- Indicators to assess sustainable land development often focus on either economic or ecologic aspects of landscape use. The concept of multifunctional land use helps merging those two focuses by emphasising on the rule that economic action is per se accompanied by ecological utility: commodity outputs (CO, e.g., yields) are paid for on the market, but non-commodity outputs (NCO, e.g., landscape aesthetics) so far are public goods with no markets. Agricultural production schemes often provided both outputs by joint production, but with technical progress under prevailing economic pressure, joint production increasingly vanishes by decoupling of commodity from non-commodity production. Simultaneously, by public and political awareness of these shortcomings, there appears a societal need or even demand for some non-commodity outputs of land use, which induces a market potential, and thus, shift towards the status of a commodity outputs. An approach is presented to merge both types of output by defining an indicator of social utilityIndicators to assess sustainable land development often focus on either economic or ecologic aspects of landscape use. The concept of multifunctional land use helps merging those two focuses by emphasising on the rule that economic action is per se accompanied by ecological utility: commodity outputs (CO, e.g., yields) are paid for on the market, but non-commodity outputs (NCO, e.g., landscape aesthetics) so far are public goods with no markets. Agricultural production schemes often provided both outputs by joint production, but with technical progress under prevailing economic pressure, joint production increasingly vanishes by decoupling of commodity from non-commodity production. Simultaneously, by public and political awareness of these shortcomings, there appears a societal need or even demand for some non-commodity outputs of land use, which induces a market potential, and thus, shift towards the status of a commodity outputs. An approach is presented to merge both types of output by defining an indicator of social utility (SUMLU): production schemes are considered with respect to social utility of both commodity and non-commodity outputs. Social utility in this sense includes environmental and economic services as long as society expresses a demand for them. For each combination of parameters at specific frame conditions (e.g., soil and climate properties of a landscape) a production possibility curve can reflect trade-offs between commodity and non-commodity outputs. On each production possibility curve a welfare optimum can be identified expressing the highest achievable value of social utility as a trade-off between CO and NCO production. When applying more parameters, a cluster of welfare optimums is generated. Those clusters can be used for assessing production schemes with respect to sustainable land development. Examples of production possibility functions are given on easy applicable parameters (nitrogen leaching versus gross margin) and on more complex ones (biotic integrity). Social utility, thus allows to evaluate sustainability of land development in a cross-sectoral approach with respect to multifunctionality. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved…
