Common Ground: The Sharing of Land and Landscapes for Sustainability

Everard, Mark

Abstract

The landscapes that humanity has inhabited throughout our evolutionary history have simultaneously met our needs and substantially shaped our progress. We too, through our gifts of innovation and foresight (as indeed our lack of it), have substantially shaped the landscape, atmosphere and waters of this resilient yet finite world, appropriating increasing proportions of the resources of nature to meet our shifting and growing demands. And thereby we have progressively, if largely unintentionally, undermined the quality and extent of the ecosystems that support us, including their various capacities to meet the needs of our burgeoning population.

Our relationship with the landscapes we inhabit is central to our past, present and future. This book refers frequently to the terms ‘land’ and ‘landscape’, for each of which there exist many definitions. For the current purpose, the term ‘land’ is taken to refer to the solid part of the Earth’s surface including its many attributes and functions, such as soil, hydrological properties and places for human habitation and food production. The definition applied to the word ‘landscape’ draws from its meaning within the term ‘landscape ecology’ initially coined in 1939 to describe interactions between environment and vegetation but subsequently broadened to address heterogeneity within landscapes including spatial structure, distribution and abundance of organisms, and the functions that it performs including the geomorphological processes that shape it and associated uses by and pressures from humanity . Neither term refers to ownership of land, but both are intimately associated with supporting not only diverse ecosystems but also many societal interests. ‘Landscape’ thus refers to an arrangement of heterogenous habitats and the functions that this complex socio-ecological system performs, whilst ‘land’ refers principally to the biophysical resource itself.

The relationship between humanity and the critical resource of land, and the integrated functions of diverse land types across the wider landscapes that support us, has shifted continuously throughout our tenure on Earth, brief as it is relative to the evolution of planetary life. Notwithstanding our total dependence on the Earth’s natural resources, industrial-age humanity and the pervasion of industrial and capitalist ideologies throughout increasing proportions of the Earth’s human population have already overridden many of the supportive limits of this world. It is now doing so at an increasing pace, with adverse and increasingly well-understood consequences for all who share it and depend upon it now and into the future.

This book sets out to explore the shifting relationship between human society and the resource of land and the wider context of the landscapes that shape and bear us. The first chapter, The privatisation of the land, addresses the dependence of early civilisation on common landscapes and their progressive annexation into private property throughout much of the world with an associated loss of commoners’ rights. Chapter 2, Reclaiming the common good, then traces the progressive recognition of the many public benefits flowing from land, regardless of who owns it, and the trace of legislation, common law and subsidies that are beginning to ’reclaim’ these public goods using primarily European and American examples.

Chapter 3, The ends of the earth, refers to the ways in which exploitation of ecosystems beyond the limits of their carrying capacity contributes to many of the pressing sustainability challenges that we face today. This raises troublesome long-term implications for all who share the global ‘common’. Chapter 4, Shifting conceptual landscapes, then turns to transitions in human understanding and exploitation of the natural world, and how this has shaped perception and response to development, and latterly sustainable development challenges, primarily throughout our industrial past but looking ahead to what will be required in future.

Chapter 5, A landscape at our service, introduces the evolution of ‘ecosystem services’. Ecosystem services define the many benefits that people derive from ecosystems, offering insights into the dependence of all human interests on the natural world and making a substantial potential contribution to finding a more sustainable relationship between society and the landscapes that support it. Chapter 6, The great food challenge, then explores our changing relationship with land from the perspective of food supply. Chapter 7, Valuing land and landscapes, considers valuation of ecosystem resources and how ecosystem services can be used to develop more inclusive markets to support sustainable interactions with the land that supports us.

This then is synthesised in Chapter 8, Living landscapes, to consider management, markets and other tools and exemplars of best practice from around the world that can accelerate progress towards sustainability through the integration of different perceptions and value systems, leading to the creation of economically, ecologically and socially connected ‘living landscapes’. Chapter 9, Lessons for tomorrow’s world, distils principal lessons from the preceding chapters to guide future development with respect to our relationship with land, with Chapter 10, The people’s land, then concluding this book with moral and cultural considerations relating to the achievement of sustainability.

Although the ultimate destination of this book is to consider what is necessary to secure a sustainable relationship between humanity and the landscapes that support our needs on an enduring basis, we start off by looking backwards to understand more of this ever-shifting relationship.

• Book Type: Authored Book
• Publication Date: Aug 11, 2011
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• ISBN: 9781848139633
• Keywords: land, landscape, sustainable use, catchment management, governance, stewardship
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/960227
• Publisher URL: http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/hardback/common-ground