SCIENCE
environment
Struggles in sustaining land resources Written by Heidi Schmelzer
H
umans make a lasting impact on the environment, often through land-use change: modifying the natural landscape, which can be temporary or permanent, occuring through human activity like agriculture, urbanization, and deforestation. While these all negatively impact the environment, there are positive impacts of land use change like reforestation. Negative land-use actions do not only affect the local environment, they have widerreaching effects, like contributing to raising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or impacting natural flood control (a type of ‘ecosystem service’). One obstacle with managing land-use change is that much of it occurs on privately owned land. Many governments don’t have systems in place to regulate activities in non-public areas, and this presents a challenge in preserving important ecosystem services. It can be difficult to persuade private landowners to adopt sustainable practices if it does not financially help them. Often, implementing sustainable use strategies can cause them to lose money. It is imperative to tackle this problem, as the actions on private land have far reaching consequences for widespread habitats and the global environment. We speak with Paulo Pereira, professor at Mykolas Romeris University in Lithuania. Together with his team (Marius Kalinauskas; Miguel Inacio; Katarzyna Bogdziewicz, and Luis Pinto), he investigates humans impact on the environment and how to address sustainability during the climate crisis.
Above: A natural waterway. © Paulo Pereira. All rights reserved. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.
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