Flexible Land Research Articles

Long-Term Evolution of Ecologically Fragile Waterside Rural Areas and Strategies for Local Spatial Planning: An Empirical Study in Baiyangdian, China

Under the dynamics of urbanization and counterurbanization, rural areas in China face both challenges and opportunities with the government’s new-town policy. A comprehensive analysis is essential for developing effective strategies. Characterized by traditional water settlements and high ecological sensitivity, Anxin County, which encompasses 50% of Baiyangdian Lake, was selected as a case study. Anxin County was incorporated into the National New Area in 2017, and it served as an experimental site for green ecological development. This study aims to provide insights into the sustainable spatial planning of Anxin County’s settlements by examining their long-term evolution and locational differences, modeling the driving mechanisms, and proposing differentiated spatial planning strategies based on predictive outcomes. Our research findings indicate the folllowing: (1) Anxin County’s settlements have expanded significantly in the past, with a notable surge between 1975 and 1996. Initially, semi-waterside settlements experienced the fastest growth before the 1970s, followed by land settlements. (2) Natural and socio-economic factors are modeled as independent variables to explain the evolution of settlement areas. The results indicate a decreasing impact of natural factors and an increasing influence of socio-economic factors over time. Furthermore, the evolution of settlements in water areas is relatively straightforward and random, whereas land settlements are influenced by a complex array of factors. (3) Utilizing the model to predict settlement growth, the study identifies settlements requiring relocation, and it proposes the most suitable relocation targets for them. A total of 23 villages, including Bei Tianzhuang and Cai Putai, are identified for relocation, while villages such as Ma Village, Bian Village, and Liu Lizhuang have strong capacities for accepting in-migrants. The study also offers recommendations for enhancing waterfront landscapes, flexible land use, road network systems, and internal construction.

Our cities, our farm lands: The socioeconomic determinants of urban households participation in urban agricultural production under climatic stressors

In Africa, urban agriculture is critical in addressing food security issues, economic and environmental sustainability in rapidly urbanizing regions such as urban Ghana. However, the factors that influence urban residents' participation in urban agricultural production under climate change adaptation has little space in the extant literature. Recognizing the increasing challenges posed by climate change, this study aims to understand the socio-economic factors influencing urban households' participation in agricultural activities and its implications for climate change adaptation and to draw urban households' socio-economic characteristics and their association with participating in urban agricultural production in the era of climate change effects in urban areas of Ghana. A quantitative approach is employed, involving a sample size of 362 urban households' across diverse neighbourhoods. Statistical analyses, including descriptive statistics—frequencies and percentages, inferential statistics—chi-square test and binary regression models, are employed to quantify the relationships between demographic factors and participation levels. The data suggests correlations between demographic variables, such as household size and income are significant at an alpha 0.05 in determining an urban household's participation in urban agricultural production under climatic stressors. Meanwhile, more urban households' in middle and high-class areas participate in urban agriculture than the lower class. Land acquisition is basically through purchasing which is a challenge in urban agriculture production. The study concluded that urban household size and monthly income are influential factors in urban households' participation in urban agricultural production even though land acquisition plays a factor. The study suggests that policymakers and stakeholders should harness the potential of urban agriculture for sustainable development in the era of climate change. This should be done through rolling out pro-poor urban development policies like pro-poor rights and legislation in urban areas; poor access to financial markets; and land tenure reforms that include flexible land holding and access by the poor.

