Land Constraints Research Articles

Escape underway: Malthusian pressures in late imperial Moscow

Did late Imperial Russia suffer from Malthusian pressures? At first glance, with its rising levels of population and per capita income, it seems Russia was in a transition away from Malthusian equilibrium. However, the joint increase in population and per capita income could also have been the result of Russia’s high land-to-labor ratio. Which of the two is it? Such a problem is a frequent one in economic history, as many frontier economies have high land-to-labor ratios, which foil the researcher’s ability to determine whether an economy was transitioning or whether it was growing because of weak land constraints. In this paper, we use quarterly demographic and economic data from Moscow (which we take as a proxy for Russia) in conjunction with a Cointegrated Vector Autoregression approach to determine whether the Russian economy was transitioning away from a Malthusian equilibrium. We find signs of Malthusian pressures still operating while wages had stopped responding to changes in death and birth rates. This combination suggests that a vulnerable transition was truly underway even though a Malthusian shadow remained.

Land's Constraints and Possibilities–High‐Altitude Farmers in the Eastern Alps

AbstractHigh‐altitude farmers in South Tyrol (Italy) live and work in the mountain belt of the Eastern Alps and are the focus of an ongoing research project on which first results are presented here. Located between 1200 and 1900 m above sea level, some of their farmsteads are among the highest in Western Europe. This historico‐political development of the region accounts for the relatively favorable situation of these farmers. Since the 1970s, the regional government has regularly subsidized these smallholdings, to ensure that the farmers can remain on their land and market their produce. Keeping the mountain sites cultivated is crucial for ecological reasons but also for the tourist industry on which the region and its people depend heavily. How do farmers approach the apparent contradiction between self‐sufficiency that lies at the core of their work, and, the resources that they need and receive from external agencies?

Peatland restoration as an affordable nature-based climate solution with fire reduction and conservation co-benefits in Indonesia

Ecosystem restoration is increasingly employed as a nature-based solution to a range of crises. Decisions over restoration must balance limited resources, land constraints, and competing demands. Peatlands in Southeast Asia have been heavily impacted by agricultural expansion over the past three decades, with Indonesia now accounting for a substantial proportion of degraded tropical peatlands globally. Using spatial linear programming, we focus on prioritizing peatland restoration sites in Indonesia for fire risk reduction, climate change mitigation, species conservation, and cost-effectiveness. The study finds that restoring peatlands at 1 km2 planning units can generate multiple co-benefits such as reduced fire risks by 6%–37%, attenuated extinction risks of peatland specialist bird species and mitigated climate change potential of 0.002–0.36 Pg CO2e yr−1. These benefits were reduced but still of comparable magnitude when larger areas of planning (defined by village and catchment boundaries) were used. The results, although indicative, support tropical peatland restoration as a cost-efficient strategy for mitigating climate change, reducing fire, conserving biodiversity, and supporting sustainable development that can be offset by carbon prices of USD 2–37/Mg CO2e.

Economic losses in dairy farms due to heat stress in sub-tropics: evidence from North Indian Plains.

The present study assesses the sensitivity of dairy animals to thermal stress, and projects the economic losses due to heat stress in the Trans and Upper Gangetic plains region of India with Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 climate scenario for the time slice 2010-2039 and two subperiods, 2020-2029 and 2030-2039. The projections were carried out for two different scenarios of population and productivity growth of dairy animals, Business-as-Usual (BAU) and Alternate, whereby land, feed and fodder constraints were applied. The potential annual loss in milk production due to heat stress in the region was estimated to be around 361 and 377 thousand tons for the time slice 2010-2039 under BAU and Alternate scenario, respectively. In economic terms these losses, at current prices, would be equivalent to INR 11.93 billion and INR 12.44 billion, respectively. This gives an indication of the level of financial investment that can be made in adaptation measures to arrest the loss due to climate change.

