Promoting sustainable land management: An innovative approach to land-take decision-making

Pranav Gupta, Alka Bharat, Nick McCullen and Tristan Kershaw

Land Use Policy, 2025, vol. 149, issue C

Abstract: Land degradation presents significant global challenges, threatening natural resources, biodiversity, and food security. Addressing this issue requires more effective land-take decision-making processes, particularly in data-deficient cities where comprehensive land assessment methods are challenging to implement. This study introduces a streamlined land-take decision-making framework designed to promote sustainable land management practices. The framework consists of two key components: the Sustainable Development Index (SDI) for assessing current land-take decisions and the Decision-Making Rubric (DMR) for proposing mitigated solutions. Applied to a pilot case city in India, the framework demonstrated its practical utility by showing that land-take decisions between 2001 and 2021 resulted in a 69 % reduction of natural land cover. If these trends continue, the assessment of the 2031 master plan using SDI indicates that an additional 56 % of the remaining ecosystem-rich areas, which include regions with high biodiversity and ecological value, could be lost by 2031. However, the framework's application could potentially mitigate these impacts, reducing the projected 56 % loss to 14 %, thereby promoting more sustainable and equitable land management practices. The study's aim is to provide decision-makers with a practical tool to improve land identification methods and enhance the sustainability of land-take decisions. This research contributes to the existing body of knowledge by addressing the gap in practical, easily applicable tools for sustainable land management in data-deficient urban contexts.

Keywords: Land-take; Decision-making; Sustainable urban development; Loss and damage analysis; Scenario building; Natural resources management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:149:y:2025:i:c:s0264837724003727

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2024.107419

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