various ways of understanding the landscape: affective (e.g. indicating which trees are worth preserving because of their appearance), operational (e.g. how drought is observed and possibly considered relevant to fire prevention) and those based on policy frameworks (e.g. categorizations of Nature 2000 nature types). A more-than-representational or relational approach to landscape helps to distinguish between these various forms of understanding the landscape as it puts the human–landscape interactions centre stage and takes seriously the diverse interactions and resulting understandings. By making visible how stakeholders look at the landscape and where they direct their attention to, we enhance our understanding of what these stakeholders find important and how it shapes their perception of what is worth preserving or what needs to be changed (Tschakert et al., 2013). In addition, our findings underscore that landscapes can be both an ‘intellectual artefact’, such as a Nature 2000 classification, as well as an experiential process in which the sound of birds and the specific aesthetics of particular trees are experienced and appreciated (see also Brace & Geoghegan, 2011).

4.3 Engaging with Diverse Ways of Knowing and Valuing the Landscape

In this section we analyse what the walkshop means for how participants engaged with each other’s diverse ways of knowing and valuing the landscape. A more-than-representational or relational approach to landscape may draw the attention of researchers to the relations between humans and landscapes and create space for stakeholders’ diverse understandings of the landscape, a transdisciplinary walkshop goes a step further and aims to foster such an understanding among stakeholders as to engage explicitly with diversity, which is imperative to addressing sustainability challenges (see Sect. 3.1). We analyse our findings, here, after which we discuss what our contribution in the wider literature (Sect. 3.5).

First, some stakeholders were inclined to situate distinct measures in their context and the broader landscape. For instance, when arriving at locations A and B we spoke about the transitions between forest and heathlands, which participants generally described as being as quite harsh in this area. One participant explicitly interpreted this discussion as an illustration of how biodiversity priorities are seen to clash with fire prevention: relatively harsh transitions are likely to prevent the more dangerous tree canopy fires but are less biodiverse. Another participant, one of the land managers, nuanced this by remarking that this does not have to be the case. He believed that it is possible to make gradual transitions when land managers and fire brigades examine the area well and take measures to prevent wildfires in other ways, such as vegetation management in the forest as opposed to in the transition zone, or measures to improve accessibility for fire brigades. At location C, we spoke about the risks of fires for the local residents and the adjacent village. Here, researchers started the discussion by asking what residents can or should do to protect their homes from fires, for instance, whether they should ensure that the vegetation in their gardens and around their houses is safe. Some participants quickly situated this question in the wider area, by considering the types and heights of trees in the adjacent forest, but also possible escape routes that the residents could use.

Second, engagement with diversity can also be achieved by situating current practices and values in a historical (and future) context, to show the relative position of current norms and values as changing throughout time. Opening a conversation about the eventual appearance of the landscape in the context of a changing climate and increasing fire risks may also create the space to make more radical changes in the landscape to prevent (uncontrollable) fires. However, during our walkshop we observed that there was relatively little space to envisage—or express a desire for—the landscape here to look any different in the future. For instance, at various points in the discussion participants said that it was not possible to reduce the total amount of forests in view of the Dutch Climate Agreement. Although participants from provinces and land managers argued this means that forests may ‘move’ (i.e. that trees can be uprooted and planted elsewhere, to accommodate both fire-prevention measures and the Climate Agreement), they admitted that—as the Netherlands is considered ‘full’ and most areas have designated functions—in practice it is easier to maintain the area as it is. Moreover, at location B we (the researchers contributing to the discussions) shared some history about how the landscape had been formed over several centuries. After this, we tried to provoke a discussion about which historic practices of land management are deemed valuable, how these still constitute the landscape, and how we would like this to be in the future given the context of climate change. However, there was little space for this conversation. Land managers did not explicitly acknowledge that particular time periods are taken as the current standard—for instance, how pine trees are seen as typical for the Veluwe whereas most were only planted in the 1800s for the purpose of constructing mines. One land manager said that in an adjacent area they aim to restore sandy dunes, which are, comparably, parts of the landscape that were established only from the 1850s. In sum, we experienced that it was difficult to open up the conversation about what the landscape should look like under changing circumstances such as a changing climate and increased fire risks—and open up to diversity—as particular historical timeframes and current policy frameworks appear to be the leading norms for current land-management practices.

Lastly, as shown in many of the above examples, participants spoke in diverse ways about which fire-prevention measures were valuable and in what setting. Although this diversity was acknowledged and deemed important in the walkshop discussions, there appeared to be little space to engage with it in practice. This tension was particularly evident at locations B and C. Here, the discussion was focused on the transition of particular areas from being dominated by pine trees to deciduous trees (as both locations had such areas). Participants felt that using deciduous trees as a fire-prevention measure was a good practice in general (the rationale is that as leaves and stems of deciduous trees contain more moisture than pine trees, they lower the temperature of a passing fire). Some of the participants with greater knowledge of fire and vegetation voiced concerns regarding the effectiveness of the measure: they pointed out that deciduous trees did were still bare in the spring, which means they do not contain much moisture. They called for more situated analysis of the effectiveness of various measures in an area, including felling trees altogether to create fire breaks. In this walkshop, some participants expressed these concerns. However, in deciding which fire-prevention measures to take, participants argued that there is less space for this as felling trees is not considered a legitimate option given the Dutch Climate Agreement. Notably, in these discussions the Agreement was either challenged due to its limiting appropriate fire measures, or was seen as a given that could not be altered—at least not by this group at this moment.

5 Conclusion: The Walkshop for Explicating and Engaging with Diversities

In this section, we draw conclusions with regard to our research question: how may a walkshop make landscape–human interactions visible and allow for meaningful engagements with diverse ways of knowing and doing and its potential for transdisciplinary research? Before doing so, first, we discuss how a more-than-representational or relational approach to landscape helped us in the design and analysis of our walkshop.

