Land Use and Its Consequences

Urban Farm DB summary

This chapter surveys the food-security implications of agricultural land use, unsustainable features of widespread food production practices, and the debate over agricultural intensification versus extensification, then examines land use's consequences beyond the land itself for groundwater, surface water, oceans, ambient air quality, and planetary systems. It explains the causes of forest destruction and fragmentation driven by the global expansion of land used for "high-risk commodities," the linkage between deforestation and declining terrestrial biodiversity, and the global market dynamics driving both crises. It assesses socioeconomic and ecological shortcomings in some proposed nature-based solutions, showing that they perpetuate an unsustainable business-as-usual approach, and summarizes how these land-use issues are conceptualized as human-rights concerns and translated into policy proposals.