Opportunities for planned retreat and flexible land use in Sweden: Local, regional and national governance perspectives

As the sea level rises and the frequency of intense rains increase, so does the need for climate adaptation. Planning for a successive development of society away from current and future flood prone areas to give room for water is not seen as an alternative in Sweden today, although it could be a strategy that creates long-term security.In this study, we investigated Swedish public authorities' perceptions of planned retreat and flexible land use. This was done through an online survey and interviews directed to officials directly involved in climate adaptation work, at municipalities, County Administration Boards (CABs), Regions, national authorities (NAs), and industry organizations (IOs). The responses were analyzed through the lens of a windows of opportunity approach. The study indicates that the extent to which climate scenarios are used and how far into the future the planning horizon extends in the practical work, varies between governance level which also have impact on the perspectives on planned retreat. The openness for planned retreat and flexible strategies seemed to differ slightly between governance levels in an ascending scale from regions, IOs / NAs, municipalities, to CABs. The survey has generated insights from a large number of respondents at different governance levels sharing their perceptions of retreat and adaptation in Sweden as a main contribution of this work.Difficulties to deal with uncertainties in climate scenarios and considering long-term perspectives were identified as some reasons that close the window for planned retreat. Enabling a flexible use of the land that will gradually become more exposed to flooding and sea level rise could be an intermediate step towards retreat. This would be a way to reframe a closed window of opportunity and begin the process of turning it into something transformative. It could be where the short- and long-term planning meet and a way to reframe our way of thinking about how we live and reside in dynamic waterfront areas, and perhaps lead to a more transformative, safe, and sustainable society for future generations.

The Role of Public-private Partnerships In Land Administration

The earth occupies a special place among the living material conditions of man and is a necessary condition for the existence of society. Thus, it is important to see how effectively the natural, agricultural and economic potential of the land will be used. Unfortunately, under the conditions of the agrarian reform, the possibilities of rational land use were not properly taken into account and, consequently, it was not possible to achieve satisfactory results. It is known that land, as a spatial basis for the location and operation of productive forces, plays an important role in all areas, but it is especially important in agriculture, where land is an instrument of labor and an object of labor. The administration of land, as an important natural resource and a key factor of production is a task of political and socio-economic importance for the country. International experience shows that the necessary condition for the development of an effective market economy is active cooperation between state authorities and business. In the process of institutionalization, this cooperation took on the character of a public-private partnership (PPP) and was renamed public-private partnership. The public-private partnership is a framework that recognizes and structures the role of government in fulfilling its social responsibilities, successfully reforming the sector and implementing public investment, and at the same time integrates the private sector into these processes. Public-private partnerships are vital to economic development as engagement, participation and collaboration contribute to more effective laws and policies. Public-private partnerships in land administration bring flexible and customer-oriented land registration services and significantly improve land registration procedures. In addition, PPP brings a higher level of service delivery, cost-effectiveness, and reduced investment risks to participating parties. Keywords: Land Administration, Public-Private Partnership, Blockchain.

Flexible land: The state and its citizens’ negotiation over land ownership

The former enclaves of Bangladesh and India existed as de facto stateless spaces for almost seventy years before they were exchanged and merged with the host state territories in 2015. Because of their extra-territorial existence, land ownership and transactions remained effectively a local affair in the enclaves. After the exchange, however, enclaves became regular parts of the state territory, and the host state officially recognized private ownership of enclave land. Drawing on fourteen months of ethnographic research in India’s ex-enclaves inside Bangladesh, in this paper, I shed light on the complex and multi-layered process of land formalization. As such, I offer a lens of flexible land to comprehend how the state and the citizens employ numerous resources and tactics in claiming and formalizing land that becomes the simultaneous reasons and results of its flexibility. In so doing, I argue that the key to our understanding of flexible land lies in an attentive reading of legibility, sovereignty, and negotiation in a post-colonial context, especially in South Asia. Thus, flexible land becomes an innovative lens, explained and developed throughout this paper, to address how flexibility functions as an embodiment of land formalization for the citizens and the state in the former enclaves of India inside Bangladesh.

