In my last goal post, I gathered a wide-array of literature on land-use and grouped them into 5 categories: decision-making, globalization, biodiversity and ecological impacts, social impacts, and theory. I saw these groupings as different ways to approach the overwhelming topic of land use. After this grouping, I read a few of these articles to better understand how these researchers did their work.
In the decision-making section I read “Integrating ecosystem-service tradeoffs into land-use decisions” (Goldstein) and “Integrating Water-quality management and land-use planning in a watershed context” (Wang). In the globalization section I read “Global Land Use Change, Economic Globalization and Looming Land Scarcity” (Lambin). In the theory section, I read “Participatory Evaluation of Monitoring and Modeling of Sustainable Land Management Tech in Areas Prone to Land Degradation” (Stringer). Even just looking at the titles it is clear that there are many divergent paths one could take with common threads throughout (“management”, “scarcity”, “decisions”, “sustainable”). I challenged myself to find the connections of these projects to draw them all together.
Goldstein’s study quantified ecosystem services and financial implications of seven land use plans to assess the viability of options and benefits in relation to payoff. This approach grounded the question of land planning by creating and questioning land use plans for a real project (a large Hawaiian land owner) and therefore didn’t get lost in the possible theory of it all. In contrast, Stringer’s piece assessed the efficacy of strategies to incorporate and persuade stake-holders during land-use decision making. His article played off of Goldstein’s article nicely because it showed how one should communicate the complexity of land-use in a multi-stakeholder context. Stringer focused on the DESIRE (DESertification mitigation and REmediation of degraded lands) project which tried to combine local tradition with empirical evidence. I appreciated this approach because, unlike Goldstein’s article, the study did not solely assess the benefits of a land-use plan by scientific ecological reactions, but also the affect on other actors. Stringer argues against the “unspoken assumption among the academic community that to convince people to manage land..all that is required is more and better science.” Instead he argues, “no matter how effectively a technology is proven to prevent land degradation, if it challenges cultural norms, or is not profitable, or too risky, it is unlikely it will be adopted by land managers.” This shift in perspectives shifts the framing of the approach and the solution. These pieces are interesting in relation to my course on development in which I have been encouraged to look at development projects (with huge effects on land) from many different perspectives (indigenous, historically, institutionally, etc) and therefore understand why they fail or succeed or have the impact that they do.
Wang’s piece on the effect of land use on water quality was helpful in showing me the methods and deliverables of a scientific and geo-spatial examination of land-use effects. This geo-spatial approach was very interesting to me and helps me clarify possible methodology. I think land questions are an obvious source for powerful spatial analysis, and Wang capitalizes on this. It would be interesting to combine Wang and Stringer’s methodology and examine the effects of different decision-making approaches spatially.
I used Lambin’s study on the effectiveness of different policy instruments in my original concentration. I appreciate this study’s examination of the different dynamics that are a result of globalization movements. He talks about displacement, rebound, cascade, and remittance and how these are affected by and affect land decisions. I appreciate this global systems perspective after the more grounded and situated approaches. Lambin’s approach also reminded me of my development class in the connections between globalization’s effect on development implementation and land management (often these topics overlap). Mostly, these four studies provided strong, interesting examples of approaches that I can draw from.
After doing all of this reading, I am still left with questions about what role I want to play in this field? How should I approach this topic and is one approach more effective than another? Essentially, I am grappling with what to do and how to do it. Not necessarily easy questions to answer, but these questions bring me one step closer.
A Study of Intersections 