A global environmental constitution for the Anthropocenes climate crisis

In this study, historical biodiversity hotspots in the midwestern United States were compared with present-day land ownership and use. Species richness of trees, shrubs, and vines was derived from 19th century land survey records from eight states. Species recorded during the survey of a township (93 km2) accurately measured historical species richness. At a state level, analysis of variance was used to compare average historical species richness for 370 townships across five present-day land ownership and use categories (City, Federal, Rural, State, Town, and Tribal). Three states (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois) had no significant differences in the historical species richness across present-day land ownership and use categories. Five states (Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin) had significant differences in average historical species richness across present-day land ownership and use. These differences represent potential biodiversity conservation or potential loss of species due to land conversion. In Missouri and Minnesota, townships with the highest historical species richness were presently in federal or tribal ownership, respectively, which represents a high likelihood of conservation of species. In Wisconsin and Michigan historical biodiversity hotspots were located at present-day towns and cities, which represents a high likelihood of loss of historical species. Iowa had a mixed results with historical biodiversity hotspots on land presently occupied by cities (loss of species) and land in state ownership (potential conservation). This study demonstrated the value of using historical land survey records to reconstruct the location of former biodiversity hotspots for conservation planning and the establishment of restoration benchmarks.

IntroductionThe adaptive management strategy of the cultivated land use system is crucial for achieving sustainable development, particularly when viewed from the perspective of perceptual behavior. This study integrated farmers’ behavior, perceptions, and willingness into the resilience evaluation index system of the cultivated land use system.MethodsBy resilience calculation method of cultivated land use system and linear regression method, it also explored the effect of farmer differentiation on the resilience of cultivated land use systems under the influence of socioeconomic systems, thereby providing a scientific reference for the adaptive management of cultivated land use systems.ResultsThe key findings are as follows: First, in general, the production resilience of the peasant household cultivated land use system was low, with significant resilience differentiation of resource elements and stratification of ecological and scale structures. However, the total resilience remained relatively stable. Second, farmers’ cultivated land use systems exhibit uneven resilience, with a lack of production and ecological protection, indicating low efficiency and weak functioning of the cultivated land use system. Third, farmers’ differentiation into non-agricultural employment is high, with low dependence on land. The resilience of the cultivated land use system varies significantly among different types of farmers, with imbalance and production deficiency being the main types of resilience in the farmland use system. Fourth, the economic differentiation of farmers and the differentiation of cultivated land use negatively affected the resilience of the cultivated land use system; the more pronounced the differentiation, the lower the resilience.DiscussionBased on these findings, the primary management strategies to enhance the resilience and adaptability of the cultivated land use system include improving the production resilience of the system, increasing the enthusiasm of different types of farmers to invest in the resource elements of the cultivated land use system, promoting the transformation of ecological protection consciousness and behavior among various types of farmers, and improving the willingness for cultivated land transfer.

Examining inequities in species loss due to land use in China from an interregional trade perspective

Private Sector-led Urban Development Projects. Management, Partnerships and Effects in the Netherlands and the UK

Private Sector-led Urban Development Projects. Management, Partnerships and Effects in the Netherlands and the UK

