On “Sustainability” in Land Management

A seasonable Land Management has an economic, ecological/environmental and social component.

5.1. Economic component of Land Management

The most famous Land Management means in order to achieve economic impacts (in rural areas) is “the old Land Consolidation”. Until today land consolidation serves for an improvement of production and working conditions in agriculture and forestry, and that in West-, Central- and East-European countries. By merging of parcels to larger plots, by reshaping to obtain units of more favourable location and shape, by providing for ways, rural roads, water bodies and other common facilities, by soil-conserving, soil-improving and landscape measures the economic basic conditions of the farming enterprises will be improved, the amount of work reduced and a rational farm management facilitated. All that leads to considerable immediate and mediate income effects in agriculture as pointed out in a couple of scientific publications.

In urban areas, a rearrangement or readjustment by voluntary or compulsory land management instruments creates the prerequisites for private and public investments which – on their – indirectly create and conserve employment.

Figure 5: Economic Impacts occasionally a “Classic” Land Consolidation Procedure (Flurbereinigung “Kuchenheim”)

In the example of Flurbereinigung “Kuchenheim”, both goals are containing: occasionally of a land consolidation procedure agricultural land nearby the border of a city was redesigned. With view to the foreseeable development and enlargement of the city to a commercial area the rearrangement of the parcel structure was designed as well for a rational farming as a later commercial land use, both with a huge economic impact!

5.2. Environmental component of Land Management

The environmental dimension of Land Management shall be demonstrated with view to flood prevention:

During the last hundred years human land use drew near the waters; alignments and embankment of rivers took away the natural meadow ground of the rivers – in consequence we have to state huge flood incidents with big damages to animals, things and nature.

Today, the government tries to undo

Figure 6: The Environmental Dimension of Land Management

this wrong development: dikes have to be translocated away from the river in order to give more space for the waters, and retention spaces will be established again. That produces conflicts with the actual land users, mostly with the farmers, and needs a sophisticated land management with use of all instruments mentioned before (figure 1). Thus, Land Consolidation Agencies in Northrhine-Westphalia pursue these flood prevention activities at Rhine river, starting nearby Cologne and going up to the Netherlands border – a distance of more than 150 km – by about two dozen land management procedures that looses investments of more than 1 billion Euro (€).

5.3. Social component of Land Management

The social dimension of Land Management becomes obviously in big public investment/

infrastructure projects. Such projects like road/highway construction, railway/high speed track construction, airport enlargement need hundreds of hectares of land that is mostly in private ownership and that is regularly the economic base for farms and families.

In case of a compulsory purchase of land, the decision, which owners are involved and have to leave their land, depends only on the concrete planning. In Germany in case of expropriation it is to state a so called “special victim” (German: “Sonderopfer”) of the involved individuals. Further disadvantages are remaining rest plots, interrupted road connections, round

Figure 7: The Social Dimension of land Management

about ways and so on. That immediate afflicting by lost of property and/or by strong disadvantages concerning real property can be avoided by an intelligent land management, based on the implementation of a land consolidation procedure: the needed land will be bought – free-hand – in the surrounding area concerned; state or communal land, located wherever in the region, can be brought in.

Occasionally the land consolidation scheme, the needed and available land is transferred to the trace of the road/railway/airport. Needed environmental compensation measures, caused by the project, can also be realized in the same way. In this example of the High Speed Track Cologne/Frankfurt more than 500 ha of agricultural land was brought up in this way occasionally of 5 land consolidation projects across a distance of 26 km.

A second social aspect, but not at all of secondary relevance, is the “pacification” by that approach: Whilst in case of compulsory expropriation of the needed land lengthy judicial proceedings regularly follow with a duration up to 10 years and more over all available judicial institutions, a land purchase occasionally a land consolidation procedure does avoid such expensive procedures. Thus, a mediation of land use conflicts in Germany has as well social as economic impacts, what was impressively demonstrated in a fundamental research project on “Impact Oriented Controlling” (BMS Consulting 2005).

So far the examples on „effective and sustainable land management” in Germany:

effectiveness in the technical design and operational implementation and sustainability in the substantial approach in economic, environmental and social terms.

6. Conclusion

1. Land Management activities are the timely answer on increasing (public and private) demand on land and existing or upcoming land use conflicts.

2. Each democratic state and each liberal society needs a modern – that is an effective and