Does Land-Use Intensification Decrease Plant Phylogenetic Diversity in Local Grasslands?

Phylogenetic diversity (PD) has been successfully used as a complement to classical measures of biological diversity such as species richness or functional diversity. By considering the phylogenetic history of species, PD broadly summarizes the trait space within a community. This covers amongst others complex physiological or biochemical traits that are often not considered in estimates of functional diversity, but may be important for the understanding of community assembly and the relationship between diversity and ecosystem functions. In this study we analyzed the relationship between PD of plant communities and land-use intensification in 150 local grassland plots in three regions in Germany. Specifically we asked whether PD decreases with land-use intensification and if so, whether the relationship is robust across different regions. Overall, we found that species richness decreased along land-use gradients the results however differed for common and rare species assemblages. PD only weakly decreased with increasing land-use intensity. The strength of the relationship thereby varied among regions and PD metrics used. From our results we suggest that there is no general relationship between PD and land-use intensification probably due to lack of phylogenetic conservatism in land- use sensitive traits. Nevertheless, we suggest that depending on specific regional idiosyncrasies the consideration of PD as a complement to other measures of diversity can be useful.

Foreign Direct Investment in Agriculture: Land Grab or Food Security Improvement?

“Large-scale acquisition of land by foreign investors” is the correct term for a process where the verdict of guilt is often quicker than the examination. But is there something really new about land grab except in its extent? In comparison with colonial and post-colonial plantation operations, should foreign investors today behave differently? We generally accept coffee and banana exports as pro-growth and pro-development, just as for cars, beef and insurance. What then is wrong with an investment contract allowing the holder to buy a farm and to export wheat to Saudi Arabia, or soybeans and maize as cattle feed to Korea, or to plant and process sugar cane and palm oil into ethanol for Europe and China? Assuming their land acquisition was legal, should foreigners respect more than investment contracts and national legislation? And why would they not take advantage of the legal protection offered by international investment law and treaties, not to speak of concessional finance, infrastructure and technical cooperation by a development bank, or the tax holidays offered by the host state? Remember Milton Friedman’s often-quoted quip: “The business of business is business!” And why would the governments signing those contracts not know whether and which foreign investment projects are best for their country, and how to attract them? This chapter tries to show that land grab, where it occurs, is not only yet another symptom of regulatory failures at the national level and a lack of corporate social responsibility by certain private actors. National governance is clearly the most important factor. Nonetheless, I submit that there is an international dimension involving investor home states in various capacities. The implication is that land grab is not solely a question whether a particular investment contract is legal or not. This chapter deals with legal issues which seem to have largely escaped the attention of both human rights lawyers and, especially, of investment lawyers. I address this fragmentation between different legal disciplines, rules, and policies, by asking two basic questions: (i) Do governments and parliaments in investor home countries have any responsibility in respect of the behaviour of their investors abroad? (ii) What should they and international regulators do, if anything?

Land deals intensify competition for scarce resources

Since the worldwide food price crisis of 2008, foreign investors have rushed to acquire large amounts of agricultural land in poorer countries. Some observers welcome this, claiming that outside investment in ostensibly underused land will jump-start local development. Others regard such investments as land grabs, stressing that the areas are rarely empty and that local people have little say. This brief identifies the types of land targeted by investors and reveals key socio-ecological patterns of such deals. The evidence indicates that foreign investments are intensifying competition for the best land. Ensuring that such deals instead contribute to sustainable, inclusive use of land requires strong public guidance and oversight.

Towards a spatial understanding of trade-offs in sustainable development: A meso-scale analysis of the nexus between land use, poverty, and environment in the Lao PDR

