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The role of a coherent long term vision and coordination for successful land use policies and business practices
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The role of policies and business practices in incentivising sustainable land use
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After reviewing the challenges remaining to achieve sustainable land use in the previous chapter, this chapter explores the policies and business practices that could overcome these challenges. First, the need for broader policy coherence is reviewed. It is followed by an overview of the role played by various policies and business practices with high potential impacts on land use sustainability with a focus on the following policy instruments: (1) regulations, (2) taxes, fees, subsidies (including payments for ecosystem services) and trading schemes, (3) large-scale land acquisitions, (4) due diligence for responsible investment in agriculture, and (5) voluntary certification schemes.
The role of a coherent long-term vision and coordination for successful land-use policies and business practices
This section presents some key elements that are of the upmost importance in the design of policies that will overcome the challenges towards more sustainable land use.
Long-term vision
Policies with long-term vision are needed. For instance, given the time needed by most urban land-use policies for their long-run effects to kick in, governments need to show long-term commitments to implemented policies (OECD, 2018[49]).
There is also a need for vertical coordination between international, national and sub-national sector institutions for coherence and policy alignment (Verburg et al., 2019[50]; Brack and Wolosin, 2018[51]). Many natural resources require transboundary management, thus many land-related issues are best solved internationally (OECD, 2020[30]). International collaboration and especially between producer and consumer- country governments is key in addressing embodied deforestation9 and taking trade measures designed to control global trade in commercial agricultural products, such as soy, palm oil, beef and cocoa (Brack and Wolosin, 2018[51]).
9 Embodied deforestation is deforestation driven by agricultural commodity.
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There are trade-offs and synergies in land management decisions. Land use objectives include economic objectives (e.g. agriculture, transport and energy /urban policies), environmental objectives and broader well-being objectives. Competition for land can result when several goals are pursued at the same time and there will be trade-offs and potential synergies in land management decisions (OECD, 2020[45]). Example of such trade-offs include: Ensuring security of jobs in livestock industry can conflict with reducing GHG emissions through a reduction in meat consumption (OECD, 2020[3]). Protecting forested land for carbon storage and biodiversity can conflict with agricultural land availability to provide sufficient land for growing food. Reducing GHG emissions through large-scale deployment of new biofuels can conflict with food production, conservation of natural habitats for biodiversity or carbon storage. Increasing urban density can conflict with health protection (OECD, 2018[49]).
Land-use policies should thrive to use an integrated landscape approach that can help to minimise
trade-offs between policy objectives (Verburg et al., 2019[50]; OECD, 2018[49]). Reed et al (2020[52]) provide this definition: “Integrated landscape approaches are governance strategies that attempt to reconcile multiple and conflicting land-use claims to harmonize the needs of people and the environment and establish more sustainable and equitable multi-functional landscapes.”. International development organisations recommend the landscape approach. For instance, PROGREEN, a new World Bank MultiDonor Trust Fund launched in 2019 advocates the use of inter-sectoral (integrated) landscape approaches. This approach is recommended at all stages of urban policymaking for instance (OECD, 2018[49]). This integrated approach is the essence of concepts used as paradigms for future urban development, such as the compact city, the smart city or transit-oriented development (OECD, 2018[49]).
It is important that sectoral policies are coherent with sustainable land use and land-use nexus
issues (OECD, 2020[45]). Too often sectoral policies are designed without considering policies from other sectors. For instance, policy makers in OECD countries have often failed to take into account that investments in urban highways have served as incentives for low-density development (OECD, 2018[49]). Urban planning has also too often failed to consider their impact on the transport infrastructure (OECD, 2018[49]). In many cases, economic, trade, and industrial (among others) policies tend to have an overwhelming impact on land-use policies. An example is the extent to which energy and trade policies on biofuels have impacted land use. Palm oil export levy has contributed to strengthen Indonesia biodiesel market and Indonesia oil palm plantations have expanded (OECD, 2020[45]). Based on country case studies, OECD (2020[44]) found that general trade policy often fails to consider land-use nexus issues potentially endangering policy coherence.. At the same time, open markets are increasingly important for food security. The regions experiencing population and demand growth are not those where supply can be increased sustainably. Trade acts as a buffer to domestic shocks and – on balance – reduces price volatility (OECD, 2020[3]).
