Land-system science to support achieving the sustainable development goals

Introduction

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on 25 September 2015. All UN member states signed on to 17 goals with 169 targets that are intended to guide action towards ending poverty, protecting the environment, and ensuring that all people enjoy peace and justice before 2030 (United Nations, 2015). Achieving the SDGs will require staying within the planetary boundaries for nutrient and hydrological cycles, biodiversity, ecosystem services, and, connected to all these, land use (Griggs et al., 2013). We envision the Journal of Land Use Science becoming a principal outlet for research on land use and sustainability, both to address the aims of the SDGs, and to evaluate critically what these actions mean for landscapes and the people who govern them.

Challenges

Recent decades have brought significant social and environmental challenges, to which land-use scientists have collectively contributed substantial expertise on the impacts on land-use systems (Müller & Munroe, 2014). Trends in land use at regional and global scales have responded to growing demand for forest and agricultural products, bioenergy, and increasing meat-based diets, while suitable land resources that provide the desired outputs become increasingly scarce (Lambin & Meyfroidt, 2011). Land changes factor significantly in many climate challenges, from the flows of energy consumed and the resulting carbon emitted by cities (Stokes & Seto, 2016), to biodiversity declines (Bailey et al., 2016), to dramatically shifting livelihoods and resulting adaptations (Diamond & Ansharyani, 2018). Conceptual approaches, models, case studies, and policy insights are critical to addressing impacts as well as identifying the potential for mitigation that can be achieved in land use (Arneth et al., 2019). Finally, the contributions of land-use science regarding land conversions, land modifications, and ecosystem degradation, and the resulting dynamics of infectious disease threats are critical at this moment in time (Vanwambeke et al., 2019). We expect to see accelerated research funding and activities in these fields.

The role of land-use science in advancing sustainability

Land use plays an essential role in achieving many of the SDGs and land-use science can thus crucially contribute to better understanding of the trade-offs and synergies in achieving distinct SDGs. Sustainable land use can reconcile future challenges related to provision of food, energy, and water (Schmalzbauer & Visbeck, 2016). Land use can also help to conserve habitats and biodiversity, serve to mitigate climate change, and contribute to poverty reduction. Yet, ongoing environmental change jeopardizes realizing the land-use outcomes that are required to accomplish the SDGs.

The land-use community has recently began to engage more directly with the SDGs (Ehrensperger et al., 2019), noting that the 2030 agenda provides clear policy targets to guide land-use science research as well as elucidating key research priorities that may otherwise be missing from our analyses.

There are multiple interlinkages among the 17 SDGs. Arguably, key priorities for the land-use community include the following (Schmalzbauer & Visbeck, 2016):

Goal 1: no poverty

Agriculture remains the cornerstone to secure livelihoods for low-income countries where more than 60% of the population are employed in the agricultural sector. Sustainable land-use systems are not only essential to avoid poverty and hunger but also to secure opportunities and provide prospects for future generations. At the same time, commercial actors acquire land resources to capitalize on the income opportunities that are provided by the growing global demand for agricultural commodities. For example, analysis of large-scale investments into agriculture in Mozambique can shed light on the impacts of these investments for people and nature. Such insights are crucial to inform development initiatives and investors how their action can help alleviate local poverty, secure livelihoods, and sustain natural resources integrity (Zaehringer et al., 2018)

Goal 7: affordable and clean energy

The shift to renewable energy sources is pivotal to decarbonize the economies. Land use is intrinsically linked to the generation of renewables. Wind turbines conflict with settlements and agricultural areas, influence land rents, and affect landscape amenities. A striking amount of crop production is destined for producing biofuels and wood will continue to be the prime source of energy for most people. The Journal of Land Use Science featured a special issue on how changes in energy systems affected land use (Jepson & Caldas, 2017). Articles in the issue addressed indirect land-use change resulting from biofuel production (Bergtold et al., 2017; Prade et al., 2017) as well as direct land-use changes resulting from energy projects, such as from sugarcane production replacing traditional food crops (De Souza et al., 2017) and through coal and oil mining concessions (Mena et al., 2017).

