The first IMPRESSIONS Hungarian Case Study workshop took place on 13 &14 July 2015, in Szekszárd, Hungary. Joined by over 25 participants representing public institutions, civil society and the private sector from Szekszárd and Veszprém, we discussed socio-economic driving forces and developed locally meaningful scenarios to the two case areas. The workshop was very well received by participants and was covered in local and national media. We will continue engaging stakeholders by providing updates, requesting inputs to modeling and by asking for their help with data in the upcoming months so that they stay involved until the second workshop in June 2016. Learn more about the workshop and IMPRESSIONS in the following video report:
Besides stakeholder engagement, work on several thematic models was also continued. Together with the Hungarian Central Statistical Office, we conducted a large-scale survey involving 220 landowners and 21 agricultural enterprises from both Veszprém and Szekszárd with the aim:
- to identify factors influencing individual agricultural managers’ decision-making on land use and management;
- to advance understanding of the implications of recent and future climate change in the agricultural sector;
- to assess the prevalence of tick-borne diseases among farm workers.
Results of the survey will help us estimate whether changes in individual agricultural managers’ decision-making could foster sustainability of local food production. The results will also contribute to our thematic models, and will help decision-makers take them into account when setting up adaptation-related policies for the sector.
IMPRESSIONS was represented at the Annual Meeting of the Hungarian Society of Hygienists in Eger, Hungary, on 6-8 October 2015, where one of our workshop participants and project partners, Teca Zoltánné Gaál from Szekszárd gave a presentation on the IMPRESSIONS project to a scientific audience.