Building consensus and increasing self-efficacy: participatory scenarios as a tool for developing food security solutions in West Africa

Food security in West Africa is threatened by climate change, as well as demographic shifts and land constraints. Communities and policy-makers in the region need to plan for long term sustainability and food security when many conditions are highly uncertain. Participatory scenario planning has been proposed as a tool for building strategic action in the face of uncertainty. Proponents have made claims that this process can generate consensus and self-efficacy for action, but these claims have not been tested empirically. We used two parallel scenario processes in Ghana and Mali, designed with the goal of prioritizing strategic actions for food security, to gather data from participants on their views of the top challenges to food security in their region, the causes of those challenges, and actors who should be implementing solutions. The data indicate that the scenario process did promote consensus among participants on these topics, as well as self- and collective-efficacy to take action, and that these characteristics persisted past the duration of the scenario process. Agreement among local and regional actors around what actions to take to promote food security and belief that they are capable of implementing those actions are key prerequisites for planning under conditions of high uncertainty. Participatory scenario exercises are therefore a useful tool.

Assessment of the Soil Information and Analysis of Related Land Constraints to the Selected Detailed Town Planning Schemes in Morogoro Municipal

In Tanzania, land use and planning are under the land authority. They are responsible for ensuring sustainable land use and management in urban and rural areas. Nevertheless, lack of adherence to the soil to detailed soil properties and land use constraints by urban planners, urban explosions in different areas in Tanzania, particularly Morogoro have been a big issue of concern as it poses danger to the environment and also to themselves as urban areas they are also vulnerable to land use constraints such as flood, erosion, water logging, erosion hazards and rock outcrop. This study aims to assess the available soil information and analyze land constraints related to the Selected Detailed Town Planning Schemes in Morogoro Municipal so as to address failures of the current urban planning approach. Detailed soil information provided by the municipality and literature of previous studies were accessed. A total of six land use constraints: poor drainage and waterlogging, rock outcrop, erosion hazard, flood hazard, soil depth and surface slope were analyzed in this study to map major land use constraints in the study area. A geospatial analysis approach was used to combine these constraints so as to map total land use constraints and asses the spatial distribution of the constraints. Finally, detailed land use schemes accessed from the Morogoro land management authority were digitized and overlayed on the constraints map. Detailed schemes approved in areas of Mkundi have shown to be a success as these areas have the lowest land use constraints whilst areas of Kilakala, and Mlimani has been a failure due to high slope, erosion hazards and shallow soil, the middle part of Morogoro including the new Kingalu market have been a failure and costly due to flood and water logging mitigations.

Constraints in Adoption of Laser Land Levelling Technology in Haryana

The study analyzed perceptions of farmers about laser land levelling and constraints faced by them in adoption of this resource conservation technology in Sirsa and Karnal district of Haryana. Mean percent score tool of statistics was used to rank perceptions and constraints of farmers. It was noticed that 97.00 per cent respondent farmers believed that there is reduction in irrigation cost. 80.00 per cent believed that laser land levelling adoption helped in better weed management. Also, it was examined that major constraint was non-availability of machines due to shorter window between two consecutive crops. Study of diffusion revealed that fellow farmers and relatives were major source of diffusion. 86.25 per cent of laser land levelling service provided by private players showing dominance of private investment. It was also observed that laser land levelling is a scale neutral technology because it was adopted by all categories of farmers and not biased towards large farmers. It was observed that under scheme Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY) laser leveller along with tractor and operator at a custom hiring centre (CHC) was provided at nominal rate Rs. 1075/day while Cooperatives provided laser leveller at rupees 575 per acre.

Global outlook on large-scale nuclear power development strategies

As of today, nuclear power together with hydropower provides three-quarters of global low-carbon electricity generation. Over the past 60 years since the time of its inception, the use of nuclear power has reduced CO2 emissions by over 60 gigatonnes. There is no doubt that nuclear power can play a major, and maybe even a decisive role in decarbonizing the electricity sector, as it is evident from the current energy mix of some European countries, especially France, and major economic powers like the Unites States, Russia and South Korea. It is also evident that in most advanced economies nuclear power has entered a phase of gradual decline with little new investment coming into new projects, regardless of the world’s desperate need for more low-carbon electricity. Although existing reactor and their corresponding fuel cycle technologies have enabled the global nuclear power fleet to reach ~ 400 GWe of net installed capacity, there is growing concern that the scale of NPP shutdowns expected in Europe and North America could offset new capacity additions in Asian markets. Theoretically, renewable energy could fill the void left by reactors taken offline but there is strong evidence that the potential of wind and solar for global decarbonization is limited by material, land and economic constraints. Large-scale renewable systems would also require massive energy storage capacity that would hamper economic sustainability of the energy supply for developing countries. Taking into account the potential benefits of developing nuclear power, some countries are determined to expand its share in their energy mix through technological innovation and application of new strategies, directed at improving or completely resolving current issues related to economics, environmental concerns or non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. There are many states in the world today pursuing some sort of nuclear power development. A limited number of countries envision expanding or transforming their nuclear energy system using truly game-changing strategies based on innovative reactor, fuel cycle and waste management technologies. The focus of this paper is to give an overview of the approaches to large-scale nuclear power development being applied today in Russia, China, USA and India.

