Ten facts about land systems for sustainability

Abstract

Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in land use and thus also point toward solutions. The 10 facts are as follows: 1) Meanings and values of land are socially constructed and contested; 2) land systems exhibit complex behaviors with abrupt, hard-to-predict changes; 3) irreversible changes and path dependence are common features of land systems; 4) some land uses have a small footprint but very large impacts; 5) drivers and impacts of land-use change are globally interconnected and spill over to distant locations; 6) humanity lives on a used planet where all land provides benefits to societies; 7) land-use change usually entails trade-offs between different benefits-"win-wins" are thus rare; 8) land tenure and land-use claims are often unclear, overlapping, and contested; 9) the benefits and burdens from land are unequally distributed; and 10) land users have multiple, sometimes conflicting, ideas of what social and environmental justice entails. The facts have implications for governance, but do not provide fixed answers. Instead they constitute a set of core principles which can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward meeting sustainability challenges in land use.

Keywords: governance; land use; social-ecological systems; sustainability.

Fig. 1.

Ten empirical realities (facts) about land systems that have strong, general support. Challenges summarize the issues that arise from each fact when trying to manage and govern land systems for sustainability. Implications summarize how governance of land systems for sustainability could be improved by acknowledging these facts and challenges. The 10 facts are structured through four higher-level facts (1, 2, 6, and 10) and several lower-level facts that derive from these higher-level ones (3, 4, and 5 deriving from 2; 7, 8, and 9 deriving from 6), yet they all express specific realities that imply distinct challenges.