Marta Pérez-Soba

Sustainability Impact Assessment of land use policies

List of Authors.- List of Authors.- Sustainability Impact Assessment: concepts and approaches.- Ex-ante Impact Assessments (IA) in the European Commission - an overview.- Impact Assessment in the European Commission in relation to Multifunctional Land Use.- An institutional analysis of land use modelling in the European Commission.- Ex ante impact assessment of land use changes in European regions - the SENSOR approach.- Transfer into decision support: The Sustainability Impact Assessment Tool (SIAT).- Scenario modelling of land use changes.- Scenarios: Driving forces and policies.- Cross sector land use modelling framework.- Tourism geography in Europe.- Landscape level simulation of land use change.- Spatial representation and data issues for European regions.- Regional socio-economic profiles for assessment of European land use related policies: the SENSOR experience.- A Spatial Regional Reference Framework for Sustainability Assessment in Europe.- Requirements for data management and maintenance to support regional land use research.- European level indicator framework.- An indicator framework for analysing sustainability impacts of land use change.- Indicators for assessing the environmental impacts of land use change across Europe.- Reflections on Social and Economic Indicators for Land Use Change.- Weighting and aggregation of indicators for sustainability impact assessment in the SENSOR context.- Regional and local evaluation.- Land use functions - a multifunctionality approach to assess the impact of land use changes on land use sustainability.- Limits and targets for a regional sustainability assessment: an interdisciplinary exploration of the threshold concept.- Sustainability Impact Assessments: limits, thresholds and the Sustainability Choice Space.- Key sustainability issues in European sensitive areas - a participatory approach.- Key sustainability issues and the spatial classification of sensitive regions in Europe.

Ex ante impact assessment of policies affecting land use, Part B: application of the analytical framework

The use of science-based tools for impact assessment has increasingly gained focus in addressing the complexity of interactions between environment, society, and economy. For integrated assessment of policies affecting land use, an analytical framework was developed. The aim of our work was to apply the analytical framework for specific scenario cases and in combination with quantitative and qualitative application methods. The analytical framework was tested for two cases involving the ex ante impact assessment of: (1) a European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) financial reform scenario employing a modeling approach and combined with a comprehensive indicator analysis and valuation; and (2) a regional bioenergy policy scenario, employing a fully participatory approach. The results showed that European land use in general is less sensitive to changes in the Common Agricultural Policy, but in the context of regions there can be significant impacts on the functions of land use. In general, the implementation of the analytical framework for impact assessment proved to be doable with both methods, i.e., with the quantitative modeling and with the qualitative participatory approach. A key advantage of using the system of linked quantitative models is that it makes possible the simultaneous consideration of all relevant sectors of the economy without abstaining from a great level of detail for sectors of particular interest. Other advantages lie in the incontestable character of the results. Based on neutral, existing data with a fixed set of settings and regions, an absolute comparability and reproducibility throughout Europe can be maintained. Analyzing the pros and cons of both approaches showed that they could be used complementarily rather than be seen as competing alternatives.

Land use functions — a multifunctionality approach to assess the impact of land use changes on land use sustainability

The dramatic changes in land use observed in Europe in the last fifty years have generally resulted in improvement of human welfare and economic development. On the other hand, they have caused serious environmental problems. There is therefore a need for approaches that help to understand in an integrative way the economic, environmental and societal impacts that land use changes have on sustainability. Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA), which assesses the impact of policies on sustainability, addresses this challenge. SIA partly builds on the concept of the multifunctionality of land which helps to deal with the complexity of interactions between different land uses, their temporal and spatial changes, and finally how policies might steer those changes towards sustainability. Following this need for true integration of economic, environmental and societal issues across policy areas at a meaningful spatial scale, an interdisciplinary team in the SENSOR project has developed an innovative conceptual framework to assess the impact of policies on land sustainability at various levels of spatial aggregation i.e. the Land Use Functions (LUFs) framework. LUFs are the goods and services provided by the different land uses that summarise the most relevant economic, environmental and societal issues of a region. The LUFs framework integrates the changes observed in a large set of impact indicators into nine Land Use Functions (LUFs), which are balanced among the three pillars of sustainability. The LUFs framework makes it possible for policy makers, scientists and stakeholders to identify at a glance those functions of the land which are hindered or enhanced under various scenarios of land use change, and makes it possible to explore the trade-offs between them. The LUFs framework allows therefore the building of assessment across disciplines, sectors and the three sustainability dimensions. It has proved to be very helpful for the systematisation of relevant sustainability indicators within SENSOR and is intended to be further used in other projects as a tool for Sustainability Impact Assessment. The rationale leading to the LUFs concept, its definition and the conceptual framework is described in this chapter. We conclude that the concept of LUFs allows users to make explicit the analytical links between multifunctional land use and sustainable development, and therefore to look at multifunctionality as a way towards sustainability.

