Clashes of knowledge: ‘Green deal’ concepts and challenges for sustainable rural systems

The content-related scope of the article includes primarily an attempt to take a broad look at the issues of research topics undertaken in research on sustainable development of rural areas. This topic is of great importance in the context of global environmental problems and various concepts of the ‘green deal’ included in the development policies of countries, primarily the EU member states. These issues were the subject of considerations during the 30th Annual Colloquium of the Commission on the Sustainability of Rural Systems of the International Geographical Union, which took place on June 5–9, 2023 at the University of Lodz, at the Faculty of Geographical Sciences. To comprehensively identify the topic, the methodology of content analysis of the abstracts submitted by the authors was used. This approach and the analysis of the sample of research papers presented at the conference made it possible to identify key issues related to sustainable development of rural areas. The approach used shed light on the relationship between society and nature, and revealed a variety of perspectives and solutions proposed by researchers from around the world. An attempt to integrate the thoughts of many scientists (conference participants) and highlight basic issues in the field of sustainable development of rural areas led to the construction of a model of environmental research in relation to the geographical specificity of understanding reality. This specific thought study (synthesis of views) highlights the importance of different perspectives and knowledge systems in understanding the foundations of sustainable rural development. The content-related analysis of the conference abstracts revealed four groups of processes influencing the sustainable development of rural areas, i.e. exploitation of natural resources and its social context, changes in land use, building social awareness of environmental threats and the evolution of connections between urban and rural areas.