Effects of Grazing on Water Erosion, Compaction and Infiltration on Grasslands

Seventy-seven percent of all agricultural land is related to livestock, meat and dairy, including grazing land and arable fields used for animal feed production. The effect of livestock on the natural environment is well documented. Many types of research describe these effects on biodiversity. The surface runoff and soil erosion on grasslands and pastures are investigated with smaller intensity since grasslands are one of the two major land uses that are considered as natural or at least semi-natural lands. Still, mainly due to overuse, grazing on sloping pasture lands can cause severe soil damage, the trampling can cause compaction, compaction decrease infiltration and thus increase runoff and, consequently, soil loss. There are several consequences of the grazing pressure that cause water erosion and surface runoff above the acceptable limit, such as a dramatic decrease in grass densities and/or above-ground bio-mass, compaction, animal tracks, etc. Related research started as early as 1911 and continues until today. There are several methods to analyse the consequences of grazing pressure, e.g., in situ rainfall simulations, infiltration and soil resilience measurements, modelling of runoff, soil loss and infiltration, calculation of ecological costs, etc. Furthermore, most importantly, scientists are investigating the possibilities for improvement of the achieved unstable grazing system due to bad management. Numerous publications have been publishing results on positive changes with the removal of grazing livestock from the grasslands. However, since the socio-economic situation is changing on Earth, more people requiring the products of the pastures, an optimal grazing solution is greatly needed. One of the solutions can be the planning of the optimal animal unit per area, based on the expected grass yields. However, due to the big differences in yields, caused by the greatly unreliable weather, the solution for the future must be a multifunctional agriculture and a flexible land use.

Opportunities for Planned Retreat and Flexible Land Use in Sweden: Local, Regional and National Governance Perspectives

Opportunities for Planned Retreat and Flexible Land Use in Sweden: Local, Regional and National Governance Perspectives

The Political Economy of Village Level Theocracies in the Ìlàjẹ Coastline, Southwest Nigeria

In 1947, a group of fishermen from the coastal area of Ìlàjẹ, Ondo State, Nigeria who were members of the Aládúrà, an independent Church movement in southwest of Nigeria, came together to establish a theocratic settlement, which they named Ayétòrò. A few years after, other theocratic settlements emerged in quick succession and by 1980 there were more than fifty such villages along the Ìlàjẹ coastline. The pertinent question is why this form of community organization is pervasive among the Ìlàjẹ. The main argument of this article, following ethnographic data collected from four theocratic settlements, which are regarded as the core village theocracies, is that a flexible land tenure regime and a loose traditional political system, among other factors of environmentand kinship structure, ensured easy access to land and served to authenticate the spiritual leadership claims of founders of theocratic settlements. The conclusion reflects on the future of theocratic settlements against the background of increasing modernization along the Ìlàjẹ coastline.

Land certification, rental market participation, and household welfare in rural China

AbstractThe 2009 land reform in China marks a move toward a more flexible land tenure system in rural areas. This study evaluates the effect of this reform on rental market participation and household welfare in rural China. Using a four‐period nationally representative household‐level panel data during 2010–2016, we find that the 2009 land reform increased rental market participation by 6.6 to 7.0 percentage points on average. The effect varies significantly with village and household characteristics. The welfare impact of rental market participation on rural households depends on the type of participation. Specifically, the households renting in land witness an increase in their aggregated income by 10.7% on average through the expansion of farm production, which is accompanied by an increase in aggregated expenditure by approximately 11.2%. Those leasing out their land lose the portion of income on the farm but the aggregated household income is on average statistically unchanged, possibly due to a higher off‐farm income and the inflow of land rental income. Along with the statistically unchanged aggregated expenditure, the households leasing out land experience no significant welfare changes after the 2009 land reform.