Central to this research lays the concept of private sector-led urban development projects (Heurkens, 2010). Such projects involve project developers taking a leading role and local authorities adopting a facilitating role, in managing the development of an urban area, based on a clear public-private role division. Such a development strategy is quite common in Anglo-Saxon urban development practices, but is less known in Continental European practices. Nonetheless, since the beginning of the millennium such a development strategy also occurred in the Netherlands in the form of ‘concessions’. However, remarkably little empirical knowledge is available about how public and private actors collaborate on and manage private sector-led urban development projects. Moreover, it remains unclear what the effects of such projects are. This dissertation provides an understanding of the various characteristics of private sector-led urban development projects by conducting empirical case study research in the institutional contexts of the Netherlands and the UK. The research provides an answer to the following research question: What can we learn from private sector-led urban development projects in the Netherlands and UK in terms of the collaborative and managerial roles of public and private actors, and the effects of their (inter)actions? Indications for a market-oriented Dutch urban development practice Urban development practice in the Netherlands has been subject to changes pointing towards more private sector involvement in the built environment in the past decades. Although the current economic recession might indicate otherwise, there are several motives that indicate a continuation of private sector involvement and a private leadership role in Dutch urban development projects in the future. First, a shift towards more market-oriented development practice is the result of an evolutionary process of increased ‘neoliberalization’ and the adoption of Anglo-Saxon principles in Dutch society. Despite its Rhineland roots with a focus on welfare provision, in the Netherlands several neoliberal principles (privatization, decentralization, deregulation) have been adopted by government and incorporated in the management of organizations (Bakker et al., 2005). Hence, market institutionalization on the one hand, and rising civic emancipation on the other, in current Western societies prevents a return towards hierarchical governance. Second, the result of such changes is the emergence of a market-oriented type of planning practice based on the concept of ‘development planning’. Public-Private Partnerships and the ‘forward integration’ of market parties (De Zeeuw, 2007) enforce the role of market actors. In historical perspective, Boelens et al. (2006) argue that Dutch spatial planning always has been characterized by public-private collaborations in which governments facilitated private and civic entrepreneurship. Therefore, post-war public-led spatial planning with necessary government intervention was a ‘temporary hiccup’, an exception to the rule. Third, the European Commission expresses concerns about the hybrid role of public actors in Dutch institutionalized PPP joint ventures. EU legislation opts for formal public-private role divisions in realizing urban projects based on Anglo-Saxon law that comply with the legislative tendering principles of competition, transparency, equality, and public legitimacy. Fourth, experiences with joint ventures in the Netherlands are less positive as often is advocated. Such institutionalized public-private entities have seldom generated the assumed added value, caused by misconceptions about the objectives of both partners grounded in incompatible value systems. This results in contra-productive levels of distrust, time-consuming partnership formations, lack of transparency, and compromising decision-making processes (Teisman & Klijn, 2002), providing a need for other forms of collaboration. Finally, current financial retrenchments in the public sector and debates about the possible abundance of Dutch active land development policies point towards a lean and mean government that moves away from risk-bearing participation and investment in urban projects and leaves this to the market. Importantly, Van der Krabben (2011b) argues that the Dutch active public land development policies can be considered as an international exception, and advocates for facilitating land development policies. In this light, it becomes highly relevant to study private sector-led urban development as a future Dutch urban development strategy. Integrative urban management approach This research is rooted in the research school of Urban Area Development within the Department of Real Estate and Housing at the Faculty of Architecture (Delft University of Technology). It is a relatively young academic domain which views urban development most profoundly as a complex management assignment (Bruil et al., 2004; Franzen et al., 2011). This academic school uses an integrative perspective with a strong practice-orientation and carries out solution-oriented design research. Here, the integration involves bridging various actor interests, spatial functions, spatial scales, academic domains, knowledge and skills, development goals, and links process with content aspects. Such a perspective does justice to complex societal processes. Therefore it provides a fruitful ground for studying urban development aimed at developing conceptual knowledge and product for science and practice. Such integrative perspective and practice-orientation forms the basis of this research and has been applied in the following manner. In order to create an understanding of the roles of public and private actors in private sector-led urban development, this research takes a management perspective based on an integrative management approach. This involves viewing management more broadly as ‘any type of direct influencing’ urban development projects, and therefore aims at bridging often separated management theories (Osborne, 2000a). Hence, an integrative management approach assists in both understanding urban development practices and projects and constructing useful conceptual tools for practitioners and academics. Integrative approaches attempt to combine a number of different elements into a more holistic management approach (Black & Porter, 2000). Importantly, it does not view the management of projects in isolation but in its entire complexity and dynamics. Therefore, our management approach combines two integrative management theories; the open systems theory (De Leeuw, 2002) and contingency theory. The former provides opportunities to study the management of a project in a structured manner. The latter emphasizes that there is no universally effective way of managing and recognizes the importance of contextual circumstances. Hence, an integrative management approach favors incorporating theories from multiple academic domains such as political science, economics, law, business administration, and organizational and management concepts. Hence, it moves away from the classical academic division between planning theory and property theory, and organization and management theories. It positions itself in between such academic domains, and aims at bridging theoretical viewpoints by following the concept of planning ánd markets (Alexander, 2001) rather than concepts such as ‘planning versus markets’, public versus private sector, and organization versus management. Also, such an integrative view values the complexity and dynamics of empirical urban development practices. More specifically, this research studies urban development projects as object, as urban areas are the focus point of spatial intervention and public-private interaction (Daamen, 2010), and thus collaboration and management. Here, public planning processes and private development processes merge with each other. Thus, our research continues to build upon the importance of studying and reflecting on empirical practices and projects (e.g. Healey, 2006). In addition to these authors, this research does so by using meaningful integrative concepts that reflect empirical realities of urban projects. Thereby, this research serves to bridge management sciences with management practices (Van Aken, 2004; Mintzberg, 2010) through iterative processes of reflecting on science and practice. Moreover, the integrative management approach applied in this research assists in filling an academic gap, namely the lack of management knowledge about public-private interaction in urban development projects. Despite the vast amount of literature on the governance of planning practices (e.g. DiGaetano & Strom, 2003), and Public-Private Partnerships (e.g. Osborne, 2000b), remarkable little knowledge exists about what shifting public-private relationships mean for day-to-day management by public and private actors in development projects. Hence, here we follow the main argument made by public administration scholar Klijn (2008) who claims that it is such direct actor influence that brings about the most significant change to the built environment. An integrative urban management model (see Figure 2.3) based on the open systems approach has been constructed which forms a conceptual representation of empirical private sectorled urban development projects. This model serves as an analytical tool to comprehend the complexity of managing such projects. In this research, several theoretical insights about publicprivate relations and roles are used to understand different contextual and organizational factors that affect the management of private sector-led urban development projects. Hence, a project context exists

