Klimalandschaft Köniz

MSc Jonas Frédéric Chastonay, Centre for Development and Environment (CDE)

External partners: Municipality of Köniz, Department of Environment and Landscape (Daniel Gilgen, Marius Stadler); Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL (Elena Siegrist)

The municipality of Köniz has committed to achieving net‑zero greenhouse‑gas emissions by 2045 and to compensating residual emissions locally. Climate‑adapted land use can make a substantial contribution both to reducing emissions and to strengthening climate resilience — yet concrete foundations, participatory processes with land users, and institutional pathways for scaling are still lacking. The project develops land‑use practices in three phases together with actors from agriculture, forestry and watercourse maintenance, tests these practices on demonstration plots, and quantifies their climate impact using the Carbon Benefits Project Tool. In Phase III, the groundwork is laid to integrate the results into the municipal spatial strategy and Köniz’s climate protection regulation, thereby enabling the scaling of proven land‑use practices.