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Socio-economic analysis on land use change studies Nelson Lourenço Maria do Rosário Jorge; Carlos
Russo Machado
Some of the most profound changes in the landscape have arisen from direct decisions by man concerning land use, and these have affected both the quality of environmental resources, such as soils and water, and the sustainability of food production. Land use decisions are based on opportunities and constraints affected by both biophysical and socio-economic drivers. Predicting future land use change requires methodologies that integrate understanding of the processes affected by these drivers. Because the dynamics of land use and land cover can have biophysical, social, economic or ecological drivers, we must use an interdisciplinary approach to analyse the different problems. Nevertheless the work depart from the disciplinary perspective of traditional land use studies it must maintain the specificity of each science. The need to integrate natural and social sciences for the identification of questions and eventually solutions for sustainable development has been recently widely recognised. Being land use and land use changes one of the main issues integrating the large debate on sustainable development, its analysis demand clearly an integration of spatial / biophysical data with the socio-economic data type. The question is how this integration is possible, and how can it best be achieved. This paper deals with the identification of the required conditions for a real integration of disciplines, without which an integrated analysis may not be possible. It deals with the questions, which are required in order to achieve a true integration. Integration underpins the success of the policy-making process, as well as aiding the definition of research priorities relevant to policy decisions. Furthermore, this process needs to involve the stakeholders operating within the landscape: for example, landowners and agricultural managers, local and national regulators, planners and governments, local and national pressure groups, the private and entrepreneurial sector, and the wider public. The scientific basis of this perspective is the belief that integrating physical and socio-economic approaches in the study of land resources and land use systems represents a conceptually correct means of addressing the unifying issue of economic and environmental sustainability. For example, the social sciences still lack an appropriate conceptual framework for the understanding of complex interactions between society and the environment. Moreover, the majority of studies tend to concentrate on the effect and impact of man’s actions on the environment, dedicating little attention to the consequences of those changes on human activity. Studies on the role which humanity plays in global change are often carried out within the concept of an analysis of the human dimension. Thus, they loose the systemic perspective which considers society as a sub-system interacting with the natural sub-system within the far-reaching and integrated framework which is the global change system (Mesarovic et al., 1996). The use of this systemic perspective allows the complexity of the interactions defined by the social and natural systems to be incorporated in the analysis and obliges the development of a different view on the relationship of these two systems. This view shows that they interact through a logic of reflexivity. In other words, the social systems are changed at the same time as they modify the natural system, i.e. the impact of human activity on the environment and the consequences of the latter’s deterioration on human activity cannot be considered separately since they are related in real time. It is assumed that the reactions of the different land users will largely determine the impact of the policies in terms of constraints and opportunities for development. This conceptual approach should take into consideration the external driving forces. In other words, the general framework of measures which direct and rule society’s intervention in nature. Therefore, land use study "…involves both the manner in which the biophysical attributes of the land are manipulated and the intent underlying that manipulation - the purpose for which the land is used…" (Turner et al., 1995). Approaches toward the assessment of environmental and policy change impacts on the sustainability of land use systems in Europe have traditionally followed two approaches:
Whilst ‘disciplinary’ approaches provide scientifically exact methodologies for constructing robust frameworks within which assessments of sustainability and policy impacts may be carried out, they often underestimate the range of variability associated with complex systems. Conversely, the ‘generic’ approaches attempt to encompass the breadth of complex systems, yet often lack the robust methodologies and process descriptions required to accurately forecast future changes, often failing even to predict the current observed variability. The multi-disciplinary approach departs significantly from existing research addressing similar issues. Existing approaches distinguish between the biophysical and economic (Carter et al., 1994), reflecting both the disciplinary perspective of researchers and the difficulty in attracting funding from traditional sources when addressing cross-disciplinary research. The unified approach outlined will more adequately address sustainability in terms of ‘cost-benefit’ analysis by developing a common baseline for both the economic and the physical attributes of the landscape. Furthermore, this baseline approach will allow a numerical appraisal of the concept of sustainability, which traditionally has been difficult to quantify (Pearce, 1993). In addition, efforts will be made to incorporate social science research and stakeholder inputs, which cannot readily be translated into model form. Another issue relevant to this kind of analysis is also the integration of different scale analysis. If we search for answers at local level we must not forget the external driving forces in other levels of intervention, i.e. the regional and the global framework that influence the local or the individual level. The issue of spatial scales is approached from a different perspective. Existing models may be defined as ‘horizontal’ in their approach to the spatial domain; interactions take place between phenomena operating at a similar spatial scale; inputs/outputs move vertically, either downward or upward, into larger or smaller spatial units. It is current opinion that aggregation and desegregation between the smallest spatial unit of production decision-making in the landscape, namely the farm, allows different spatial scales to be achieved, from the catchment to the national scales. This is a conceptually coherent approach, given that aggregation can result in information loss. Furthermore it allows the effects of large-scale phenomena, for instance shifts in market orientation or weather patterns, to be addressed through an assessment of modifications induced at the lowest scale of production. In this context, it is emphasised that farmer decisions are