In land systems, equitably managing trade-offs between planetary boundaries and human development needs represents a grand challenge in sustainability oriented initiatives. Informing such initiatives requires knowledge about the nexus between land use, poverty, and environment. This paper presents results from Lao PDR, where we combined nationwide spatial data on land use types and the environmental state of landscapes with village-level poverty indicators. Our analysis reveals two general but contrasting trends. First, landscapes with paddy or permanent agriculture allow a greater number of people to live in less poverty but come at the price of a decrease in natural vegetation cover. Second, people practising extensive swidden agriculture and living in intact environments are often better off than people in degraded paddy or permanent agriculture. As poverty rates within different landscape types vary more than between landscape types, we cannot stipulate a land use–poverty–environment nexus. However, the distinct spatial patterns or configurations of these rates point to other important factors at play. Drawing on ethnicity as a proximate factor for endogenous development potentials and accessibility as a proximate factor for external influences, we further explore these linkages. Ethnicity is strongly related to poverty in all land use types almost independently of accessibility, implying that social distance outweighs geographic or physical distance. In turn, accessibility, almost a precondition for poverty alleviation, is mainly beneficial to ethnic majority groups and people living in paddy or permanent agriculture. These groups are able to translate improved accessibility into poverty alleviation. Our results show that the concurrence of external influences with local—highly contextual—development potentials is key to shaping outcomes of the land use–poverty–environment nexus. By addressing such leverage points, these findings help guide more effective development interventions. At the same time, they point to the need in land change science to better integrate the understanding of place-based land indicators with process-based drivers of land use change.

Sustainable investment in land in the Global South: What would it require from a coherence perspective? The case of Sierra Leone

Large scale acquisitions of land in the Global South have signifi-cantly increased since the millennium. It is often the case that foreign investors are involved in such acquisitions, which are commonly aimed at facilitating the export of commodities. These investments in land tend to transform conventional, rather small scale agricultural systems into large scale, industrial agricultural systems. While investment in ag-riculture in the Global South is much needed, large-scale investments in land often goes hand-in-hand with environmental and human rights re-lated challenges. As a consequence, lawyers need to address questions of sovereignty over natural resources (this paper focuses in particular on land resources), to peoples’ right to self-determination, to the responsi-bilities of the home and host states of the investors, including public-private relationships, and the role of international institutions who are involved, as well as relevant jurisprudence. This paper approaches these questions from the perspective of a theory on policy coherence for sus-tainable development.

Large-scale land acquisition and its effects on the water balance in investor and host countries

This study examines the validity of the assumption that international large-scale land acquisition (LSLA) is motivated by the desire to secure control over water resources, which is commonly referred to as ‘water grabbing’. This assumption was repeatedly expressed in recent years, ascribing the said motivation to the Gulf States in particular. However, it must be considered of hypothetical nature, as the few global studies conducted so far focused primarily on the effects of LSLA on host countries or on trade in virtual water. In this study, we analyse the effects of 475 intended or concluded land deals recorded in the Land Matrix database on the water balance in both host and investor countries. We also examine how these effects relate to water stress and how they contribute to global trade in virtual water. The analysis shows that implementation of the LSLAs in our sample would result in global water savings based on virtual water trade. At the level of individual LSLA host countries, however, water use intensity would increase, particularly in 15 sub-Saharan states. From an investor country perspective, the analysis reveals that countries often suspected of using LSLA to relieve pressure on their domestic water resources—such as China, India, and all Gulf States except Saudi Arabia—invest in agricultural activities abroad that are less water-intensive compared to their average domestic crop production. Conversely, large investor countries such as the United States, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Japan are disproportionately externalizing crop water consumption through their international land investments. Statistical analyses also show that host countries with abundant water resources are not per se favoured targets of LSLA. Indeed, further analysis reveals that land investments originating in water-stressed countries have only a weak tendency to target areas with a smaller water risk.

Free Riders, Holdouts, and Public Use: A Tale of Two Externalities

Free riders and holdouts are market failures that potentially impede the completion of otherwise beneficial transactions. The key difference is that the free rider problem is a demand side externality that requires taxation to compel payment for a public good, while the holdout problem is a supply side externality that requires eminent domain to force the sale of land for large scale projects. This paper highlights that distinction between these two problems and uses the resulting insights to clarify the meaning of the public use requirement of the Fifth Amendment takings clause.

Private Property, Public Use, and Just Compensation: The Economics of Eminent Domain

The eminent domain clause of the U.S. Constitution concerns the limits of the government's right to take private property for public use. The economic literature on this issue has examined (1) the proper scope of this power as embodied by the 'public use' requirement, (2) the appropriate definition, and implications, of 'just compensation,' and (3) the impact of eminent domain on land use incentives of owners whose land is subject to a taking risk. This essay reviews this literature and draws implications for our understanding of eminent domain law.