Ex Ante Impact Assessment of Policies Affecting Land Use, Part A: Analytical Framework

Contemporary policy making calls for scientific support to anticipate the possible consequences of optional policy decisions on sustainable development. This paper presents an analytical framework for ex ante assessment of economic, social, and environmental impacts of policy driven land use changes that can be used as an aid to policy making. The tasks were to (1) link policy scenarios with land use change simulations, (2) link land use change simulations with environmental, social, and economic impacts through indicators, and (3) valuate the impacts in the context of sustainable development. The outcome was a basis for dialogue at the science-policy interface in the process of developing new policies on the European level that impact on land and land use. The analytical approach provides a logical thread for ex ante impact assessment within the context of sustainable development, land use multifunctionality, and land use change and it provides a thorough discussion of achievements and open challenges related to the framework. It concludes with considerations on the potential for using evidence based ex ante assessments in the process of policy development. The paper is complemented by a B-paper providing exemplary results from two applications of the framework: a financial reform scenario of the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union, and a bioenergy policy scenario for the case of Poland (Helming et al. 2011).

Modelling the spatial distribution of livestock in Europe

Livestock remains the world’s largest user of land and is strongly related to grassland and feed-crop production. Assessments of environmental impacts of livestock farming require detailed knowledge of the presence of livestock, farming practices, and environmental conditions. The present Europe-wide livestock distribution information is generally restricted to a spatial resolution of NUTS 2 (province level). This paper presents a modelling approach to determine the spatial distribution of livestock at the landscape level. Location factors for livestock occurrence were explored and applied to consistent and harmonized EU-wide regional statistics to produce a detailed spatial distribution of livestock numbers. Both an expert-based and an empirical approach were applied in order to disaggregate the data to grid level. The resulting livestock maps were validated. Results differ between the two downscaling approaches but also between livestock types and countries. While both the expert-based and empirical approach are equally suited to modelling herbivores, in general, the spatial distribution of monogastrics can be better modelled by applying the empirical approach.

Ex ante impact assessment of land use changes in European regions: the SENSOR approach

Land use includes those human activities that exhibit a spatial dimension and that change the bio-geophysical conditions of land. Land use policy making at European level aims at fostering sustainability pathways of natural resource use and rural development through the decoupling of economic growth from environmental degradation while supporting social cohesion in rural areas. Targeted policy making requires tools for the ex ante assessment of impacts of policy driven land use changes on sustainable development opportunities in European regions. These tools have to cover all relevant land use sectors and impact issues including their interrelations. They have to be spatially explicit, allow scenario analysis of possible future developments, be based on reproducible analyses, and be transparent and easy to use. The European Commission funded Integrated Project SENSOR is dedicated to develop such ex-ante Sustainability Impact Assessment Tools (SIAT) for land use in European regions. SIAT is designed as a meta modelling toolkit, in which global economic trend and policy scenarios are translated into land use changes at 1km2 grid resolution for the area of Europe. Based on qualitative and quantitative indicator analyses, impacts of simulated land use changes on social, environmental and economic sustainability issues are assessed at regional (NUTS2/3) scale. Valuation of these impacts is based on the concept of multifunctionality of land use. It is conducted through expert and stakeholder valuations leading to the determination of sustainability choice spaces for European regions. This paper presents the analytical approach in SENSOR and describes the impact assessment framework.