Variability is not uncertainty; mobility is not flexibility: Clarifying concepts in pastoralism studies with evidence from Tajikistan

As the “new rangeland paradigm” took shape in the 1990s, climatic variability in pastoral ecosystems was often discussed as “uncertainty”, and the essential mobility of pastoral systems was argued to be possible only with flexible land access rights. These context-specific principles have increasingly been globalized in analyses of diverse pastoral systems. While new understandings of the role of uncertainty and flexibility in pastoral systems have been unquestionably beneficial for particular contexts, uncertainty has been problematically embraced as intrinsically central to pastoral systems.This paper combines a critical review of the literature and field work in Tajikistan’s Rasht Valley to bring into clear relief differences between variability and uncertainty, on the one hand, and mobility and flexibility, on the other. This allows us to see that livestock mobility is a strategy to cope with environmental variability in all pastoral contexts. Flexibility, however, is a strategy to cope with environmental uncertainty that is only present in a subset of pastoral contexts. Importantly, flexibility is not a required precondition for mobility. These realizations carry important implications for governance in pastoral settings. Due to the many challenges of building flexibility into property systems, pastoral land governance should be developed by looking for predictability, and efforts to maintain flexibility should be judicious and empirically well-justified.

Beyond accuracy: evaluating alternative measurement methods in context of Flexible Land Tenure System in Namibia

Namibia currently undergoes a rapid process of urbanisation of 4% annually, visible through an exponential informal settlement growth. Alternative measurement methods in cadastral mapping could secure land tenure in these settlements and fasten land registration. This article investigates the performance of five alternative measurement methods within the Flexible Land Tenure System (FLTS): orthophoto-based boundary demarcation, mapping applications on mobile devices, hand-held GPS, low-cost GNSS with u-blox receiver and GNSS RTK based on the Namibian CORS. The article evaluates all five methods on technical performance, affordability, time efficiency, feasibility, and simplicity. Based on the evaluation, all methods are appropriate for Namibia except for the hand-held GPS method. Low-cost approaches are appropriate for starter titles, whereas high-technology methods are better when requiring higher positioning accuracy (land hold title). Orthophoto-based boundary demarcation is surprisingly less suitable for the Namibian case. Overall, the results support a fit-for-purpose land administration in Namibia.

Pastoralists and peasants: perspectives on agrarian change

ABSTRACT For many years, studies of peasants and pastoralists have run in parallel, creating mutual blind-spots. This article argues that, despite contrasting research traditions and conceptual framings, there are many commonalities. The classic problematics of agrarian studies – around production, accumulation and politics – apply as much to pastoralists as they do to peasants. Processes of social differentiation and class formation, the role of wage labour and questions around mobilisation and politics are consistently relevant. However, a reflection on a large literature on pastoralism across nine world regions reveals that there are nevertheless some important contrasts with classic representations of a settled peasantry. These are: living with and off uncertainty; mobility to respond to variability; flexible land control and new forms of tenure; dynamic social formations; collective social relations for a new moral economy; engaging with complex markets and a new politics for a transforming world. The article concludes by arguing that, under contemporary conditions, these are all important for understanding settled agrarian systems too, as today pastoralists and peasants face many of the same challenges. These seven themes, the article argues, offer a new set of lenses for examining pastoral and peasant settings alike, helping to expand perspectives in agrarian studies.

Revisiting the concept of “fiscal modules”: implications for restoration and conservation programs in Brazil

Fiscal modules (FMs) were created to facilitate the collection of the rural territorial tax in Brazil. In theory, the area of a FM should be enough for a family to have income, survive, and thrive. The current Native Vegetation Protection Law (Law 12.651/2012) gives equal treatment to all people who own up to four FMs through the Environmental Regularization Program for small properties and family agriculture. Thus, FMs are parameters for flexible land allocation, reducing the area in which the restoration of native vegetation is mandatory. In this study, we sought to describe the history of the creation of FMs to verify the correlations between current agricultural and socioeconomic indicators and FM size. We used a case study in the state of Rio de Janeiro in southeast Brazil to analyze how updating the FM affects the Environmental Regularization Program proposed by the Native Vegetation Protection Law. FMs were created in 1979 and set in 1980, but have never been updated. Current data on land use, rate of deforestation, and productivity in rural areas should lead to changes in the FM size and value. Analyzing the data from municipalities in the state of Rio de Janeiro, we found that the groups formed in the cluster analysis differed from the existing FM groups in the state, which range from 5 to 35 ha. This difference may be a consequence of the failure to update the FM parameters, because updating the FM definition may result in less hectares in each FM. This would result in a larger area to be restored, according to the Environmental Regularization Program, and would thus favor the overall goals of forest restoration.