Physical Potentials and Constraints of Tidal Peat Swamps for Agriculture (Case Study of Rasau Jaya District, West Kalimantan Province, Indonesia)

Tidal swamps which are widespread in lowland areas have the potential to be used for agricultural activities. The amount of rain potential available in this type of land can be used to supply water for irrigation purposes so that plants grow optimally. However, the tidal potential especially on the peat swamps area may have a negative impact, namely the occurrence of nutrient leaching from the soil, which is harmful to plants. Rasau Jaya, a tidal lowland area with peat swamp soil characteristic, is an area allocated for rice and corn cultivation. The study was conducted with the aim to determine the physical potential and constraints of land and water management in Rasau Jaya for the cultivation of both types of plants. This research was conducted through field observations and measurements as well as laboratory tests and model scale to evaluate the characteristics of existing land quality based on Land Suitability Classification by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The result of this study shows that characteristics of water availability in Rasau Jaya is classified as Class S1 Highly Suitable for rice and corn crops, while existing conditions of land in Rasau Jaya III are generally classified in the S2 class Moderately Suitable for rice and corn crops. Appropriate land management is needed to increase land productivity for the cultivation of the Rasau Jaya’s assigned priority crops.

Vertical forest: green open space alternative in urban area development

Addressing environmental problems in urban areas, the Law No. 26 of 2007 has mandated local governments to preserve Green Open Space (GOS) covering minimum 30% of its area. However, some local governments barely meet this obligation due to high price of lands and budget constraints. Meanwhile, an innovation in the form of vertical forest started to be applied in developed countries may be adopted to overcome the limited land constraint for developing GOS. This study was conducted to determine the opportunities for implementing vertical forest as an alternative solution for the constraints. In addition, it also aims to find out the possibility of its application for spatial planning policies so that it supports the national sustainable development goal. This study is an explorative research with qualitative method. The study concluded that vertical forest essentially is suitable to be implemented as an alternative solution to limited land for the GOS development. From the policy perspective, the development of vertical forest can encourage the competitiveness of the green city program. Therefore, the government need to design incentive policies for local governments and the private sectors to develop vertical forest. It is also necessary to adjust GOS developing regulation to become more accommodating so that vertical forest can be recognized as part of GOS.

Machine learning enables national assessment of wind plant controls with implications for land use

SummaryAs deployment of wind energy continues to expand, computationally efficient tools for predicting wind plant performance over a wide range of layout designs, technology innovations, and spatial locations are increasingly important for policy and investment decisions. We demonstrate two approaches to training a surrogate model to predict annual energy production (AEP) of parameterized wind plant layouts: one using a Gaussian process (GP) and the other using a fully convolutional neural network (FCNN). We leverage the powerful FCNN architecture by encoding wind plant design parameters and output response surface as an image. The FCNN produces more accurate results than the GP with mean absolute errors equivalent to 1% and 1.9% of plant rated power, respectively, although the GP performs well under limited training data and provides useful uncertainty information. We also evaluate a surrogate model for wake steering, enabling a nationwide assessment of the impact of plant control strategies and plant layout decisions. Across two million locations, we find that wake steering strategies boost AEP with relative gains upwards of 3%. Gains are most pronounced at sites without a dominant wind direction and where layout optimization is less fruitful. Additionally, we perform a nationwide sensitivity analysis showing that wake steering can mitigate wake losses from higher density plant layouts. Our results suggest that regions which have not been previously viable for wind deployment due to moderate wind resources are especially well enhanced by wake steering strategies that could help overcome land constraints and inflexible layout options, potentially identifying new deployment opportunities.

