Land use planning and the ecosystem approach: An evaluation of case study planning frameworks against the Malawi Principles

Peter M. Phillips and Elsa João

Land Use Policy, 2017, vol. 68, issue C, 460-480

Abstract: Global land use change continues to undermine the capacity of ecosystems to sustain ecosystem service (ES) flows. Much attention in policy and research has therefore been given to concepts, tools and processes for sustainable land use planning, including consideration of ES and the ecosystem approach. However, there are limited empirical cases or evaluations of ecosystem approach based planning from which lessons can be drawn. The aim of this research therefore was to identify and evaluate existing case study planning frameworks that have the potential to operationalise the ecosystem approach. Based on the Malawi Principles, a new suite of evaluation criteria was developed. This was used to assess case study documentary evidence and evaluate the extent to which the 12 Malawi Principles had been considered. The evaluation also assessed the planning methods/approaches used by the case studies and their potential to help translate the Malawi Principles into land use planning outcomes. Finally, a SWOT analysis was used to structure the main findings. Our results show that the Malawi Principles have been considered across the case studies “fully” or “partially” in 64% of instances suggesting, therefore, that the case studies present a reasonable interpretation of the ecosystem approach. However, poor consideration of biodiversity and environmental limits across the cases highlights the risk of land use management decisions continuing to contribute to the degradation of natural capital.

Keywords: Land use planning; Ecosystem approach; Evaluation; Malawi Principles; Ecosystem services (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837716312522
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:68:y:2017:i:c:p:460-480

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2017.08.006

Access Statistics for this article

Land Use Policy is currently edited by Jaap Zevenbergen

More articles in Land Use Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joice Jiang ().