As we argued in the introduction, for us, engaging with diverse ways of doing and knowing and including various forms of knowledge is imperative to understanding and addressing sustainability challenges. We chose a more-than-representational or relational approach to landscapes (Lorimer, 2005; Seamon, 2018) as such an approach considers the landscape not as something that ‘is’ but as something that is constructed through experiences and practices allows for an understanding of the landscape as being lived differently by different stakeholders. Indeed, this approach has previously been used by researchers to allow for an understanding of the landscape as being lived differently by different stakeholders (Baron, 2020; Brace & Geoghegan, 2011; Döring & Ratter, 2021; Köpsel et al., 2017). We, too, found this approach valuable as it allowed us as researchers to engage with diverse ways of doing and knowing and include various forms of knowledge: it allowed us to spark and facilitate discussions in which we aimed to create space for diverse understandings of the landscape, it allowed us to generate data that goes beyond cognitive reasonings but also include affective forms of knowledge and previous experiences in the landscape, and it allowed us to analyse the walkshop and making space for diverse knowledges in this chapter. Although this may not be new for (the aforementioned) researchers in sustainability challenges, walking research methodologies remain relatively uncommon, hence, we find it important to share our positive experiences.

What is new, however, is specifically designing a transdisciplinary walkshop with the aim for sustainability transformation (cf. Döring & Ratter, 2021; Wickson et al., 2015). In the introduction we argued that, ideally, a transdisciplinary walkshop would advance such an understanding among stakeholders, to allow them to place their own values and ways of knowing and doing alongside each other’s, in the context of this place and in its historical context. We conclude by reflecting on how the transdisciplinary walkshop allowed enabled this among stakeholders and explore its potential for transformation.

We have shown that our walkshop made visible and explicit how different stakeholders perceive and experience the landscape: affecting, operational and policy-based understandings. We also found three ways in which stakeholders attempted to engage with each other’s diverse understandings. First, stakeholders situated measures (and trade-offs) in a wider context by looking at adjacent areas, as to not focus on which value is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in a specific location but looking at how it adds up in the landscape overall. Second, although we experienced as difficult to foster reflection hereon among stakeholders, a way to engage with diversity is to recognize that most values and understandings of the landscapes are rooted in a particular understanding of what the landscape ‘is’ and how it ‘should be’, which depends strongly on the historical context one looks at. Acknowledging the various histories and ‘original’ landscape elements we find therein makes space for acknowledging that diverse landscape understandings continue to remain (see also Egberts, 2017). Third, we found that stakeholders engaged with diversity and plural possibilities, essentially opening the conversation about the effectiveness of fire-prevention measures by considering under what conditions they would be effective (for instance weather conditions or time of year).

What is more, participants witnessed and experienced what sort of knowledge other stakeholders used to make their arguments and tell their stories about the landscape, for instance when participants measured the moisture content of leaves, indicated particular types of trees or shared specific experiences of something they encountered in the field of fire prevention. Such interactions allowed for an understanding not only of each other’s viewpoint, but also of the underlying rationales. This brings about a form of legitimizing other’s viewpoints and their reasons for action (see also Habermas, 1985; Wickson et al., 2015). This suggests that the walkshop may be a relevant research method for other TDR projects for transformation, which aim to instigate new forms for participants and researchers to understand others’ viewpoints.

Situated knowledge came to the fore when stakeholders considered specific fire-prevention measures mainly in relation to other measures, the overall landscape or potential weather conditions. Experiencing the situatedness of fire risks and fire-prevention measures in the landscape and in the context may affect how stakeholders perceive what measures are deemed appropriate (Leino & Peltomaa, 2012). This was shown, for instance, when stakeholders explained how transitions between heathlands and forests may be less harsh in order to promote biodiversity if other measures in other areas are taken. Or, how stakeholders expressed concerns regarding the effectiveness of planting deciduous trees as a fire-prevention measure, given that in the vulnerable springtime they do not yet contain sufficient moisture to retard fires.

However, merely bringing diversity and its situatedness to the fore is not the same as productively engaging with diversity regarding (inclusive) transformation. As we argued in the introduction, diversity in TDR has the potential to challenge dominant norms and values regarding transformation (see also Kok et al., 2021; Turnhout et al., 2020). In the walkshop, we saw that some dominant norms—such as the policy framework the Dutch Climate Agreement—were challenged, even though it is currently a given with which our participants have to work.

Engaging with diversity may also entail irreconcilable aims and ways of knowing and doing (Klenk & Meehan, 2015; Wickson et al., 2006). In our walkshop however, we did not witness such irreconcilability, nor did we see much friction between the participants’ ways of knowing and doing. All participants made the effort to acknowledge the importance of others’ priorities, and of when some of their priorities were detrimental to others (for instance, when fire-prevention measures were detrimental to biodiversity). At times, solutions were suggested in such cases, for instance when one participant argued that a soft gradient would be possible if fire-prevention measures were taken elsewhere in the area. Here, we see how there was empathy regarding each other’s viewpoints. Crucially, it is argued that this is crucial to bring about collective action and transformative change (Habermas, 1993, p. 31, cited in Flyvbjerg, 1998). However, the field of fire prevention in the Netherlands is relatively immature: stakeholders are getting to know each other and currently share a common interest in placing the issue more firmly on political and social (and research) agendas. This may have contributed to the open dialogue and a lack of friction during the walkshop. If the interests had been more diverse, the participants may also have been more strategic. This might be at the expense of the level of the openness of the discussion, making it worth developing strategies to address any such strategic tensions.