The Natural Fix?

LAND COMPETITION AND LIVELIHOOD ISSUES

There are competing demands for land use. Any policy that aims to promote ecosystem carbon management must resolve conflicts between different land uses and take care not to disadvantage the poor.

Policies that are to have a positive effect on carbon storage and sequestration in terrestrial ecosystems (both natural and human-dominated) may aim to ensure that existing land-use continues – for example through enhanced protection of set- aside areas that hold significant carbon stores, such as peat- swamp forests – or they may aim to bring about large-scale land use change, for example through changing agricultural practices. Any such policies and their impacts will need to be considered in the context of other, possibly competing needs for and uses of land: for food production, as living space, for maintenance of biodiversity, for recreation and to fulfil aes- thetic and spiritual demands (Millennium Ecosystem Assess- ment 2005). How, then, can people optimise land use and land manage- ment for a variety of needs? One approach is to maximise the efficiency of land-use for one overriding purpose – such

as food production or human habitation – in any one place, thereby leaving more land available for other uses (such as rec- reation, species conservation or carbon sequestration); another is to seek multiple uses or benefits from any one piece of land (Green et al. , 2005). Whichever approach is chosen, trade-offs will almost cer- tainly be necessary and in any individual case, particular people or groups of people will attach different priorities to different kinds of land use. Where there are competing possible land-uses, conflicts are likely to arise, with a strong likelihood that there will be different ‘winners’ and ‘losers’, at least in the short and medium term. Without careful plan- ning it is likely often to be the poor and disadvantaged who lose out, for a variety of reasons: they are often highly de- pendent on local resources, and are not in a position to buy in substitutes; they generally have less of a voice in decision-

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