Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on acronyms and currency
- 1 Concern for land
- 2 Land resource issues
- 3 Resource survey and land evaluation
- 4 Competition for land
- 5 Working with farmers
- 6 Land use planning
- 7 Land degradation
- 8 Global issues: climatic change and biodiversity
- 9 Monitoring change: land resource indicators
- 10 Costing the earth: the economic value of land resources
- 11 Land management: caring for resources
- 12 Research and technology
- 13 Land, food, and people
- 14 Population, poverty, and conflict
- 15 Awareness, attitudes, and action
- Notes
- References
- Index
1 - Concern for land
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on acronyms and currency
- 1 Concern for land
- 2 Land resource issues
- 3 Resource survey and land evaluation
- 4 Competition for land
- 5 Working with farmers
- 6 Land use planning
- 7 Land degradation
- 8 Global issues: climatic change and biodiversity
- 9 Monitoring change: land resource indicators
- 10 Costing the earth: the economic value of land resources
- 11 Land management: caring for resources
- 12 Research and technology
- 13 Land, food, and people
- 14 Population, poverty, and conflict
- 15 Awareness, attitudes, and action
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
With the rise in population placing ever-increasing pressures on scarce land, governments of developing countries should give high priority to rational land use, improved land management, and avoidance of degradation. At international level, public concern has been more with pollution aspects of the environment, and nature conservation, than with land as a productive resource. In developing countries, awareness by governments of the critical role played by land resources is poor, and institutions inadequately funded. Much progress has been made over the past 50 years in approaches and methods for land resource survey, evaluation, and management. What is needed now is more widespread and effective application of these methods. Sustainability, the combination of production with conservation, is a central concept in land resource management.
Management of land, of its soils, water, forests, pastures, and wildlife, has been central to human society from its earliest times. Land resources provide the basis for more than 95% of human food supplies, the greater part of clothing, and all needs for wood, both for fuel and construction. The developments of the industrial age have substituted coal, oil and minerals for some of the fuel, construction, and fibre needs, but have in no way removed the basic dependency of society upon the renewable resources of the land.
There has always been competition for land, sometimes reaching the level of conflict. In prehistoric times, among communities dependent on hunting and gathering, it would have shown in the kind of territoriality found amongst animal populations.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Land ResourcesNow and for the Future, pp. 1 - 11Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998