Understanding land-use change conflict: a systematic review of case studies

Abstract

The growing demand for food, water, and shelter change the way people use land. These changes have affected or even caused conflict in several locations. However, conflicts do not erupt in isolation; they are the result of multiple interacting causes. There is limited structural understanding of these causes. In this study, we systematically coded case studies that report on conflict related to land-use change, including deforestation in commodity frontiers, agricultural development on common land, and urban development. Based on an analysis of 62 cases, we identified population growth, overlapping land rights, ethnic fragmentation, and economic inequality as the most frequently reported root causes, while rises in land prices was the most often reported proximate cause. Reported institutional causes suggest that the problem is not necessarily the complete absence of governance mechanisms, but rather that governance mechanisms are not fully equipped to deal with the complexities of the observed land-use changes.

Land Use Transition and Eco-Environmental Effects in Karst Mountain Area Based on Production-Living-Ecological Space: A Case Study of Longlin Multinational Autonomous County, Southwest China

“…Global warming, carbon cycle alteration [3], ecological degradation [4], biodiversity loss [5], ecosystem health [6], and the imbalance of the sea-land water cycle [7] caused by land use transition have been under concern by scholars. The existing studies mainly have two aspects: the process studies about land use characterization [8], change prediction [9], and drivers [10], and the mechanism studies on land use national forest transition [11], regional arable land transition, and urban-rural construction land transition [12][13][14], which effects urban-rural development [15], resources [16], and ecoenvironmental impacts [17]. Specifically, the land use transition under the background of production-living-ecological space is manifested in the land, leading to function change, which is focused on the transition among the three leading functions of production-livingecological space [18,19].…”

Land-Use Changes in the Sele River Basin Landscape (Southern Italy) between 1960 and 2012: Comparisons and Implications for Soil Erosion Assessment

“…Studies dealing with land-use changes have a great importance in geographical and geo-environmental research, as proved by the large number of papers on this topic [1][2][3]. First, they provide information about the type and the intensity of human impact on the physical landscape [4][5][6].…”

Managing the challenges of competing interests of different regions in setting the boundaries of neighboring urban areas: the case of Addis Ababa city administration and oromia regional state, Ethiopia

“…One of the challenges of the overlapping boundry is contradicting landuses: The consequences of contradicting land uses are significant threats to conservation ( Rajvanshi, 2005 ), causing ownership insecurity ( Magsi et al., 2017 ), increasing ecological degradation such as riverine ecosystems ( Valle et al., 2015 ) primarily on landscapes classified as natural and working. According to Jong et al. (2021) , overlapping land right is one of the root causes of conflict related to land use and related changes, which supplement the case study area.…”