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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 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
The impact of land use changes on sustainable development is of increasing interest in many regions of the world. This study aimed to test the transferability of the Framework for Participatory Impact Assessment (FoPIA), which was originally developed in the European context, to developing countries, in which lack of data often prevents the use of data-driven impact assessment methods. The core aspect of FoPIA is the stakeholder-based assessment of alternative land use scenarios. Scenario impacts on regional sustainability are assessed by using a set of nine regional land use functions (LUFs), which equally cover the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability. The cases analysed in this study include (1) the alternative spatial planning policies around the Merapi volcano and surrounding areas of Yogyakarta City, Indonesia; (2) the large-scale afforestation of agricultural areas to reduce soil erosion in Guyuan, China; (3) the expansion of soil and water conservation measures in the Oum Zessar watershed, Tunisia; (4) the agricultural intensification and the potential for organic agriculture in Bijapur, India; and (5) the land degradation and land conflicts resulting from land division and privatisation in Narok, Kenya. All five regions are characterised by population growth, partially combined with considerable economic development, environmental degradation problems and social conflicts. Implications of the regional scenario impacts as well as methodological aspects are discussed. Overall, FoPIA proved to be a useful tool for diagnosing regional human-environment interactions and for supporting the communication and social learning process among different stakeholder groups.
In light of possible future restrictions on the use of fossil fuel, due to climate change obligations and continuous depletion of global fossil fuel reserves, the search for alternative renewable energy sources is expected to be an issue of great concern for policy stakeholders. This study assessed the feasibility of bioenergy production under relatively low-intensity conservative, eco-agricultural settings (as opposed to those produced under high-intensity, fossil fuel based industrialized agriculture). Estimates of the net energy gain (NEG) and the energy return on energy invested (EROEI) obtained from a life cycle inventory of the energy inputs and outputs involved reveal that the energy efficiency of bioenergy produced in low-intensity eco-agricultural systems could be as much as much as 448.5–488.3 GJ·ha−1 of NEG and an EROEI of 5.4–5.9 for maize ethanol production systems, and as much as 155.0–283.9 GJ·ha−1 of NEG and an EROEI of 14.7–22.4 for maize biogas production systems. This is substantially higher than for industrialized agriculture with a NEG of 2.8–52.5 GJ·ha−1 and an EROEI of 1.2–1.7 for maize ethanol production systems, as well as a NEG of 59.3–188.7 GJ·ha−1 and an EROEI of 2.2–10.2 for maize biogas production systems. Bioenergy produced in low-intensity eco-agricultural systems could therefore be an important source of energy with immense net benefits for local and regional end-users, provided a more efficient use of the co-products is ensured.