Land use structure optimization based on uncertainty fractional joint probabilistic chance constraint programming

An uncertainty fractional joint probability chance constraint programming is developed to process land use structure optimization under uncertainty. The model integrate uncertainty programming into fractional programming, and the uncertainty programming include interval programming, fuzzy programming, stochastic programming and joint probability chance constraint programming. The results of the study are a series of land use policies in multiple scenarios with interval and deterministic numbers. The advantage of the model include it can (1) effectively integrate the two objectives of economic benefit maximization and pollution minimization by the fractional programming; (2) effectively process the uncertainty by the corresponding uncertainty programming; (3) reflect the impact of uncertainty on system benefit, pollutant discharge, and land use structure policy; and (4) develop a series of possible scenarios and corresponding feasible plans. The results of the study can help planners or decision makers develop flexible land use policy to address the multi-objective problems of maximum, minimum, and uncertainty. The proposed method is universal and can be extended to other cases.

Community Participation in Nature Conservation: The Chinese Experience and Its Implication to National Park Management

Rural communities are taking active roles in conservation. However, the basic modes and content of community participatory approach are seldom summarised or reflected on in China, leaving the use of terms confused and their links to practice disconnected. By reviewing the literature, we traced back to the protected area-community relations from the perspective of features of rural communities, namely knowledge accumulation, social bond, collective actions, and risk-aversion, and reflected on changing roles of community conservation through recognition of these features. Combining case studies and our own research experience, we focused on the de facto practices behind the somewhat casual use of several terms and re-classified community participation in conservation to three modes of community participatory management, community co-management, and community dominant management, along a continuum in which, from low to high level, conservation is more a means rather than an end for the community to be empowered for their own resource management. We argued that the success of community participation must ensure stable and flexible land tenure so that the right to benefit can be guaranteed, and the collective action in managing resources can be achieved by empowerment. In practice, further institutional changes of improvement in the legislation and optimisation in benefit sharing and compensation are needed to promote community participation in a broader social participation context.

Uncertainty analysis of remediation cost and damaged land value for brownfield investment

Flexible land management that allows risk-based remediation approaches can increase local financial assistance in brownfield development investments. The evaluation of brownfields investment has always been mired in uncertainty because of the complexity of contamination and land policy. To clarify the uncertainty in investment costs resulting from a flexible risk-based land management, this research analyzes the uncertainty of remediation costs (Ir) and damaged land value (Ip). Sizable statistical data for 30,000 abandoned factories in Taiwan are used to derive the uncertainty of investment cost. The results show that the range and value of the uncertainty of Ip is more than Ir because the present land value and the change in flexible land management are the main sensitivity factors. The saved investment costs at the 90% confidence interval ranges five orders of magnitude. Moreover, investors could have saved approximately 5.74E+13 USD resulting from Ip and Ir. The study's two major findings with regard to investment risk in brownfield redevelopment are: (1) an explanation of the extent to which investment costs are to be reduced for investors by adjusting remediation goals depending on different land types; (2) characterization of the uncertainty of brownfields in the real investment market for brownfield redevelopment.

