Sustainable Land Management in a European Context a Co-Design Approach Human-Environment Interactions

Human-Environment Interactions 8 Thomas Weith · Tim Barkmann · Nadin Gaasch · Sebastian Rogga · Christian Strauß · Jana Zscheischler Editors Sustainable Land Management in a European Context A Co-Design Approach Human-Environment Interactions Volume 8 Series Editor Emilio F. Moran, Michigan State University, Bloomington, IN, USA The Human-Environment Interactions series invites contributions addressing the role of human interactions in the earth system. It welcomes titles on sustainability, climate change and societal impacts, global environmental change, tropical deforestation, reciprocal interactions of population-environment-consumption, large-scale monitoring of changes in vegetation, reconstructions of human interactions at local and regional scales, ecosystem processes, ecosystem services, land use and land cover change, sustainability science, environmental policy, among others. The series publishes authored and edited volumes, as well as textbooks. It is intended for environmentalists, anthropologists, historical, cultural and political ecologists, political geographers, and land change scientists. Human-environment interaction provides a framework that brings together scholarship sharing both disciplinary depth and interdisciplinary scope to examine past, present, and future social and environmental change in different parts of the world. The topic is very relevant since human activities (e.g. the burn of fossil fuels, fishing, agricultural activities, among others) are so pervasive that they are capable of altering the earth system in ways that could change the viability of the very processes upon which human and non-human species depend. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8599 Thomas Weith • Tim Barkmann • Nadin Gaasch • Sebastian Rogga • Christian Strauß • Jana Zscheischler Editors Sustainable Land Management in a European Context A Co-Design Approach 123 Editors Thomas Weith Tim Barkmann Institute of Environmental Science Research Area ‘Land Use and Governance’ and Geography Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape University of Potsdam, Campus Golm Research (ZALF) Potsdam, Germany Müncheberg, Germany Working Group “Co-Design Sebastian Rogga of Change and Innovation” Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Research (ZALF) Landscape Research (ZALF) Müncheberg, Germany Müncheberg, Germany Jana Zscheischler Nadin Gaasch Working Group “Co-Design of Change and Science Management and Transfer Innovation” Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (PIK) Research (ZALF) Potsdam, Germany Müncheberg, Germany Christian Strauß Research Area ‘Land Use and Governance’ Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) Müncheberg, Germany ISSN 2214-2339 ISSN 2452-1744 (electronic) Human-Environment Interactions ISBN 978-3-030-50840-1 ISBN 978-3-030-50841-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50841-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021. 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This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Foreword Sustainable land management is a key issue among the various applications of sustainable development. Humans are mobile terrestrial beings who need land as terra firma to support their activities and obtain vital resources. And yet land makes up only a third of the earth’s surface and is finite, much of it already having been populated by humans. Other basic preconditions for ensuring the survival of humans were the availability of freshwater and a plant cover that provided food and shelter, which was used for gathering and hunting. This activity was steadily improved owing to skill and intellect, particularly after learning how to use fire as an effective energy source. The real importance of land, however, was discovered when humans started to practice agriculture, especially crop farming. This was the very origin of land use and the first decisive step in transforming nature into a typical human environment, called culture. Humans took ownership of land and selected certain plant and animal species for crop cultivation and livestock husbandry around their settle- ments. These were built as solid farmsteads, marking a second type of land use and a completely artificial land cover. During plant cultivation, farmers became aware of the uppermost layer of the land, called soil, the quality of which, above all fertility, was indicated by the plant cover. Humans soon learned to determine which sites were best suited for agriculture—deep sandy to loamy soils that were easy to till. Management began by replacing the natural plant cover with crop plants, usually in pure stands, which involved working the land using tools such as hoes and ploughs. Grain and root crops soon became the mainstay of human food supply, promoting population growth—which again required more farmland: a vicious circle evolved. Cultural development is marked by continuous technical progress involving long-term consequences that were often impossible to foresee. Progress in agriculture resulted in bigger food quantities than farmers needed. This surplus enabled food to be supplied to a new, non-farming human population that led to urban life and civilisation, causing an irreversible division of rural and urban land use, life- style and mentality. Urban citizens, free from the daily toil of struggling with nature to produce food, developed new ideas and values such as landscape beauty, a love v vi Foreword 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 reso- lutions, 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 deterio- ration, 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 dam- aged 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,

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