Comparison of vegetable production, resource-use efficiency and environmental performance of high-technology and conventional farming systems for urban agriculture in the tropical city of Singapore

Urban farming can improve cities’ food security and resilience, but the performance of different farming systems with respect to land and investment constraints has not been systematically investigated. Here, we compared conventional soil-based farming, vertical farming with natural lighting (Vnat), and indoor vertical farming. This study aimed to compare (1) the dynamic production of leafy vegetables over time given the same amount of investment and land constraints, (2) the associated water and energy use, and (3) the global warming potential (GWP) of the urban farming sector if each of the three farming systems was solely used in the tropical city-state of Singapore. A system dynamics (SD) model was constructed to map the potential quantity of leafy vegetables produced, together with the water and energy use of each farming system. The land and monetary investment constraints were set at an additional 0.3% of the total land area of Singapore and an annual investment of SGD 10–20 million (0.001–0.005% of Singapore's annual GDP). Vnat farming was predicted to have the highest production level (110,000 t) and self-sufficiency (76.9% of total demand) by 2050 based on the SD model. This would be >3 times the self-sufficiency level achieved by indoor and soil-based farming systems given the same investment and land constraints. Indoor farming was simulated to use <14% the land area of Vnat while soil-based farming exhausted the additional 0.3% of the land allocated. Indoor farming was also the most energy intensive system, requiring 100 times more than Vnat farming. Comparison of the GHG emission rates showed that indoor farming had the greatest GWP—at 2.51 kg CO2-eq per kg of lettuce produced. Our results suggest that Vnat farming may be the best form of urban farming system to provide large amounts of food in Singapore, considering the production level, the amount of resources used, and the environmental impacts.

Energy performance and indoor airflow analysis of a healthcare ward designed with resource conservation objectives

With the outbreak of COVID-19, the urgency of wide-scale healthcare infrastructure development has been felt globally for human survival. To accommodate a large infected population, copious wards are to be built within the prevalent constraints of land, power and material availability. This study designs a two-bed modular healthcare ward which is shrunk in size to minimize the requirement of space and other construction commodities such as materials, labour and power. Additionally, HVAC energy usage is accounted for conservation. The health safety and thermal comfort of occupants are regulated by monitoring indoor environment attributes while pushing towards a resource-efficient structure. Two popular envelope thermal retrofits viz. phase change material and thermal insulation are tested to conceive gains in terms of improved energy performance of the ward. Various ward designs contest with their energy performance and occupant's health safety and comfort characteristics in a multicriteria decision making process for delivering the most favourable solution. Subsequently, the most suitable solution is offered by a design involving thermal insulation retrofit with 8 ACH fresh air supply rate and 26°C inlet air temperature. The proposed design can support developing nations to contrive quick response to pandemic outbreaks with reduced construction (cost, time) and energy loads.

Can we live within environmental limits and still reduce poverty? Degrowth or decoupling?

Can we live within environmental limits and still reduce poverty? Degrowth or decoupling?

Factors Affecting Land Titling during Regularization of Informal Settlements in Dar es Salaam Tanzania

The nature and characteristics of informal settlements in Tanzania indicates that informal landholders face a number of constraints attributable to weak land tenure security. In the beginning of 2016, the government undertook major initiatives to regularize informal settlements with limited success on land title uptake. This paper investigates the landholders’ willingness to change land tenure status and constraints faced thereof based on a dataset of 228 questionnaires, interviews and focus group discussions from informal settlements land occupiers in three wards of Dar es Salaam City, Tanzania. The findings indicate that despite a relatively lower rate of land title uptakes in the study areas, landholders are relatively more willing to change their land tenure status. Among the constraints identified include the costs and longer time taken to process the titles which were observed to be the most serious obstacles. Moreover, the oldest age group was observed to be the most reluctant age group to change tenure status when compared to relatively younger age groups although they were mostly aware of the benefits of changing tenure status. Furthermore, the findings indicate that, during title processing, the oldest age group faced the least constraints among the age groups studied. Since the oldest age group are the majority landholders, their reluctance to process title documents significantly reduces the number of title documents issued. In terms of education, the findings show that the highly educated groups have relatively lower willingness to change tenure status than other education groups. Such observation suggests that the more a landholder is educated, the more he or she is aware of the title benefit but the less likely him or her is to process a land title document. In terms of policy implication, for the poor class in informal settlement, regularization cost reduction could be an effective means to facilitate take up of land titles during regularization program though the same policy initiative may not work among the highly educated. For the highly educated and probably the rich, an informality tax could work, provided cheaper mechanisms to collect such tax are devised.