Zoning and the built environment: A public health analysis of zoning in Austin, Texas

The built environment is part of the physical environment made by people and for people. Because the built environment is such a ubiquitous component of the environment, it acts as an important pathway in determining health outcomes. Zoning, a type of urban planning policy, is one of the most important mechanisms connecting the built environment to public health. This policy analysis research paper explores how zoning regulations in Austin, Texas promote or prohibit the development of a healthy built environment. A systematic literature review was obtained from Active Living Research, which contained literature published about the relationships between the built environment, physical activity, and health. The results of these studies identified the following four components of the built environment that were associated to health: access to recreational facilities, sprawl and residential density, land use mix, and sidewalks and their walkability. A hierarchy analysis was then performed to demonstrate the association between these aspects of the built environment and health outcomes such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, and general health. Once these associations had been established, the components of the built environment were adapted into the evaluation criteria used to conduct a public health analysis of Austin's zoning ordinance. A total of eighty-eight regulations were identified to be related to these components and their varying associations to human health. Eight regulations were projected to have a negative association to health, three would have both a positive and negative association simultaneously, and nine were indeterminable with the information obtained through the literature review. The remaining sixty-eight regulations were projected to be associated in a beneficial manner to human health. Therefore, it was concluded that Austin's zoning ordinance would have an overwhelmingly positive impact on the public's health based on identified associations between the built environment and health outcomes.^

Publicness and Taken-for-granted Knowledge: A Case Study of Communal Land Formation in Rural Thailand

The lack of public-mindedness can cause problems in the social order of people’s daily lives, such as the tragedy of the commons and the problem of free riders. Some scholars such as Habermas assert that communicative rationality is the solution, expecting that individuals will communicate with each other to reach a consensus without being bounded by aspects of social background. Other scholars advocate the revitalization of traditional community culture. These arguments, however, are not based on reality. By using the case of communal land formation in rural Thailand, the author shows that collective action is neither a revival of tradition nor a result of communication free from social constraints. Rather, cooperation emerges because the people rationally respond to their present needs and have built, through daily social interactions, taken-for-granted knowledge about how they should behave for cooperation.

Neighborhood mobility: A Long-Gone Pardigm? Approaching proximity and land use mix using data from home based surveys.

El WCTR es un congreso de reconocido prestigio internacional en el ámbito de la investigación del transporte y aunque las actas publicadas están en formato digital y sin ISSN ni ISBN, lo consideramos lo suficientemente importante como para que se considere en los indicadores. Policies trying to increase walking within urban mobility modal split usually highlight the importance of the functional patterns and the environmental quality of the urban space as major drivers of citizens modal choices. Functional characteristics would be mainly associated to an appropriate mix of land uses within neighbourhoods, whereas environmental quality would be associated to the characteristics of urban spaces. The purpose of this research is threefold: first, to identify relevant proxy indicators, which could characterize pedestrian-friendly land use mix and environmental quality. Second, to assess, for both traits, existing disparities among neighbourhoods in a major metropolitan area. And finally, to explore the association between both indicators and children mobility patterns: according to their built environment, which neighbourhoods have a greater proportion of children and, how is their mobility? Using data from the 2004 household mobility survey in the 128 neighbourhoods of the municipality of Madrid, this paper concludes that potentially favourable conditions at the neighbourhood level seem to have only a modest influence in,mobility patterns , in terms of both, selection of closer destinations and a higher share of walking within modal split. The citys policy choices, with intensive investment in road and public transport infrastructure may explain why short-distance mobility is not as important as it could have been expected in those neighbourhoods with more pedestrian-friendly conditions. The metropolitan transport system is providing mobility conditions, which make far-away destinations attractive to most citizens.

Neighbourhood mobility: a longgone Paradigm? Approaching "proximity" and "land use mix" using data from home-based surveys

Policies trying to increase walking within urban mobility modal split usually highlight the importance of the functional patterns and the environmental quality of the urban space as major drivers of citizens modal choices. Functional characteristics would be mainly associated to an appropriate mix of land uses within neighbourhoods, whereas environmental quality would be associated to the characteristics of urban spaces. The purpose of this research is threefold: first, to identify relevant proxy indicators, which could characterize pedestrian-friendly land use mix and environmental quality. Second, to assess, for both traits, existing disparities among neighbourhoods in a major metropolitan area. And finally, to explore the association between both indicators and children mobility patterns: according to their built environment, which neighbourhoods have a greater proportion of children and, how is their mobility? Using data from the 2004 household mobility survey in the 128 neighbourhoods of the municipality of Madrid, this paper concludes that potentially favourable conditions at the neighbourhood level seem to have only a modest influence in,mobility patterns , in terms of both, selection of closer destinations and a higher share of walking within modal split. The city s policy choices, with intensive investment in road and public transport infrastructure may explain why short-distance mobility is not as important as it could have been expected in those neighbourhoods with more pedestrian-friendly conditions. The metropolitan transport system is providing mobility conditions, which make far-away destinations attractive to most citizens.