AimThe anthropogenic climate change and land use change are considered two of the main factors that are altering biodiversity at the global scale. An evaluation that combined both factors can be relevant to detect which species could be the most vulnerable and reveal the regions of highest stability or susceptibility to biodiversity. We aimed to: (a) assess the effect of climate change and land use on the distribution of Cerrado plant species for different countries where they occur, (b) evaluate the effectiveness of the current network of protected areas (PAs) to safeguards species under different greenhouse–gas (GHG) emissions and land use scenarios, and (c) estimate the vulnerability of species based on protection effectiveness and habitat loss.LocationBolivia, Brazil and Paraguay.MethodsWe modelled the distribution of 1,553 plant species of Cerrado and evaluated species range loss caused by present and future land use and two GHG for 2050 and 2080. We assessed species vulnerability combining the representativeness of species within conservation units with the loss of species’ ranges outside PAs.ResultsWe found that climate change and land use will cause great damage to Cerrado flora by 2050 and 2080, even under optimistic conditions. The greatest impacts of land use will occur in the regions where the greatest richness will be harboured. The conservation of the species will be seriously affected since the PA network is not as effective in safeguarding them under current or future conditions.Main conclusionsThe low level of protection together with the losses caused by the advance of agricultural lands will lead most species being highly vulnerable. Due to the distinct impacts of climate and land use over the three countries, conservation strategies should be implemented at transboundary and national levels.

Wetland coverage and type distributions vary systematically by ecoregion across the Great Lakes Basin. Land use and subsequent changes in wetland type distributions also vary among ecoregions. Incidence of wetland disturbance varies significantly within ecoregions but tends to increase from north to south with intensity of land use. Although the nature of disturbance activities varies by predominant land-use type, mechanisms of impact and potential response endpoints appear to be similar across agricultural and urban areas. Based on the proportion of associated disturbance activities and proportion response endpoints affected, the highest ranking mechanisms of impact are sedimentation/turbidity, retention time, eutrophication, and changes in hydrologic timing. Disturbance activities here are defined as events that cause wetland structure or function to vary outside of a normal range, while stressors represent the individual internal or external agents (causes) that act singly or in combination to impair one or more wetland functions. Responses most likely associated with disturbance activities based on shared mechanisms of impact are 1) shifts in plant species composition, 2) reduction in wildlife production, 3) decreased local or regional biodiversity, 4) reduction in fish and/or other secondary production, 5) increased flood peaks/frequency, 6) increased above-ground production, 7) decreased water quality downstream, and 8) loss of aquatic plant species with high light compensation points. General strategies and goals for wetland restoration can be derived at the ecoregion scale using information on current and historic wetlands extent and type distributions and the distribution of special-concern species dependent on specific wetland types or mosaics of habitat types. Restoration of flood-control and water-quality improvement functions will require estimates of wetland coverage relative to total land area or specific land uses (e.g., deforestation, urbanization) at the watershed scale. The high incidence of disturbance activities in the more developed southern ecoregions of both Canada and the U.S. is reflected in the loss of species across all wetland types. The species data here suggest that an effective regional strategy must include restoration of a diversity of wetland types, including the rarer wetland types (wet meadows, fens), as well as forested swamps, which were extensive historically. The prevalence of anthropogenic stresses and openwater habitats likely contributes to the concentration of exotic species in inland wetlands of the southern Great Lakes ecoregions. Vegetation removal and site disturbance are the best-documented causes for plant invasions, and encroachment activities are common in marshes and ponds of the southern ecoregions.