Mapping and Assessment of Ecosystems and their Services: Indicators for ecosystem assessments under Action 5 of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020

Environment Europe Direct is a service to help you find answers to your questions about the European Union Summary The second MAES report presents indicators that can be used at European and Member States level to map and assess biodiversity, ecosystem condition and ecosystem services according to the Common International Classification of Ecosystem Services (CICES v4.3). This work is based on a review of data and indicators available at national and European level and is applying the MAES analytical framework adopted in 2013.

How Personal Judgment Influences Scenario Development: an Example for Future Rural Development in Europe

Scenarios of alternative plausible futures have been used extensively to explore the potential effects of socioeconomic and environmental change. The ultimate objective of any explorative scenario exercise is to assess the variation in possible futures to provide insights into the range of potential outcomes. These results provide stakeholders with guidance for policy development, planning, and management. We explore how personal judgment can influence scenario development. Scenarios for the future of European rural regions are used to explore alternative outcomes under a public interventionist future and a market liberalization oriented future. A transparent qualitative framework is used to identify differences in outcomes based on personal judgment. Results show that, for both scenarios, there are plausible mechanisms that can lead to similar positive or negative outcomes. Choosing a single process per scenario, based on personal judgment and interpretation, can therefore greatly influence scenario outcomes and limit the range of uncertainty that is covered by the scenarios. The exercise shows the importance of making these judgments explicit in scenario development, especially when exploring broad consequences of alternative policy directions that may be based in political worldviews.

An assessment of the impact of climate adaptation measures to reduce flood risk on ecosystem services

Measures of climate change adaptation often involve modification of land use and land use planning practices. Such changes in land use affect the provision of various ecosystem goods and services. Therefore, it is likely that adaptation measures may result in synergies and trade-offs between a range of ecosystems goods and services. An integrative land use modelling approach is presented to assess such impacts for the European Union. A reference scenario accounts for current trends in global drivers and includes a number of important policy developments that correspond to on-going changes in European policies. The reference scenario is compared to a policy scenario in which a range of measures is implemented to regulate flood risk and protect soils under conditions of climate change. The impacts of the simulated land use dynamics are assessed for four key indicators of ecosystem service provision: flood risk, carbon sequestration, habitat connectivity and biodiversity. The results indicate a large spatial variation in the consequences of the adaptation measures on the provisioning of ecosystem services. Synergies are frequently observed at the location of the measures itself, whereas trade-offs are found at other locations. Reducing land use intensity in specific parts of the catchment may lead to increased pressure in other regions, resulting in trade-offs. Consequently, when aggregating the results to larger spatial scales the positive and negative impacts may be off-set, indicating the need for detailed spatial assessments. The modelled results indicate that for a careful planning and evaluation of adaptation measures it is needed to consider the trade-offs accounting for the negative effects of a measure at locations distant from the actual measure. Integrated land use modelling can help land use planning in such complex trade-off evaluation by providing evidence on synergies and trade-offs between ecosystem services, different policy fields and societal demands.

Landscape Scenarios and Multifunctionality: Making Land Use Impact Assessment Operational

Ex ante impact assessment can help in structuring the analysis of human-environment interactions thereby supporting land use decision making for sustainable development. The contributions to this special feature focus on some of the challenges of making land use impact assessment operational for policy making. A total of nine papers deal with the needs and uses of assessment tools for policy making at the European level, with the value-based influence in scenario development, and with ex ante impact assessment studies in different contexts, spatial systems, and for different purposes and user groups. The concept of landscape multifunctionality was implicitly or explicitly employed as an integrating entity between socioeconomic and biogeophysical features of a spatial system. Three major aspects were revealed that could improve the relevance of the policy of land use impact assessment: the involvement of decision makers early on in the design of the impact assessment study; the integration of quantitative analysis with participatory valuation methods; and the robust and transparent design of the analytical methods.