Goal 11: sustainable cities and communities

Land-use analyses to date have shed light on linkages with urban climatology and city planning through land-system architecture (Turner, 2016). Urban planners are increasingly drawing from transdisciplinary approaches that incorporate human-environment science and engineering into urban design with the aim of creating more sustainable cities. Sustainability as a concept requires implementing system definitions, which presents challenges working on urban systems at broad (landscape or even national) scales that may transcend city boundaries (Wu, 2019). Land-use science has a critical role to play in monitoring urban changes at regional and global scales, combining expert knowledge in urban change detection as well as the dynamics of urban systems, particularly in fast-growing regions of Asia and Africa (Adhikari & de Beurs, 2017).

Goal 13: Climate Action

Land use contributes about one quarter to global anthropogenic emissions, mainly through deforestation, emissions from intensified land use, and through livestock production. The Journal of Land Use Science features research that sheds lights on the spatial patterns, determinants, and underlying causes of emission-intensive land-use changes, including the intensity of livestock production (Fernández et al., 2020), deforestation, and forest degradation (E. A. Ellis et al., 2020). Likewise, knowledge on how land systems must be responsive to mitigate climate changes and best adapt to new opportunities will be increasingly important (Nesbitt et al., 2018).

Goal 15: Life on land

Arguably, SDG 15 focuses on core targets which are addressed by the Journal of Land Use Science. Land-use changes have been the culprit of alarming rates of biodiversity loss and degradation of many ecosystem services that are essential for humanity (Foley et al., 2005; Newbold et al., 2016). A land-use perspective complements traditional ecological analyses by elucidating potential trade-offs and synergies among human needs and ecological impacts. Sustainable land use, in turn, underpins ecosystem protection and the conservation of biodiversity (E. C. Ellis et al., 2019; Thomson et al., 2019).

Perspectives for the future

We look forward to productive engagement in the pages of the Journal of Land Use Science on the multifaceted relationships between land-use science and the SDGs. After 14 years of research in this journal, we have amassed considerable expertise on the intricate interrelationships among social and environmental systems, and the role of land use in moving toward global sustainability (Jensen & Veihe, 2009; Pileri & Maggi, 2010). We are now at a key moment in which we can push forward, in elucidating the many roles that land systems can play in achieving the SDGs, as well as in closing gaps in our science that are inevitably revealed in asking those questions. Finally, more targeted engagement with policy and setting normative targets should play a much larger role for the land-system science community (Nielsen et al., 2019). This last point can be controversial, in light of general research practices that stress objectivity and the scientific method. At the same, particular normative targets, like the 1.5 degree C target of global warming above pre-industrial levels to reduce risks for people, economies, and ecosystems, are now broadly accepted due to the disastrous effects should we not embrace those targets. In what other realms can we as a community agree to work toward specific outcomes? This moment in time is sobering and should yet inspire future academic generations to work more pointedly toward improving life on earth.

Conclusion

Land-use scientists can play an eminent role in solving problems by engaging in research that contributes to better understanding the role of land systems in support of the SDGs, as well as critiquing indicators that are too aggregate (e.g., at the level of a country), or that set targets that are hard to measure (e.g., adaptive capacity) (Liverman, 2018). The Journal of Land Use Science is therefore committed to publish papers that highlight the role of land use for the SDGs and that account for the complexities in accomplishing them. The Journal of Land Use Science has interest to publish papers that address the SDGs at local levels, such as with case studies focusing on specific goals and targets (Messerli et al., 2019), at national levels where the agenda needs to be implemented (Gao & Bryan, 2017), and at continental to global levels (Heck et al., 2018; Obersteiner et al., 2016).

Authors' contribution

Contributions to our journal can take a variety of formats, including traditional research articles, synthetic reviews of literature that can engage public policy documents, and our new ‘Debates’ section for short communications that advance a clear position. We look forward to receiving and publishing manuscripts that relate land use with the SDGs, assess effects of land-system change on the SDGs, and that identify the conditions that are necessary to steer land use towards attaining the goals of the SDG for the benefit of humanity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.