Purpose: Urban expansion and growth is one of the basic characteristics of urbanisation process. This expansion has telling effects on available land space in urban areas. The continuing reduction in available land space has led to the encroachment on wetland areas and its subsequent development. This study was carried out in Port Harcourt Municipality Rivers State. The aim was to assess development projects in terms of land use on converted wetlands.
 Methodology: Purposive sampling technique was used to select four sites out of twenty four reclaimed sites identified within the study area.Three hundred and eighty (380) household heads from eight proximate communities to the four selected reclaimed sites was arrived at with the aid of Taro Yamane formulae and were interviewed using purposive sampling technique. The extent of wetland loss to physical development in the study area was ascertained by running a time series analysis using the Geographic Information System (GIS) technique. Data on physical development projects presently sited on the reclaimed wetlands were identified and their coordinates collected using handheld Global Positioning System (GPS), a process known as ground truthing. The coordinates of the different development projects presently sited on reclaimed wetlands so collected were interfaced with Google earth images of the different locations using the place-mark device available on Google earth software.
 Findings: The study revealed that predominant land use in site A (Eastern Bypass) is industrial land use and a growing competing administrative land use; in site B (Borikiri Sand field), the predominant Landuse is residential with a growing competing commercial land use; In Site C (Eagle Island), the predominant land use is residential and in Site D (Ibeto), the predominant land use is residential with a growing commercial and industrial hubs. 
 Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The study therefore recommends that reclaimed wetlands in the study area be properly plan and the different development projects earmarked for such site be fully implemented; Government should strictly enforce the land use control measures utilizing sub-division regulation, zoning ordinance, building and housing codes including site and service approach to ensure proper utilisation of reclaimed sites.

Land use intensification is associated with loss of biodiversity and altered ecosystem functioning. Until now most studies on the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning focused on random loss of species, while loss of rare species that usually are the first to disappear received less attention. Here we test if the effect of rare microbial species loss on plant productivity depends on the origin of the microbial soil community. Soils were sampled from three land use types at two farms. Microbial communities with increasing loss of rare species were created by inoculating sterilized soils with serially diluted soil suspensions. After 8 months of incubation, the effects of the different soil communities on abiotic soil properties, soil processes, microbial community composition, and plant productivity was measured. Dilution treatments resulted in increasing species loss, which was in relation to abundance of bacteria in the original field soil, without affecting most of the other soil parameters and processes. Microbial species loss affected plant biomass positively, negatively or not at all, depending on soil origin, but not on land use history. Even within fields the effects of dilution on plant biomass varied between replicates, suggesting heterogeneity in microbial community composition. The effects of medium and severe species loss on plant biomass were similar, pointing toward a saturating effect of species loss. We conclude that changes in the composition of the soil microbial community, including rare species loss, can affect plant productivity, depending on the composition of the initial microbial community. Future work on the relation between function and species loss effects should address this variation by including multiple sampling origins.

Land use is one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss. However, many life cycle assessment studies do not yet assess this effect because of the lack of reliable and operational methods. Here, we present an approach to modeling the impacts of regional land use on plants, mammals, birds, amphibians, and reptiles. Our global analysis calculates the total potential damage caused by all land uses within each WWF ecoregion and allocates this total damage to different types of land use per ecoregion. We use an adapted (matrix-calibrated) species-area relationship to model the potential regional extinction of nonendemic species caused by reversible land use and land use change impacts. The potential global extinction of endemic species is used to assess irreversible, permanent impacts. Model uncertainty is assessed using Monte Carlo simulations. The impacts of land use on biodiversity varied strongly across ecoregions, showing the highest values in regions where most natural habitat had been converted in the past. The approach is thus retrospective and was able to highlight the impacts in highly disturbed regions. However, we also illustrate how it can be applied to prospective assessments using scenarios of future land use. Uncertainties, modeling choices, and validity are discussed.

Urban agriculture can enhance the resilience of neighborhoods by providing fresh food in times of natural disasters; however, there is little empirical evidence to support this. Therefore, this study proposes a methodology to identify patterns of agricultural production in urban areas by quantifying self-sufficiency rates in vegetable weight and key nutrients. A spatial grid cell analysis using a geographic information system (GIS) identifies the current and potential self-sufficiency of each land use pattern in Tokyo. In a total of 1479 grid cells, the dominant land use and locations of 49,263 agricultural plots led to the categorization of six distinguishable land use patterns. The results showed that Tokyo has a fruit and vegetable self-sufficiency of 4.27% and a potential of 11.73%. The nutritional self-sufficiency of selected nutrients was the highest in vitamin K (6.54%), followed by vitamin C (3.84%) and vitamin A (1.92%). Peri-urban areas showed the highest resilience in relation to aggregated risks and population density because of the mixture in agricultural and urban land uses.