of paramount importance because they underpin the functioning of agriculture, and it is through farmer decisions that policy has an impact on agro-ecological resources. Adequate modelling of this decision-making process is fundamental in achieving the sustainable use of natural resources. For the integration of the socio-economic perspective in the study of land use changes, it is not enough to collect data of socio-economic type and to present its spatial pattern of distribution, or even its combination with spatial data. The integration of different disciplines requires the close collaboration between these disciplines, already at the stage of defining the datasets needed. The information to be collected depends on the questions each scientific perspective has to the same object, i.e. land use change, and also on the scale of analysis. Based on the definition of the problems, which need an explanation, each scientific approach has to identify the questions it may deal with, as a contribution to this explanation. And then, dialog is necessary for the understanding of the different questions, and of how the different approaches may contribute to each other's development within the subject. The process is not a simple one, and it is not possible with the work of a single scientific perspective, even if well motivated. In the following it will be presented two examples to illustrate how collaboration work is necessary. The presentation of these examples, both concerning problems which are not well analysed, expresses the questions how an integrative approach could work in particular cases. In the study, Monitoring and Managing Changes in Rural Marginal Areas was made a comparative analysis of the processes of change in the rural marginal areas. The regions analysed were from northern and western Europe (Jutland in Denmark and Wallonia in Belgium) and from the Mediterranean region (Alentejo and Serra Algarvia in Portugal). The research was based on the present but has maintained an evolutionary perspective by comparisons with previous situations, chiefly in the sixties and seventies. Therefore, the aim has been to provide a global picture of agricultural activity in the last few decades in order to understand the dynamics of change in the areas studied. The main objectives of this research were:
The research was based in the analysis of the changes in land use, which result from the farmers’ intervention in the countryside in the regions studied. In the rural areas, the farm managers are the main agents for change in landscape patterns, since they determine the ways the land is occupied for agriculture and forestry. Decisions to intensify or extensify production, to forest or to cultivate, to the options in livestock production or to abandon the land, determine different productive systems which, on the one hand, affect the region’s landscape and environment and, on the other hand, have social implications for the population. More than identifying the ways the land is occupied, the features of the landscape and the natural conditions of the regions, the study sought to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the characteristics of farmers as the main agents for agricultural change in these areas. This analysis is fundamental for understanding the present situation and the factors that cause the processes of land use change in these regions. Nevertheless, the fact that they are regions with different characteristics has caused some problems for comparative analysis. In order to attain this objective, the operational implementation of the research went through four stages:
The integration of the socio-economic and geographic components was attempted by resorting to the use of the Geographic Information System. In the study, Land Use Change: Methodological Approach to Understand the Interactions Nature / Society in Coastal Areas, which is now in progress, we want to understand the land use changes in coastal areas through the analysis of the impact of the human and biophysical dynamics. The research will be based on a cross-disciplinary approach to understand the change in coastal areas, integrating both socio-economic and biophysical dimensions. The study will examine the societal driving forces – political, economic, institutional and social - that influence the development of coastal areas and modify the landscape by changing land forms, land use and land cover. So, the main objective is to design an integrated methodology to understand the land use changes in coastal areas and propose a comprehensive analysis which allow us to:
To reach this goal, the coastal area of Alentejo, Portugal, was chosen. The procedure would require the characterisation of the region based on indicators (censuses, annual statistics, and data obtained by remote sensing techniques). The use of Corine and Lacoast information will be an important source to the identification of the land use changes. At regional level the analysis should, therefore, be based on information obtained with instruments for remote detection (satellite pictures and aerial photographs) which permit the collection of information on land use in the coastal area. These instruments also make it possible to obtain data for different periods and to carry out an evaluative analysis of the main changes in land use. On this level, official statistics can also be analysed to collect socio-economic information, which is fundamental for describing the region’s general framework. These two types of information are complementary and fundamental for the identification of the main problems, which affect the region studied. Simultaneously, it is necessary to study the main participants in the land’s use. Is therefore, fundamental for understanding the motivation of these agents when they use the land. In this way, the study is carried out on two levels of analysis. On a regional scale, it is possible to describe the region, and use official statistics and remote detection to identify the main problems to be dealt with and the main changes in land use. At local level, a study is made of the social actors, and of the factors for change identified at regional level. These two case studies show the importance
to work on an integrative way. This approach allows the complexity of the interactions
defined by the social and natural systems to be incorporated in the analysis and obliges
the development of a different view on the relationship of these two systems. Therefore we
assume that to understand the dynamics of land use change we must use an interdisciplinary
approach to analyse the different problems. Nevertheless this kind of approach must be
developed in such a way that each science maintains its specificity. Bibliography
To understand the problems related to scale analysis must be a key issue in the study of the interactions nature / society. The different human activities must be evaluated or measured according to the different levels of the spatial and temporal scales (Gibson, C.; Ostrom, E.; Ahn, T., 1998)
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To understand socio-economic dynamic of the rural areas and
particularly the attitudes of the farmers to common policies and the market;