Land Use Policy最新文献

There are few examples of where co-design has been applied to active policy development on the scale or level of complexity of England’s post-Brexit Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes. ELM offers a fascinating ‘laboratory’ to analyse how co-design at this scale works in practice. This paper offers the first in-depth empirical assessment of the process from the perspectives of both the policy makers and stakeholders who were involved in the initial phase of ELM co-design from 2018 to 2020. Using interview data, we provide critical insights for both academics and government on 'pragmatic' applications of co-design to active policy development and reflect on what this tells us about the wider processes of policy development that may need to change in order to accommodate this more ‘democratic’ approach. Our analysis, which identified key barriers to co-design as articulated by institutional stakeholders and civil servants, revealed a mismatch between the principles and practices of ‘co-design’ in the initial development of ELM. These early-stage challenges included: (i) a lack of shared decision-making and empowering stakeholders to contribute to problem-definitions; (ii) confidentiality requirements that introduced barriers to information-sharing; (iii) insufficient transparency and feedback on what happened to stakeholder’s contributions in terms of policy development; (iv) an absence of detail on the schemes, including proposed approaches, payment rates, advice, baseline measures, the kinds of ‘outcomes’ expected, and monitoring mechanisms; and (v) a repetition of themes that participants had already discussed. Many of these mismatches may be common to other policy arenas. We argue that improved application of policy co-design in government will rely on wider changes to political processes and the institutional culture and practices within the civil service.

This paper engages two theories about the form and function of institutions, the “credibility thesis” offered by Peter Ho (2014, 2017, 2018) and the paradigmatic Coase Theorem, in two versions formulated by George J. Stigler and Steven N.S. Cheung and recognised by Ronald H. Coase (1988). The joint consideration of these two influential theories was predicated on the fact that the former, with its hallmark being “function trumps form” (Vatn 2023), is said to embrace institutional arrangements as endogenous, while the latter treats them as policy variables. This paper, interpreting the internal logic of the credibility thesis in its best possible light, explains that as a policy tool it is compatible with the contingent, comparative and case-by-case thinking of the Coase Theorem, as pointed out by Harold Demsetz (1969), although users of the former have launched an unfortunate and unsubstantiated attack on neo-institutional economics (NIE) likely based on a misinterpretation of primary sources.

Land management and community engagement are two key components in preventing conflict among native landowners and organizations. Disputes between owners and agencies will be the most difficult impediment to overcome in the land ongoing development. Led to extensive opposition among native customary peoples to native customary land alienation, the government has worked to provide a fair manner of individual ownership for native customary peoples. This point shows how land ownership issues may pose a danger to the nation if they are not addressed in appropriate forms and ways to the native customary community. This paper examines the influence of Communal Grants and land allocation in the Sabah Land Ordinance on native land disputes among Malaysian native landowners. Native landowners from Sabah constituted the population of this study. Samples were chosen using a simple random sampling technique. The gathered 100 complete responses were analyzed using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings revealed that the Communal Grants and land allocation in the Sabah Land Ordinance have significant positive influences on native customary land disputes. This study contributed significantly to the customary land alienation of native peoples as a minority group and indigenous world population.

Despite continuous population decline or stagnation, many Central and Eastern European cities experience urban sprawl and expansion, accompanied by excessive land take and land use change. This paper investigates recent trends in land take and land use change in Hungarian cities, aiming to identify the drivers of these processes. The study utilizes the Urban Atlas (UA) databases from 2006 and 2018 to analyze land use change in selected Hungarian cities, employing QGIS software to compile the database and MS Excel to conduct the statistical analysis. A linear trajectory model is employed to project land use change by 2026, based on 2006–2018 UA data. Additionally, via the in-depth analysis of Debrecen, the study highlights the recent acceleration of land use change to compare the projected trend with the forecasted one. Local climate strategies focus on addressing environmental concerns, including changes in land use at the city level. Therefore, this study reviews the relevant documents associated with each city to assess its commitment to reducing land take. The results indicate that despite its declining population, Hungary has seen a significant expansion in artificial surfaces, primarily due to industrialization and population policies introduced by the central government, which is likely to continue in the coming years. Unfortunately, local climate strategies have been insufficient in preventing cities from experiencing urban sprawl and expansion and preserving local ecosystem services. This underscores the inability of municipalities to defend local interests against central government directives. The findings of this study indicate that the current central policies are the main drivers of land take and urban sprawl and expansion. Prioritizing the compact city model and brownfield developments could effectively mitigate these issues. Finally, the paper advocates that complete jurisdiction over land use decisions be restored to local governments, enabling them to reject investments that may jeopardize local environmental goals.

