Land Use Futures - Summary of the process and outputs from the scoping phase

Foresight will bring together evidence strands by theme, and through the systems and scenarios work streams to help to answer the fundamental questions raised during scoping:

• What are the major global and national drivers of change?
• Is the "land system" sufficiently resilient and flexible?
• Are there key decisions about land use which should be taken in the short-term with the benefit of new insights?
• Could existing land use practices lead to unintended consequences?
• Can land deliver everything we need? Who is "we"?
• How could government and land managers build capacity? Might behavioural change be required and how could this be achieved?
• Are there tipping points? Will the way land is used need to change?
• How could behaviours and attitudes towards land change?
• What developments in science and technology could affect land use?
• What could be the future expectations of society, the environment and the economy from land?
• How could the way land is valued and the goods and services change or need to change?
• What is the impact of changing land use configurations?
• How might the way we might live, work and travel affect land use?
• What are the constraints to land use change?
• How does the land system behave in alternative futures?
• Where are the trade-offs? What mechanisms can assist with weighing competing demands?
• Where are the opportunities? Are there more opportunities for multifunctional land use?

Themes

Paradigm shifts - In the post-war period food production and the re-building of damaged infrastructure and homes were major priorities for government. The Town and Country Planning Act 1947 grew out of these priorities and established a land use model which makes a clear distinction between urban and rural land use that is largely unaltered today. The extent to which such historical imperatives shaping land use patterns and practices are still relevant today will be explored in the project, including whether the containment strategy that separates town from country so sharply continues to be appropriate and whether the frameworks underpinning current structures and patterns deliver socially desirable and environmentally sustainable outcomes for the future.

Increasing demands - There is widespread agreement that the demands being made on land are greater than ever. Targets to build new homes, to increase the amount of energy produced by renewable sources, to allow access to land whilst also protecting the interest of land owners, heritage sites, biodiversity and ecosystems, all create pressure on the land resource. Incentivising land owners to care for the environment as well as increasing productivity and safeguarding profit, food and water security policies, policies to deliver "green infrastructure", alleviate flooding, build new infrastructure, support adaptation to and mitigation of climate change, provide clean drinking water, air and soil, viable and accessible areas for recreation, effective waste storage systems, are all important and to some extent competing goals. The project will create an evidence base to better understand where trade-offs may be needed and how they may be made, and explore how the "land system" could be used to better deliver an appropriate range of outcomes in the same physical space.

A different future - demands on land use are strongly influenced by where we wish to live, work and travel, and these are likely to change over the next 50 years. While it is impossible to predict the future, an attempt to understand different possible trajectories of social, environment and economic change could inform policy-makers on how possible transformations are likely to affect the demands made on land and the best choice of policies to guide such choices.

Global forces at work - Climate change could, amongst many potential impacts, result in major migration shifts, environmental refugees, extreme weather events, rising sea-levels, changing habitats, crop failures, water shortages, and flooding, as well as more positive outcomes delivering new economic and business opportunities. Similarly, the evolution of the global economy could unfold in different ways. Major market failures, increasing trade barriers, resource nationalism, recessions, an increasing gap between rich and poor, could all potentially lead to pressure for the UK to become more self-sufficient. Equally, the benefits of an open thriving global economy could be great: increases in living standards widely shared, increased opportunities for trade, travel and new forms of work. How drivers such as these, as well as a host of others, might play out is uncertain. The project will identify significant uncertainties and factors driving change, consider how these factors interact and assess whether the UK’s land use architecture is sufficiently resilient and flexible, including how changes in land use can be used to mitigate problems.

Interventions - Some factors driving land use change are of course already in train, such as those stemming from policy and regulatory developments. For example, evolving EU agricultural and rural development policy; international trade and climate agreements; environmental legislation, including those relating to landscapes, biodiversity, water, soils, heritage, amenity/public access, fertilisers and pesticides, and the handling and recycling of wastes; climate change and energy policy; spatial planning, including prospects for urban and industrial development, the regional development agenda and the implications of lifestyle changes and expectations; food and health policy, including bio-security issues, have and will continue to influence demands on land use.

Sustainable land use and management - An integrated approach to examining the issues is needed. The project will look across the policy spectrum to consider the extent to which land can deliver society’s potential future demands and provide examples of how land can be better used to deliver multiple benefits. It will take a long-term strategic view, conceptualising land as a system of component parts that influence each other and are influenced by external factors. By better understanding the connected nature of the various components of the system, and the positive and negative feedback loops within it, the project will begin to form a picture of where the critical pressure points are and identify parts of the system where irreversible and/or unintended consequences could occur without appropriate policy adjustments or interventions.