Guest Editorial: Spacing Ourselves to Death

If you talk to a typical subsurface professional working on unconventionals today (e.g., a reservoir engineer, completion engineer, geologist, petrophysicist, etc.) as I have in person and through media such as LinkedIn, you will find that many lament one key thing: Our sophisticated models have been reduced too much. Of course, I am generalizing and those are not the words they use; the lamentations come in many forms. The dissatisfaction with oversimplification is most easily observed as dis-taste for the type curve, the simplified model we use to predict upcoming new drills. (Yes, I know many of you will want to refer to them by their “proper” name: type well curve; I will be sticking with the colloquial version.) A simple meme posted on LinkedIn about type curves garnered one of the most engaged conversations I have seen amongst technical staff. The responses varied from something like “Thank God someone finally said this out loud” to comments such as “I don’t know anything better than type curves.” Most comments were closer to the former than the latter. What is even more remarkable is that our investors feel the same. In personal conversations, many of them refer to our type curves simply as “lies.” This perception, coupled with the historical lack of corporate returns, led investors away from our industry in droves. Many within the industry see it differently and want to blame the exodus on other factors such as oil and gas prices, climate change, competition from renewables, other environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, the pandemic, or OPEC’s unwillingness to “hold the bag” any longer. If you ask them, though, investors will tell you a simple answer: The unconventional business destroyed way too much capital and lied too much through the type curves. Why is it that both investors and technical staff are unhappy with our ability to accurately model future performance? Why can’t we deliver returns? The typical unconventional-focused oil and gas company has two models that are critical to the business. First is the subsurface model, with which we are all intimately familiar in its various forms, and the second is the corporate financial model, which is focused on cash flows, income, and assets/liabilities. It is unfortunate that the two models are separate. It means we must simplify one or both so they can communicate with each other. How can you observe this oversimplification while it is happening? It is happening when the finance staff say, “Please just give me a simple type curve and well count; I need to model, optimize, and account for debt/leverage, equity, and cash flows.” Meanwhile, the technical staff say, “Please just give me a CAPEX budget or a well count; I need to model, optimize, and account for well spacing, completion design, land constraints, and operational constraints.” Looking back, we know that the winner in this tug-of-war of competing needs was the type curve.

A Satellite Town Development for Ambad MIDC Nashik

Abstract: The concept of a satellite town is not a new one in India. Many efforts were made during the British era, and following independence, the Indian government made large-scale initiatives through policies, acts, and corporate partnerships. As is well acknowledged, India is experiencing rapid urbanization, resulting in city expansion and pseudo-urbanization due to land constraints. As a result, the satellite town concept must be implemented in order to develop new urban space, limit city boundaries, maximize land utilization, and raise the livability index of the city in order to attract investment. The study takes a multi-level approach, including a review of the literature, policies to better understand parameters, the identification of a new town site, and mitigation techniques. Following the identification of the area, a qualitative and quantitative study involving sampling, area-based observation, and public engagement was used to profile socioeconomic status. Chunchale village was chosen for the study, and it was discovered that this region has farm land on entire site. And can easily convert in NA land and use for proposal. In proposal most of the land will be proposed for residential as well as infrastructure purpose, as the project is dedicated to people working in Ambad MIDC for their occupation purpose. Based on area-based observation, the surrounding area appears to be ideal for commercial use too. It is suggested that a commercial hub be created near the rehab facility to stimulate the local economy and provide work opportunities for people. As land value rises and infilling area develops, such development also helps the surrounding area's development. Keywords: Satellite town, Redevelopment, Mix Land used, urban renewal policies, spatial planning, socio economic analysis

Can the performance evaluation change from central government suppress illegal land use in local governments? A new interpretation of Chinese decentralisation

