Conceptualizing Distal Drivers in Land Use Competition

Abstract

This introductory chapter explores the notion of 'distal drivers' in land use competition. Research has moved beyond proximate causes of land cover and land use change to focus on the underlying drivers of these dynamics. We discuss the framework of telecoupling within human-environment systems as a first step to come to terms with the increasingly distal nature of driving forces behind land use practices. We then expand the notion of distal as mainly a measure of Euclidian space to include temporal, social, and institutional dimensions. This understanding of distal widens our analytical scope for the analysis of land use competition as a distributed process to consider the role of knowledge and power, technology, and different temporalities within a relational or systemic analysis of practices of land use competition. We conclude by pointing toward the historical and social contingency of land use competition and by acknowledging that this contingency requires a methodological-analytical approach to dynamics that goes beyond linear cause-effect relationships. A critical component of future research will be a better understanding of different types of feedback processes reaching from biophysical feedback loops to feedback produced by individual or institutional reflexivity.

On the System. Boundary Choices, Implications, and Solutions in Telecoupling Land Use Change Research

“…Creating a better understanding of such differentiated outcomes of telecouplings thus requires us to move beyond the notion of distal flows and processes acting in coherent and existing human-environment systems, and instead focus our attention on describing and unpacking their constitution. By showing how direct and indirect effects of telecouplings are found not only over geographical and functional distance, but by social distance as well [21,29], the case presented here illustrates the importance of such 'unpacking'. Similar points have been raised by other authors concerned with the distributed effects and agency among farmers facing distal demands for their land resources [13,15].…”

“…However, while such an approach allows for setting system boundaries a priori, it also risks black-boxing the complexity of social-ecological processes and in particular the networked interactions cutting across such 'entities'. In this paper, we drew on the growing acknowledgement within LSS for embracing different disciplinary perspectives on, for example, social space, place, and scale [21,22,29,[53][54][55]121] to highlight the need for rethinking the analytical category of 'the system' within telecoupling research. By engaging with the systems thinking literature and in particular with what has been termed a 'soft' or 'epistemological' systems approach, telecoupling research can deal with 'the system' as a networked and fluid category that is not necessarily confined to a given spatial or institutional place.…”

“…Moreover, the complexity of social and ecological processes involved in creating telecouplings challenges the separation of systems with place-based logics due to, among other things, spatiotemporal scale mismatches between the social and ecological processes embedded in the coupled system [28]. For land system change specifically, the difficulty arises partly in the fact that while land as a resource is always located in geographic and territorial space, the actors and causal processes influencing the use of land can, but may not, be located in the same place [29]. For dealing with the potential (adverse) effects of telecouplings, there is therefore a need in LSS to move beyond "the tendency to view actions primarily within clear politically or ecologically bounded systems" [7] (p. 153).…”

Works in Favor of Extraction: Labor in Land-Use Competition

“…The interests of the local population -dispossessed from its land, in need of alternative income-are at odds with interests of others profiting from this situation, through access to resources and income [48]. Here, the spatial disconnect between land-use change and its drivers [97] is not the unintended by-product of globalized production and consumption, but plays a functional role favoring a particular claim.…”

Extractive Economies in Material and Political Terms: Broadening the Analytical Scope

“…The state and power relations within (state) institutions play a crucial role in defining and formalizing exclusive property rights which precede the extraction of resources from specific territories (both for state and private companies) [62]. The resulting land-use competition [63] or competing claims to land [59] increasingly becomes manifest in conflicts over access to land, especially at the resource-use frontier where new claims are established [5,64,65]. Our study of material flows and economic indicators would lead us to expect potential for conflict wherever extraction expands [66], even in the high-income extractive economies.…”