Public preference for sustainable land use policies – Empirical results from multinomial logit model analysis

Public preferences for sustainable land use policy instruments and the motivations behind such preferences are important to make appropriate policies. Based on survey data (n = 309) from northeastern Somalia, we examined preferences for a set of land use policy instruments relative to no policy (i.e. the current status quo) and how cultural worldviews predict such preferences. We used a multinomial logit model to analyze the comparative evaluation of choices due to its interpretability and robustness to violations of normality. Overall, the results show that the respondents are likely to consent to all types of land use policy instruments relative to no policy and are more inclined to market-based and informational policy instruments. Specifically, preferences for regulatory policy instruments are positively associated with hierarchy and egalitarian worldviews and are negatively associated with fatalism and individualistic worldviews with only hierarchy and fatalism are significant. The market-based policy instrument is desirable to all cultural worldviews except fatalism, but only egalitarian and individual worldviews are significant. Preferences for informational policy instruments are positively associated with all cultural worldviews but only egalitarian worldviews showed a significant effect. Although there are some contradictions, these results are broadly consistent with the proposition of the cultural theory of risk. This study highlights that preferences for land use policies are heterogeneous with cultural worldviews mainly explaining the sources of this heterogeneity. It is evident that the respondents were willing to consent to land use policies relative to the status quo of no policy and indicates the need for concerted effort to reduce land degradation and deforestation in the country. We, therefore, recommend that policymakers incorporate the different ways that humans perceive and interpret social-environmental relations into policy decisions to achieve sustainable policy outcomes.

Public Participation In Protecting Food Resources: The Case Of Federal Lands In Pickering

In 1972, the federal government’s plan to build the second major Toronto airport in the north Pickering area met strong public resistance that put the project on hold in 1975. This project investigates the role of public engagement in land use policy and the protection of agricultural lands by reviewing the literature on the Pickering Airport from a historical perspective and conducting archival research of historical records and documents from 1972 to the present. Consulting the literature on public discourse, I examine whether a 45 year-long delay in the completion of the airport could be solely attributed to public participation in policy making. The paper will focus on effective use of media, scientific evidence and expert advice that are leading to deadlocks in a process full of inconsistencies in government decision making, influenced by electoral politics, changing governments and jurisdictional differences between federal and provincial governments.

Public Participation In Protecting Food Resources: The Case Of Federal Lands In Pickering

In 1972, the federal government’s plan to build the second major Toronto airport in the north Pickering area met strong public resistance that put the project on hold in 1975. This project investigates the role of public engagement in land use policy and the protection of agricultural lands by reviewing the literature on the Pickering Airport from a historical perspective and conducting archival research of historical records and documents from 1972 to the present. Consulting the literature on public discourse, I examine whether a 45 year-long delay in the completion of the airport could be solely attributed to public participation in policy making. The paper will focus on effective use of media, scientific evidence and expert advice that are leading to deadlocks in a process full of inconsistencies in government decision making, influenced by electoral politics, changing governments and jurisdictional differences between federal and provincial governments.

LAND USE POLICY AREA (LUPA) CONCEPT MODEL

The paper presents a Land Use Policy Area (LUPA) Concept Model adding the three basic elements: (i) ecosystem-based land use regarded as the intersection of the ecosystem and land use elements, (ii) subwatershed-based land use as the intersection of the subwatershed and land use elements, and (iii) integrated environmental management is the intersection of the subwatershed and ecosystem elements regarded as the Integrated Ecosystem Development Planning Unit (IE-DPU). The basic (spatial) elements are mathematically expressed as the paired sets of the three main variables, namely: ecosystem (dependent), watershed (dependent) and land use (independent) variables. The challenging work in this study was the development of a geospatial information model for use in policy areas LUPA applying these variables. There are four steps applied to answer the research objective, these are: ecological zone assessment, ridge-to-reef watershed delineation, land and water use heads-up mapping, ecosystem-based land use overlay analysis, watershed-based land use overlay analysis, integrated environmental management overlay analysis, and LUPA overlay analysis. The concept model analysis steers the geospatial information modeling for LUPA which carried the intersections of the paired variables: ecosystem-based land use, subwatershed-based land use and integrated environmental management as variating inputs to process by extracting the science-based information (overlay output) which practically highlighted the LUPA classification: (i) Protection with 49.1% or 3858.2 Ha of mangrove forest reserve and water use, (ii) Production areas with 46.5% or 3631.7 Ha mostly agricultural and aquacultural areas, (iii) Settlement with 2.7% or 209.2 Ha of urban and urban uses, and (iv) Infrastructure with 1.5% or 116.7 Ha of development. The authors concluded that land use policy areas will relatively change as land use changes which is also seen reliant on the impacts of climate change.

Exploring Spatiotemporal Variation of Carbon Storage Driven by Land Use Policy in the Yangtze River Delta Region

Land use/land cover (LULC) change driven by land use policy always leads to dramatic change in carbon storage and sequestration, especially in a rapidly urbanizing region. However, few studies explored the influences of land use polices on carbon storage and sequestration in a rapidly urbanizing region. Through Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model, the spatial-temporal pattern of carbon storage altered by LULC transformation and its linkage with land use policies were analyzed in five periods (1990–1995, 1995–2000, 2000–2005, 2000–2010, 2010–2015) in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) Region. The results indicated that: (1) the carbon storage in the YRD was substantially altered by continuous LULC transformation, totally decreased by 1.49 × 107 Mg during 1990–2015. (2) The total amount of carbon storage increased from 2.91 × 109 Mg in 1990 to 2.95 × 109 Mg in 1995, and then decreased to 2.90 × 109 Mg in 1995–2015. Thus, the total economic value of carbon storage increased approximately from 467.42 million dollars in 1990 to 472.99 million dollars in 1995, and then decreased to 465.01 million dollars in 2015. (3) The carbon storage and sequestration were influenced by LULC transformation driven by land use policies in five periods: large areas of grassland converted to woodland in 1990–1995 led by Forest Law, then clustered areas of cropland converted to built-up land in 1995–2015 around large cities of YRD Region led by Land Management Law and Development Plans, and finally, the conversion of cropland to built-up land was decreased and scattered in the entire region influenced by land use polices led by early stage of ecocivilization construction. The study can facilitate to develop regional land use policy for carbon storage conservation and carbon neutrality in a rapidly urbanizing region.

The Value of Systematic Evidence Synthesis in Forestry, Land Use and Development to Improve Research, Decision-Making and Practice

Despite well-established procedures for using systematic evidence-informed approaches to policy and practice in fields as diverse as medicine, crime and justice, education, and conservation, the uptake of these rigorous methods of synthesising relevant literature has been disappointingly slow in forestry and related fields. This may be due to: general lack of understanding of, or misconceptions about, systematic evidence synthesis; a belief that the method is inappropriate for the “messy” world of forestry and land-use; a dislike of the protocol-driven approach that underpins systematic evidence synthesis; the rigorous approach is beyond the resources of time and funding available for a given topic review; systematic reviews can only be undertaken by a narrow “elite”; or a combination of these. The current Special Issue of Forests brings together a range of papers that demonstrate that systematic evidence synthesis is appropriate for forestry and land-use policy and practice, and that the method is evolving to embrace new ideas that fit with the core tenets of comprehensiveness, transparency, and procedural objectivity.