Land Use - How to push the right policy buttons

Computer-based tools for better decision-making.

Understanding a decision’s impact for policy-makers is an imperative that never goes away. Take a policy to change land use. It won’t just affect farmers’ incomes and grain prices. Any resulting increase in fertiliser use, for instance, could have knock-on effects as diverse as they are far-reaching, from changes in water quality and local biodiversity to increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Enabling Defra and others to take all this into account is the aim of Social, Economic and Environmental Research (SEER) into Multi-objective Land Use Decision Making, a groundbreaking project accredited by LWEC. And it’s already proved influential, providing important input for the National Ecosystem Assessment and, from there, into the Natural Environment White Paper published in June 2011.

The project team is focused on developing easy-to-use desktop tools that will make it possible to take a more sophisticated, far-sighted approach to decision-making with a land use dimension.

“These computer-based tools will allow policy-makers to identify the direct and indirect consequences of the different interventions that are potentially open to them”, says Professor Ian Bateman of the University of East Anglia.

Taking full account of the varying conditions found in different parts of the UK, the tools will enable robust evaluation of costs and benefits ranging right up to macro-economic impacts (e.g. on jobs and economic growth).

“Where land use management is concerned, it’s vital to appreciate that decisions can have unforeseen effects in unexpected spheres,” notes Professor Bateman. “Even as a national policy-maker, there are some levers you can control and some you can’t.”