The biodiversity of stream fishes is critically threatened globally, and a major factor leading to the loss of biodiversity is anthropogenic land use in stream catchments, which act as stressors to stream fishes. Declines in the biodiversity of stream fish are often identified by a loss of species or fewer individuals comprising assemblages, but biological degradation can also occur with increases in non-native species and/or the spread of fish tolerant to anthropogenic land use, suggesting the importance of accounting for the distinctness of assemblages along with richness and diversity to best characterize the response of stream fish assemblages to anthropogenic landscape stressors. We summarized stream fish assemblages from 10,522 locations through multiple biodiversity indices and then quantified index responsiveness to natural landscape variables and anthropogenic land use in stream network catchments across five freshwater ecoregions in the temperate mesic portion of the United States. Indices included species richness, Shannon’s diversity, Pielou’s evenness, beta diversity, taxonomic diversity, and taxonomic distinctness. First, we tested for correlations among indices across freshwater ecoregions and found that while species richness and Shannon’s diversity were always highly correlated, taxonomic distinctiveness was not highly correlated with other biodiversity indices measured except taxonomic diversity. Then, we used multiple linear regression to predict biodiversity indices in each of the five freshwater ecoregions to identify significant landscape variables from natural landscape and anthropogenic land uses. Most indices were consistently predicted by catchment area, and many were predicted by elevation, except for beta diversity, emphasizing the importance of these natural landscape variables on biodiversity. In contrast, taxonomic distinctness was often predicted by the amount of urban land use in the catchment, but the direction of the relationship varied. The proportion of agriculture land use in the network catchment was a more consistent predictor of species richness, beta diversity, and Shannon’s diversity. Our analyses show that taxonomic distinctness in freshwater fishes characterize a unique element of biodiversity in relationships with anthropogenic land uses in a streams network catchment. Taxonomic distinctness may also be an effective metric for the bioassessment of stream fishes along with richness and diversity indices to help preserve biodiversity in regard to current and future anthropogenic land uses.

The objectives of this study are to develop life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methods that enable an assessment of the impact on the biodiversity by land use categorized in general land use types and to obtain the implications for an assessment of global land use impact, using the methods in the Life Cycle Impact Assessment Method based on Endpoint Modeling (LIME). Expected Increase in Number of Extinct Species (EINES), which was calculated by summing the increments in extinction risks of each threatened vascular plant species due to land transformation, was used as an indicator of damage to biodiversity. EINES per land use category was calculated using data from the “Threatened Wildlife of Japan, Red Data Book 2nd ed. Volume 8, Vascular Plants” (hereinafter referred to as “RDB”). The EINES of wetlands and grassland was relatively high. The number of species that were assumed to exist in forestland was large; however, the EINES of forestland was relatively low. It was considered to be influenced by the huge area of forestland in Japan. EINES of other land was also relatively high, and it was considered to be the reflection of the existence of species whose habitat is peculiar, such as limestone areas or high mountains. Damage factors developed for Japan in this study have broad potential application, as they have more general land use categories than those in LIME 1 and 2; however, it will be necessary to develop damage factors in other countries, taking into account threatened species categories and regional differences in the importance of various land use categories. It is also necessary to accumulate detailed data on threatened species across the planet to develop worldwide damage factors.

The Argentinean Pampean plain has been under agriculture and farming since colonial times. Its loessic soils have the highest production capacity in Argentina, in spite of which it is suffering extensive land use change due to urban expansion. The aim of this work is to evaluate the consequences of urban expansion on environmental conditions, including population welfare. An integrated analysis was carried out based on sets of ecological, physical support of production, land use and social condition variables. We hypothesize that land use change may generate unstable situations that negatively affect the natural-social system resilience, with the consequent loss of sustainability, and that this effect is perceived through the consistency among the factors on which the system resilience depends. The prediction is that a poor association between physical support and land use entails a misuse of resources that will be reflected on the social conditions. The results show that the prediction is fulfilled in some cases but not in others. Four combinations of adjustment between physical support and land use, and their consequence on social conditions were found. Land use is reflected on the social conditions, either because of social welfare as a consequence of proper land use, or because of the adverse social conditions associated to the improper allocation of land to uses for which it is not suitable. Alternatively, either social indicators of poverty prevail despite proper land use, or social welfare occurs in the presence of improper land use. In both cases, land use is not reflected in social conditions. The consequences of the four conditions on land management planning are discussed.