Soil quality response to land-use change for sugarcane expansion in Brazil

Globally, increasing demands for biofuels have intensified the rate of land-use change (LUC) for expansion of bioenergy crops. In Brazil, the world\'s largest sugarcane-ethanol producer, sugarcane area has expanded by 35% (3.2 Mha) in the last decade. Sugarcane expansion has resulted in extensive pastures being subjected to intensive mechanization and large inputs of agrochemicals, which have direct implications on soil quality (SQ). We hypothesized that LUC to support sugarcane expansion leads to overall SQ degradation. To test this hypothesis we conducted a field-study at three sites in the central-southern region, to assess the SQ response to the primary LUC sequence (i.e., native vegetation to pasture to sugarcane) associated to sugarcane expansion in Brazil. At each land use site undisturbed and disturbed soil samples were collected from the 0-10, 10-20 and 20-30 cm depths. Soil chemical and physical attributes were measured through on-farm and laboratory analyses. A dataset of soil biological attributes was also included in this study. Initially, the LUC effects on each individual soil indicator were quantified. Afterward, the LUC effects on overall SQ were assessed using the Soil Management Assessment Framework (SMAF). Furthermore, six SQ indexes (SQI) were developed using approaches with increasing complexity. Our results showed that long-term conversion from native vegetation to extensive pasture led to soil acidification, significant depletion of soil organic carbon (SOC) and macronutrients [especially phosphorus (P)] and severe soil compaction, which creates an unbalanced ratio between water- and air-filled pore space within the soil and increases mechanical resistance to root growth. Conversion from pasture to sugarcane improved soil chemical quality by correcting for acidity and increasing macronutrient levels. Despite those improvements, most of the P added by fertilizer accumulated in less plant-available P forms, confirming the key role of organic P has in providing available P to plants in Brazilian soils. Long-term sugarcane production subsequently led to further SOC depletions. Sugarcane production had slight negative impacts on soil physical attributes compared to pasture land. Although tillage performed for sugarcane planting and replanting alleviates soil compaction, our data suggested that the effects are short-term with persistent, reoccurring soil consolidation that increases erosion risk over time. These soil physical changes, induced by LUC, were detected by quantitative soil physical properties as well as by visual evaluation of soil structure (VESS), an on-farm and user-friendly method for evaluating SQ. The SMAF efficiently detected overall SQ response to LUC and it could be reliably used under Brazilian soil conditions. Furthermore, since all of the SQI values developed in this study were able to rank SQ among land uses. We recommend that simpler and more cost-effective SQI strategies using a small number of carefully chosen soil indicators, such as: pH, P, K, VESS and SOC, and proportional weighting within of each soil sectors (chemical, physical and biological) be used as a protocol for SQ assessments in Brazilian sugarcane areas. The SMAF and SQI scores suggested that long-term conversion from native vegetation to extensive pasture depleted overall SQ, driven by decreases in chemical, physical and biological indicators. In contrast, conversion from pasture to sugarcane had no negative impacts on overall SQ, mainly because chemical improvements offset negative impacts on biological and physical indicators. Therefore, our findings can be used as scientific base by farmers, extension agents and public policy makers to adopt and develop management strategies that sustain and/or improving SQ and the sustainability of sugarcane production in Brazil.

Guide to Writing a Programmatic Resource Management Plan/ Environmental Impact Statement for the Bureau of Land Management

This guide is written for Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) employees assigned to the Public Lands team who may have some National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) knowledge, possibly have experience with writing Environmental Impact Statements (EIS), and with little or no experience writing programmatic EIS documents. The guide contains information encompassing the preparation of a complete Resource Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement (RMP/EIS) for the Bureau of Land Management. The RMP/EIS is a programmatic NEPA document which has many differences and nuances distinct from a typical project type EIS. This guide provides the information necessary for a BAH Public Lands team member to understand the project process and the RMP/EIS document to successfully maneuver through the entire project from beginning to end.

The Study of the Public Space

Except for the "practical exercises" section, this work is registered under the following ISBN numbers: 978-84-15768-61-6 and 978-84-15768-62-3