Agglomeration near and far, the case of Southern California: supply chains for goods and ideas

Prosperity and economic growth require robust specialization and exchange. This means the formation and maintenance of numerous complex supply chains. These are emergent and include supply chains for things and supply chains for ideas. The former involve transactions; the latter can be via transactions and/or realized positive externalities. All supply chains have a geographic dimension which is also emergent. Firms carefully choose what to make vs what to buy and also where to sell or buy it, near or far. The whole system tends to be a pattern of locations that denote realized transactions (and transactions costs) as well as realized externalities. The city remains a competitive producer if these relationships are encouraged with the attendant costs contained. Cities are “engines of growth.” They offer attractive supply chain formation and management opportunities, including the various spatially situated supply chains for things and ideas. The latter are more complex than textbook discussions of non-rival goods suggest. People are keen to identify and acquire useful knowledge. Consider (1) the advantages of open-source knowledge sharing have been acknowledged; (2) ideas often denote complex tacit knowledge exchange, and (3) access to useful knowledge is priced in land markets and impacts location choice. Favorable networking and location opportunities are significant. Flexible land markets facilitate the availability of such opportunities. Access to pools of human capital is clearly beneficial, but the ability to tailor access to the peculiar requirements of the firm is even better. Detailed firm location data for various sectors for the Los Angeles metropolitan areas are analyzed to support our claims. We estimate Ripley k-functions and note differences by industry as well as firm size. There is agglomeration that is near as well as far. This finding complicates “death of distance” as well as “clustering” discussions.

Diffusing Risk and Building Resilience through Innovation: Reciprocal Exchange Relationships, Livelihood Vulnerability and Food Security amongst Smallholder Farmers in Papua New Guinea

This paper examines how oil palm migrant farmers in Papua New Guinea are responding to shortages of land for food gardening. Despite rapid population growth and planting nearly all of their land to oil palm, virtually all families continue to grow sufficient food for their families. The paper outlines the diverse range of adaptive strategies that households have employed to maintain food security, involving both intensification and innovation in farming systems. While gains from intensification have been significant and built resilience, they have been incremental, whereas innovation has been transformative and led to large gains in resilience. The adoption of more flexible land access arrangements on state leasehold land that ‘revive’ and adapt indigenous systems of land sharing and exchange that operated through kinship networks on customary land are innovative; they have increased the supply of land for food gardening thereby reducing risk for individual households and the broader smallholder community. The paper highlights the value of understanding farmer-driven innovations and the role of indigenous institutions and cultural values in sustaining and enhancing household food security.

Hunter-Gatherers and Human Evolution: New Light on Old Debates

One of the most persistent debates in anthropology and related disciplines has been over the relative weight of aggression and competition versus nonaggression and cooperation as drivers of human behavioral evolution. The literature on hunting and gathering societies—past and present—has played a prominent role in these debates. This review compares recent literature from both sides of the argument and evaluates how accurately various authors use or misuse the ethnographic and archaeological research on hunters and gatherers. Whereas some theories provide a very poor fit with the hunter-gatherer evidence, others build their arguments around a much fuller range of the available data. The latter make a convincing case for models of human evolution that place at their center cooperative breeding and child-rearing, as well as management of conflict, flexible land tenure, and balanced gender relations.

Conservation Reserve Program enrollment decisions in the Prairie Pothole Region

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) has retained support from farmers and the conservation community for three decades. Beneficial to farmers, the program is voluntary, does not require a permanent easement or the transfer of property rights, and provides fixed income and other financial support. However, high and volatile commodity prices in recent years have increased the opportunity cost of participating, and program enrollment has decreased. This paper considers the influence of contract design on the enrollment decision and estimates the trade-offs between rental rates and program attributes. A stated preference discrete choice experiment was completed during in-person interviews with farmers in the Prairie Pothole Region. Rental payment and establishment cost paid by the government had a direct relationship with likelihood of program enrollment. Tighter restrictions on the use of enrolled land had a negative effect, especially among farmers with livestock. Likelihood of enrollment increased with age, and age decreased responsiveness to increasing maximum bid and to tighter restrictions on land use. Expression of concerns about the CRP affected the degree of responsiveness among farm operators to changes in program attributes. Addressing these concerns through program design or education may serve to increase interest in the program. Farmers were willing to take a lower rental payment under program conditions they considered more favorable including an increased government share for stand establishment and a flexible land use policy. Consideration to introducing CRP contracts with flexible attributes, especially land use constraints, is warranted.