Interdisciplinary and inter-sector (i.e. horizontal) cooperation is necessary when designing policies
to achieve multiple goals, harness synergies and reduce trade-offs (OECD, 2019[53]). An example is the need for cooperation between land-use and transport sectors in order to design policies to control urban sprawl and mitigate its consequences (OECD, 2018[49]). Reed et al (2020[52]) argue that the implementation of landscape approaches requires a need for “concerted transdisciplinary actions that connect scales of governance to address the complex political economies in contested tropical landscapes”. They highlight some key barriers and opportunities for landscape approach implementation such as bridging sectorial and disciplinary divides and involving the private sector (Reed et al., 2020[52]). In addition, horizontal cooperation is sometimes necessarybetween two cities or two regions. For instance,
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the alignment of policies implemented by neighbouring local authorities as well as national, regional and local policies, can be key for controlling urban sprawl and tackling its consequences (OECD, 2018[49]). Land-use policies should consider their global impacts (OECD, 2017[54]; OECD, 2018[55]; OECD, 2020[45]). Supply chain are increasingly global, they usually cross several regional and regulatory borders, which makes for complex material and monetary flows and sometimes many unintended impacts (Gardner et al., 2019). In addition to on-site impacts, there is a need to assess socio-economic or environmental impacts taking place elsewhere. An example of such impact is leakage caused by the introduction of a certain land-use policy instrument (e.g. international trade policy, environmental protection policy) aimed at reducing environmental pressure (OECD, 2020[45]). For instance, stringent timber harvest legislation reducing deforestation in forest concessions may consequently increase deforestation outside concessions (OECD, 2020[45]). REDD+ policy can cause leakage of timber harvest and deforestation elsewhere, making the balance of net carbon benefits negative.
Green stimulus packages as part of COVID-19-response measures
Some economic stimulus packages and recovery plans for economies hit by the Covid-19 crisis
are already incentivising sustainable land use. In the context of the global COVID-19 crisis, many governments have provided economic stimulus packages and recovery plans for economies hit by this crisis. At least 30 OECD countries, as well as Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, and South Africa, have included measures with the overall goal being to green economies. Some of the objectives include control of invasive alien species, forest conservation job creation, and economic stimulus through ecosystem restoration (OECD, 2020[30]). Several countries have introduced fiscal measures to address unemployment and boost economic activity, while also supporting biodiversity. For instance, New Zealand has started a new programme called “jobs for nature”. At term, 11 000 new jobs will have been created with a budget of NZD 1.3 billion (USD 0.9 billion). These jobs consist in invasive species control (e.g. wilding pines, wallabies and stoats), and habitat protection and restoration (New Zealand Ministry for the Environment, 2020[56]). These activities are usually labour intensive and easy to implement because worker-training is quick and projects do not usually require much planning (Hepburn et al., 2020[57]). The OECD also provided a number of recommendations for additional measures for sustainable land use (OECD, 2020[30]) (see Box 3.1). However, some COVID-19 policy response have generated risks to land use sustainability. Stringency of land-use policies and environmental regulation in some countries has been weakened (OECD, 2020[58]). Although most of these regulatory changes are temporary, they could drive to an increase in biodiversity-harmful activities and set a precedent for removing already in-force environmental regulation limits (OECD, 2020[58]). Additionally, some governments have postponed the entry-into-force of forthcoming regulations (OECD, 2020[58]). Also, illegal extraction of natural resources like timber has increased in countries in Africa, Asia, and South America due to reduced monitoring and enforcement efforts during lockdown (and also by a loss of rural livelihoods) (IUCN, 2020[59]; Waithaka, 2020[60]). Ensuring enforcement during and after COVID-19 confinement is vital for safeguarding biodiversity and ecosystem services and would have the additional benefit of creating jobs (Strand and Toman, 2013[61]).