Chinese decentralisation, characterised by the fiscal decentralisation and political centralisation relationship between the central government and local governments, has provided significant dual incentives (financial incentives and political incentives) on the land use behaviour of local governments. However, traditional incentive theory ignores the impact of the constraint indicators set by the central government in performance evaluations. Considering the changes in China’s political performance evaluation system, and in particular, the strengthening of environmental protection and cultivated land protection, this study constructs a theoretical framework for the financial incentives, political incentives, and political constraints and provides a new perspective to explain the political restraint mechanisms for the governance of illegal land issues. Based on panel data from 30 provincial regions from 2000 to 2016, we applied the fixed-effect model and FGLS method and further tested the potential endogeneity problem. The results demonstrated: (1) Fiscal decentralisation has intensified local fiscal pressures, resulting in local governments wanting to obtain more land transfer and tax revenue, which has created a fiscal stimulus for the illegal use of land by local governments; (2) under political centralisation, the economic performance evaluation index has a strong promotion incentive effect, and is an essential driving factor for local government land violations; (3) the performance evaluation system that pays more attention to environmental protection and farmland protection has a restraint effect on illegal land use; and (4) at different stages of economic development, illegal land incentive sources and constraints differ. In terms of incentives, economically developed areas are primarily driven by tax revenue and political incentives, and land granting revenue incentives are not noticeable. Conversely, the less developed areas are primarily driven by financial incentives, while the political incentives are not apparent. For constraints, developed areas are more restrained by environmental protection performance, while underdeveloped areas are primarily constrained by cultivated land protection performance. We therefore argue that a dual relationship based on powerful incentive of “encouraging local to do” and strong restraint of “keeping the bottom line” is helpful to regulate and improve the behaviour of local governments.

Optimizing operational costs and PV production at utility scale: An optical fiber network analogy for solar park clustering

Increasing the share of renewable energy sources in power systems is key to a successful energy transition. Optimal renewable site selection requires a holistic approach, involving land, resources, environmental and economical data and constraints. In this paper we consider the problem of solar PV penetration into the power network as a spatiotemporal analysis combined with decision support targeted for policy makers and investors. Our goal is to seek new models that maximize energy penetration and stability into the network, while minimizing the operational costs. We show how the selection of solar PV sites can be accomplished to satisfy such objectives by investigating the optimal clustering of multiple solar PV parks around a shared electrical substation. This is a combinatorial problem in terms of all the potential clusters given the set of PV site candidates. Our main contribution lies in identifying and proposing a modeling analogy of our problem with the so-called SONET problem, tackled in fiber network designs. We show how this new spatiotemporal PV park placement model minimizes operational costs, while increasing energy stability of the solutions produced. We also introduce a GIS preprocessing step to reduce the computational cost of the proposed approach. We compare our proposed SONET-based model to an existing GIS-optimization model on a real case study and data from the French Guiana’s power system. This new approach aggregates multiple PV parks into clusters distributed across the territory. In the case of French Guiana, the same global nominal power (≈45MW) can, for instance, be distributed among 11 PV parks and 3 clusters, against 3 large-scale PV parks. Results show substantial gain in costs per kWh produced, up to 10MW of extra installed power and 16GWh of extra power generation when considering PV parks ⩽5MW. The new cluster configuration also ensures improved energy stability of the solutions, resulting in mitigation of the risks for both the network manager and the decision maker.

Impact of parking and greening design strategies on summertime outdoor thermal condition in old mid-rise residential estates

Old residential estates account for over 40 % of the total residential development in 20 major cities in China while the percentage is up to 61 % for Shanghai. Many of these old residential estates are facing the dilemma of the increasing demand for car parking space and the deteriorating outdoor thermal conditions. This paper presents a parametric study on the impact of arranging parking spaces and greening on summertime outdoor thermal conditions (air temperature and physiological equivalent temperature) considering the land and building constraints of old residential estates. Field measurements were conducted in an old residential estate located in the inner-city area of Shanghai to obtain the status-quo parking and greening design and basic thermal condition. The current situation along with 26 practical scenarios with different parking areas and greening designs were simulated using the validated ENVI-met model. Results confirm that adding parking space increases thermal stress and its impact is strongly affected by greening design. The magnitude of temperature reduction caused by the greenery decreases as the parking spaces increase, while multifunctional solutions with parking under large trees have strong potential in improving thermal comfort. Regression was also conducted to quantify the impact of different greenery (large trees, medium trees, small trees, shrubs, and grasses) on the thermal condition.