of nature, and animal welfare. However, these ideas and values are irrevocably tied
to reliable daily nourishment, which depends on rural supply. As the urban population became aware of this, they started to govern farmers’ activities, adjusting
them to urban needs and ideas. This culminated in industrialisation and the rapid
growth of cities, which induced the intensification and technical modernisation of
farming, again conceived by city dwellers, whose standard of living rose to heights
never seen before.
This achievement was also based on rapid advances in science and technology,
which of course also included agriculture and food production. These advances
created new attitudes and values towards fundamental aspects of life. Human rights
and well-being took centre stage, encouraging further population growth and the
greater exploitation of land and its resources. The concept of sustainable development, which has gained general consent as shown in several international resolutions, aims to overcome this dilemma.
And yet it takes precise specification to translate this broad, integrative concept
into concrete measures, which also holds for land management: which components,
resources or functions of land are to be managed in which way at a given location?
Since land is finite, its very different qualities renders it necessary to choose sites or
locations that are best suited for the various competing land uses, which are only
compatible in part. These land uses include farming, forestry, settlement,
urban-industrial development, mining, regenerative energy production, nature
conservation, leisure and recreation. Sustainable management should seek to adapt
land use to a site’s qualities, rather than modifying these qualities to suit the land
use. In addition, use intensities must be controlled to mitigate ecological deterioration, which can also be reduced by consciously designing the spatial arrangement
of land uses.
The management of rural land is usually prioritised because it supplies the urban
population with commodities such as food from grain and root crops. Such crops
depend in turn on productive arable soils, and yet these are gradually being damaged by crop farming treatments that need to be applied. Since soils are the most
precious and vulnerable land resource, a resource that cannot be restored, such
negative impacts must be mitigated to the greatest extent possible, particularly since
soils now have a new function—the sequestration of CO 2 to combat climate
change.
All these management measures must be organised by adaptive and participatory
governance institutions. It is an enormous challenge that may be helped by the
information and proposals given in this book.
Wolfgang Haber
Technical University of Munich
Freising, Germany
e-mail: haber@wzw.tum.de
vi
Foreword
to reliable daily nourishment, which depends on rural supply. As the urban population became aware of this, they started to govern farmers’ activities, adjusting
them to urban needs and ideas. This culminated in industrialisation and the rapid
growth of cities, which induced the intensification and technical modernisation of
farming, again conceived by city dwellers, whose standard of living rose to heights
never seen before.
This achievement was also based on rapid advances in science and technology,
which of course also included agriculture and food production. These advances
created new attitudes and values towards fundamental aspects of life. Human rights
and well-being took centre stage, encouraging further population growth and the
greater exploitation of land and its resources. The concept of sustainable development, which has gained general consent as shown in several international resolutions, aims to overcome this dilemma.
And yet it takes precise specification to translate this broad, integrative concept
into concrete measures, which also holds for land management: which components,
resources or functions of land are to be managed in which way at a given location?
Since land is finite, its very different qualities renders it necessary to choose sites or
locations that are best suited for the various competing land uses, which are only
compatible in part. These land uses include farming, forestry, settlement,
urban-industrial development, mining, regenerative energy production, nature
conservation, leisure and recreation. Sustainable management should seek to adapt
land use to a site’s qualities, rather than modifying these qualities to suit the land
use. In addition, use intensities must be controlled to mitigate ecological deterioration, which can also be reduced by consciously designing the spatial arrangement
of land uses.
The management of rural land is usually prioritised because it supplies the urban
population with commodities such as food from grain and root crops. Such crops
depend in turn on productive arable soils, and yet these are gradually being damaged by crop farming treatments that need to be applied. Since soils are the most
precious and vulnerable land resource, a resource that cannot be restored, such
negative impacts must be mitigated to the greatest extent possible, particularly since
soils now have a new function—the sequestration of CO 2 to combat climate
change.
All these management measures must be organised by adaptive and participatory
governance institutions. It is an enormous challenge that may be helped by the
information and proposals given in this book.
Wolfgang Haber
Technical University of Munich
Freising, Germany
e-mail: haber@wzw.tum.de
vi
Foreword