Land Use Policy

This work proposes a holistic landscape assessment methodology, with novel and practical tools, which can support sustainable landscape development for small islands. The Greek island of Gavdos is the case study. An Islandscape character assessment was developed and applied, through a series of maps, extensive data collection and field work visits. A participatory spatial SWOT analysis enabled stakeholders to visualize their ideas concerning landscape types of the island. Aided by a compatibility matrix, each development priority was considered in relation to islandscape types, and landscape design guidelines were derived. The results showed a consensus between experts and stakeholders regarding the islandscape types and the planning of development priorities. The analysis of each islandscape type revealed the guidelines that should be followed in a future local spatial plan, regarding settlements expansion, tourism development, agriculture revival, environmental protection, coastline and water preservation and road network integration to the landscape. This methodology is an aid decision-making tool for land use policy, planning, design and management of islandscapes, guiding experts to compatible development priorities and stakeholders to more sustainable solutions regarding the socio-economic, heritage and ecological value of their island.

Energy is a resource of strategic importance for cities, a fortiori global cities that rely on tremendous indirect energy embodied in interregional trades of service industries. The assessment of embodied energy in service industries is thus vital to the committed sustainable development of global cities and fundamental to tailor-made local policymaking. This paper applies Multi-Regional Input-Output analysis to the assessment of total embodied energy in service industries in six global cities, i.e., Beijing, Chongqing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tianjin. It is found that Hong Kong and Singapore have relatively lower energy use intensities compared with the four cities located in Mainland China. Service industries consume 17.02∼46.40 % of total embodied energy in the six cities. Coastal cities like Tianjin, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore have higher proportions of transportation consumption. The four Chinese mainland cities consume a larger proportion of coal than Hong Kong and Singapore. The method and the findings of this paper are expected to facilitate both the government and the industries in energy policymaking for a smarter and more sustainable urban economy.

Livestock keeping and food production from grasslands play an important role in the Mediterranean region, where grazing has a long tradition and still is a key livelihood strategy. Yet, in many places widespread degradation (caused by overgrazing) severely threatens the natural resource base and prospects for future food security and sustainable development. On Samothraki, a Greek island, several decades of continuous increase of the local livestock population, exceeding not only the local food base by far but also the local farmers’ ability to provide supplementary feed, led to a socio-ecological tipping point turning the dynamics downward. Still, in the face of very restricted marketing opportunities, we find local farmers in an economic deadlock of relying on CAP subsidies as a main source of income and on still too high animal numbers for maintaining an ecological balance of their land while lacking the labor power (due to large-scale migration to Germany in the 1950s and 60 s) to apply adequate management practices. In this paper, we present a feed balance (feed-demand and supply) for sheep and goats from 1970 to 2012 and discuss causes and effects of the excessive growth in animal numbers, as well as reasons for their downturn in the last decade. We describe the island’s groundcover and symptoms of soil degradation, and underline our findings by reference to a remote sensing approach. Our findings recently gained in prominence as in September 2017, a state of emergency had to be declared on the island when a major weather event triggered a series of landslides that severely damaged the main town, a number of roads and bridges and even the 700 years old Fonias Tower, a marker of Samothraki tourism.

Sustainability science analyses society-nature interaction on a variety of spatial and temporal scales. By explaining the link between sustainability and socio-economic material and energy flows as well as with colonization of ecosystems, this paper introduces a conceptual framework for empirical applications featured in other contributions to this special issue. The paper discusses how the proposed material and energy flow accounting (MEFA) framework supports such analyses. This framework is an integrated toolbox to account for socio-economic metabolism and colonization of natural processes; above all, land use. We argue that, even though it is at present impossible to define precision sustainability thresholds with respect to many material and energy flows, the MEFA framework is a valuable tool because it tracks these flows in a consistent manner for regions of any scale over time. © 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.