Rethinking Global Land Use in an Urban Era

Today, global land use is affected by a variety of factors, including urbanizationand the growing interconnectedness of economies and markets. This book examines the challenges andopportunities we face in achieving sustainable land use in the twenty-first century. While landresources remain finite, the global population is projected to reach ten billion by the end of thecentury, bringing issues of ethics and fairness to center stage. Who should decide how land is used?Where does competition for land occur, and why? Moreover, accelerating globalization, increasingdemand for animal protein in our diets, the need for new sources of energy, and the global scarcityof land have led to a decoupling of land use and local control, which raises issues of governance.The contributors, from a range of disciplines and countries, present new analytical perspectives andtools for understanding key issues in global land use. The chapters consider such topics as foodproduction and land use; case studies of urbanization and agriculture in Brazil and China;telecoupling and connections to distant places; emerging institutions of land-use governance; publicand private regulation of land use; uniquely urban issues of land use; and future steps tosustainability.

ContributorsGraeme Auld, Anthony J. Bebbington,Tor A. Benjaminsen, Hilda Blanco, Christopher G. Boone, Saturnino M. Borras, Jr., Wang Chunyu, RuthDeFries, Xiangzheng Deng, Hallie Eakin, Jennifer C. Franco, Bradford S. Gentry, Peter J. Gregory,Dagmar Haase, Helmut Haberl, Vanessa Hull, Carol A. Hunsberger, John S. I. Ingram, Elena G. Irwin,Anne-Marie Izac, Suzi Kerr, Jennifer Koch, Tobias Kuemmerle, Eric F. Lambin, Yingzhi Lin, JianguoLiu, Shuaib Lwasa, Peter J. Marcotullio, Matias E. Margulis, Cheikh Mbow, Ole Mertz, Peter Messerli,Patrick Meyfroidt, Emilio Moran, Harini Nagendra, Stephan Pauleit, Steward T. A. Pickett, TobiasPlieninger, Charles L. Redman, Anette Reenberg, Ximena Rueda, Heike Schroeder, Karen C. Seto, ThomasSikor, Simon R. Swaffield, Billie Lee Turner II, Caroline Upton, Birka Wicke, Makoto Yokohari, KarlZimmerer

Karen C. Seto is Professor in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. Anette Reenberg is Professor of Geography with the Environment and Society Research Group in the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management at the University of Copenhagen.