In this article we describe contrasting state land use and fire management policy forest landscape level legacies in two contiguous municipalities of the Gredos mountain range in Central Spain. We employed an exploratory sequential mixed methods approach to collect complementary palynological, dendroecological, municipal level individual fire report and state archive “Ordenación” plan data for the 1850–2021 period. We hypothesize that the variations in land and cultural fire use through time that we have documented contributed to shape significant differences in forest structure and species composition in two municipalities with similar biophysical environments. Higher fire frequency most likely associated with preindustrial era agro-sylvo-pastoral and resin tapping uses, we argue, contributed to maintain, in one site, an open canopy, savanna-like “dehesa”, heterogenous forest landscape of Pinus pinaster, Quercus pyrenaica and grassland patches with low average annual burnt area whereas, conversely, lower fire frequency associated with stricter state fire exclusion policies and prioritization of timber production in the 20th century contributed to the maintenance of a closed canopy, dense, homogeneous Pinus pinaster forest with higher average burnt area in the other site. These findings have important policy implications for European Mediterranean Basin Forest ecosystems where there is an ongoing debate over the social and ecological impacts of 20th century state fire exclusion policies in the context of widespread rural abandonment, tree cover expansion and densification, shrub encroachment in “dehesa” structured forests and the increased frequency of extreme wildfire events in expanding wildland urban interface areas.

China’s new round of nationwide land certification program (LCP) provides a good natural experiment to investigate whether land certification can promote rural labor off-farm employment. However, existing research overlooks that the new round of LCP is a re-certification program based on the previous round. This paper proposes that incorporating the ex-ante property rights of households is crucial. Using micro survey data from China, this paper empirically examined the impact of the new round of LCP on off-farm employment for households with different ex-ante property rights through a multi-period DID model. The results indicate that the new round of LCP significantly increased the off-farm employment size for households without old land certificates. However, there was no significant impact on households with old land certificates. The ambitious new round of land tenure reform can only enhance the tenure stability for those households that previously lacked land certificates.

China is facing a unique demographic challenge with its population entering a phase of negative growth, alongside the growing issue of Rural Population Aging (RPA). This has brought significant attention to the broader population challenges the country is encountering. While the aging of rural populations has been a focal point of discussion, there remains a need for deeper insights into how it specifically impacts Agricultural Carbon Emissions (ACE). To address this knowledge gap, this study has devised a research framework grounded in the human-land relationships theory. This framework seeks to analyze the influence of RPA on ACE. Empirical tests have been carried out using provincial (municipal) panel data spanning from 2002 to 2019. The study's findings indicate that RPA exacerbates ACE, particularly in regions with a pronounced aging rural demographic. However, this adverse effect is lessened in coastal areas and placed with a lighter rural aging phenomenon. Additionally, the negative impact gradually diminishes in the long term. From a land utilization perspective, RPA contributes to Land Misallocation (LM), serving as a critical conduit through which RPA influences ACE. Nevertheless, mitigating factors such as Land Transfer (LT) and Land Scale (LS) help alleviate this negative influence. This mitigation is more pronounced in the long run. In the context of smallholder farmers, the study suggests that a moderate-scale expansion and the promotion of new agricultural models can be instrumental in achieving broader agricultural carbon reduction targets.

Land rental markets had played a critical role in providing farms access to Ukraine’s agricultural land before the ban on land sales was lifted in 2021. This paper examines whether rental-based land relations can promote land use by more productive farms in the context of imperfect institutions. In particular, we examine whether Ukrainian farms’ decisions to rent land are linked to their agricultural ability. Utilizing a rich panel of more than 16,000 Ukrainian commercial agricultural producers for 2005–2015, we analyze demand-side determinants of participation in the land rental market. The evidence suggests that farms’ total factor productivity is disconnected from their decisions to rent land. Land accumulation appears to be driven by other context-related factors, including existing local land concentration and orientation toward cash crop production. Results call for launching a land sales market and improving rental market infrastructure because these measures can align land rental prices with the value of the marginal product of land.

The burgeoning unplanned urbanisation and growing environmental risks across global South cities pose core questions to urban sustainability, planning theory and practice. Who are the agents of, and what are the control mechanisms in spatial plan preparation? To what extent are economic, social, and environmental sustainability principles considered and embedded in spatial plans and frameworks? And what are the possibilities for attaining sustainable urban future via spatial planning practice in the context of multi-level governance? Using Ghana as a case study, and critical literature review, interviews, and policy analysis, we contribute to the spatial planning and sustainability narrative in global South cities by evaluating the extent to which sustainability principles are integrated in Spatial Development Frameworks (SDFs) and Spatial plans (SPs) in Ghana. We show that whereas sustainability is entangled with spatial planning, integrating sustainability principles in contemporary multi-level governance continues to present a complex challenge in practice. The complexities necessitated the engagement of local and international planning firms to complement the efforts of street-level-bureaucrats (local planning officials) in the preparation of spatial development frameworks and plans. However, such collaborations did not result in comprehensive integration of sustainability principles in spatial plans in practice. Our study indicate that, the economic, social, and environmental principles of sustainability were marginally embedded in local spatial plans of the three-tier spatial planning system of Ghana. We argue that equitable prioritisation of the principles of sustainability are required to strengthen local based spatial planning practice.

The National Program for Land Registration was supposed to be completed by 2023 with the registration of all administrative units in Romania. The aim of this study is to analyze the feasibility and acceptance of the strategic objectives of this project and the public procurement strategy in the view of three types of stakeholders involved in the project: private sector providers, cadastre academics and local cadastre offices directors. It is the first study that analyses The National Program for Land Registration from this perspective. The research shows that, in the view of the stakeholders questioned the strategic objectives were not feasible and they weren’t consulted in designing them, making the objectives unacceptable. In regards to the public procurement strategy, the results of the study show that the targets set were not clear, there is not enough competition in the market and the awarding criteria lack a balance between quality and price.