Practicing SDG Strategies through Fieldwork: Climate Mitigation efforts in a former wetland

Capacity building and actions for adaption and mitigation planning are becoming more urgent as unpreceded consequences of climate change may be reaching multiple tipping points. While a growing number of students demand capacity building for climate change adaptation and mitigation planning and climate change actions from their (higher) education, progress has been slow in teaching the importance of land use and pathways for sustainable land transformation. This chapter examines students’ fieldwork on climate mitigation efforts in a former wetland and highlights the importance of putting the SDGs into practise. This chapter draws on a case study on sustainable development in a nature park, where the students were tasked to undertake a fieldwork analysis of past and present climate mitigation efforts to develop planning proposals for landscape transition. The study finds that the teaching of tipping points has not yet been implemented in Danish (higher education) geography and planning education. Yet, the multi-scalar character of the SDGs and the student’s assessment of the (dis)proportionality between different planning proposals is an important element in training and capacity building. Thus, practicing the SDG equips students with actionable frameworks, not least when integrative approaches from physical and natural geography inform the students’ landscape scenarios and what needs to be sustained and what would need to be developed in order to develop sustainable land transformation