Foresight Land Use FuturesUpdate and Evidence Gathering

Project Leader – Nicola O’Connor

23 January 2009 CURDS

The last six months…

•Structures and planning

•Building the evidence base

•Stakeholder engagement

Project aim

•Land use fit for the future (2060 time-horizon);

•Anticipate change, plan for the future and consider new possibilities for the way land is used;

• Identify actions (in the short-term) to ensure land continues to be able to support the lives dependant on it;

•Launches findings January 2010.

Land Use Futures Project: Process Diagram

Building the evidence base

The short science reviews:

•Comprehensive list of topics (40+) with additional reviews on forestry & uplands

•Produced by recognised experts

•Approximately 2,500-5000 words long

•Current state of understanding and leading opinion

•Peer review (summer)

•Professionally edited (summer/Autumn)

•Published in the Land Use Policy Journal November 2009

Science review workshop

Other evidence gathering..

•The “long reviews”

•The Historical perspective

•The International perspective

•Valuing land and the goods and services it delivers

•Using research and data which already exists

•Linking with other land use projects and programmes

•Stakeholder and academic input at events

•Involving centres of excellence (including land use models)

Stakeholder engagement…

Past:

•Scoping workshops, bilaterals, 7-questions, advisory network, workshops, electronic communication

Future:

•Entering intensive period of stakeholder engagement

•Updated website link will be circulated to 400+

•Systemic perspectives workshop held on 18 November, next is 4 February

•Scenario building workshop 18 February

•“issues-based” working groups during analytical phase

Key messages…

•The project is on track to deliver in January 2010

•Thinking holistically and systemically

•Drawing on the best expertise from the academic and stakeholder community

•Creating a robust evidence base

•Confronting difficult issues

•A futures project which identifies actions to be taken NOW

•Making a difference

Orientation Lead Expert Group Members

Professor David Newbery (Chair)Professor of Economics, Cambridge University Professor Marcial EcheniqueProfessor of Land Use and Transport Studies, Cambridge University Professor John GoddardProfessor of Regional Development Studies Newcastle UniversityProfessor Louise HeathwaiteDirector of the Centre for Sustainable Water Management, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster UniversityProfessor Joe MorrisHead of Natural Resources Management Centre, Cranfield UniversityDr Wendy SchultzDirector, Infinite Futures Professor Carys SwanwickProfessor of Landscape, Sheffield UniversityProfessor Mark Tewdwr-JonesProfessor of Spatial Planning and Governance, UCL

What are the high-level challenges for the future of land use?

Building capacity to tackle land use issues systemically and in an integrated way

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Using space intelligently and in a way which recognises and increases value and benefits

Land use in England 2005

Crops+fallow

grasses/grazing

other agriculture

forest

other urban

built up

47.5 million live in this area

4.5 million liveelsewhere

Sample of the intersected layers of road network and population density

http://envihealth.jrc.ec.europa.eu/CEHIS/RPG3_Air_Ex3.htm

Population is not just a South East phenomenon

Managing crucial resources: e.g. river flows

Percentage change in mean monthly flow between now and the 2050s using the medium-high UKCIP02 Scenario. Source: Environment Agency, 2008

Dealing with uncertainty – reducing inertia and increasing adaptability•Climate change impacts:

•CO2 emissions from land use change

•Flood risk, coastal threats

•Marine acidification

•Development of biotechnology

•Food security and global resource scarcity

•Renewable energy demands on land

•Infectious diseases

•Information technology advances

•Mobility, immigration, demographic change

•Housing and infrastructure demand

•Changes in values

•Changes in governance

•Lifestyle Changes

Dealing with conflicts and vested interests – understanding trade-offs

• Tensions between values reflected in market prices (properties are“valued”for sale) and those that are not.

• Market price may not reflect true value of land

• Eco-service and social values of forest can be many times that of intensive agriculture, urban green space many times that of green belt

• Governance evolves to respond to market and non-marketed impacts of land use changes. The balance between competing claims can change.

• Value of land with planning permission many times that without

• Making desirable choices harder if key actors are unable to agree how, and how much, various land services are valued in the long term – “ensuring private interest does not trump longer-term interest” (CPRE).

What assumptions drive people’s choices?

A survey commissioned for the Barker Review (2006) asked respondents to choose the three categories of land they would most like to see protected from development. The results were:

•71 per cent of respondents chose land with endangered wildlife as one of their three categories;

•54 per cent chose land with scenic value

•47 per cent chose green spaces in towns and cities.

•17 per cent cited land on the edge of towns and cities as being among the most important to protect.

Meeting the economic and social needs of citizens and increasing well-being

Density of new buildings

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Flood risk England

Communities and Local Government Table P231 Land Use Change: Density of new dwellings built, England, 1989 to 2007

Big increase

Ensuring our activities on land do not have irreversible or unintended impacts

•Feedback in the in the land system – positive and negative•Differing life-cycles – e.g. forests, crop rotation, housing•70% of the future housing stock has already been built (source SEMBE 2008)

Timescales:• crop change - annual• forests 30-100+ years• wind farm 20-30 years• settlements 100-1000 years• roads 50-2000 years

Taking decisions at the most appropriate level and spatial scale

LUD data for ward areasONS for population

Population density vs percent land area England 2001

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Density people/hectare

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75%percent population

population density

average density up to this fraction of land

percent population RHS

Half the pop-ulation live on 4.5% of the land area at an average density of 41.3/ha

Duke of Buccleuch

Crownestates

National Trust

C of E

Queen

Some noted landowners'

holdings

Broad-leaf forest

12.4%

Conifer forest

Five areas of broad agreement on priority issues from HLSG

1. Need for clearer direction to balance competing demands on land•Housing demands

•Space and priority for food production

•Changing lifestyles

•Changing economic climate

•Protecting biodiversity

•Delivery of multiple benefits

2. Land Use Change significantly impacts climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts• Small change in stock of carbon can be large impact on target emissions

• Soil carbon sequestration very important

• Renewable energy - positive and negative impacts

• Water management including securing supply and managing excesses

• New build - high initial emissions, offset by lower lifetime emissions

Emissions and emissions targets

•Stock of carbon in GB soil = 30-40,000 Mt CO2e

= 190-250 times 2050 emissions target

•annual emissions from livestock = 30 Mt CO2e; 20% of 2050 target

•emissions from 2006 cropland change = 15 Mt CO2e = absorption by land converted to forest

•new settlements emit 6-7Mt CO2e/yr

Sources: Climate Change Committee (2008) and from Thomson and van Oijen (2008)

Mt = million tonnes

What next

•Land use road trip – talking to those who are already looking at land use in an integrated way (Macaulay, SRI, SERC, UAE, Cranfield, RELU)

•Designing synthesis report – cluster findings around 4-5 major themes

•Scenarios and systems workshop, issues-focused workshops

•Planning diagnostic phase

•Circulate ToR for valuation workstream shortly