D1.1 – Challenges and opportunities for just and equitable land use change in Europe

Deliverable D1.1 – Challenges and opportunities for just and equitable land use change in Europe, was submitted by KLI with contributions from CzechGlobe, CRS, and all other partners in August 2024. The description of the deliverable is available below and the full deliverable is at the end for download.

This Deliverable is part of Task 1.3 “Ethics, equity and justice in project activities and results” within Work Package 1.

Justice is increasingly recognised as a priority of the European Union within various environmental and social policy frameworks (e.g., European Green Deal). Such frameworks regulate the ways decisions are made about land use, for example: urbanisation processes, the creation of natural reserves, and the conversion of farmland. Foregrounding justice means to make sure that the benefits and burdens of land use decisions are fairly distributed among all communities, particularly among groups who are marginalised and vulnerable.

Decisions about land use are taken in situations where many actors – from community representatives to land use planners and policy makers – need to work together and consider multiple factors. Embedding justice in land use decision-making processes thus implies a clear mandate to understand how to bring individuals, communities and organisations together to fight climate change and stop biodiversity loss in more just and equitable ways. However, there is scarce knowledge and little guidance on how to integrate principles of justice and equity into how different actors work together for more sustainable and just futures in Europe.

This Ethics Handbook fills both the knowledge and the guidance gaps. First, it integrates knowledge from different disciplines and societal contexts (i.e., from research, activism, and policy) about how to deal with ethical issues of equity and justice in land use change. Second, it makes this knowledge usable for the different actors working on issues related to land use. The main goal of the Handbook is to support actors within land use decision-making to identify social and environmental injustices that arise from uneven access to resources and decision-making power.

The results presented in the Handbook emerged from multiple activities in the Horizon Europe funded project “Planning Land Use Strategies: Meeting biodiversity, climate and social objectives in a changing world” (PLUS Change). The Handbook is equipped with visual aids, examples and exercises that will help actors across diverse contexts identify, analyse, and address issues of justice and equity in their work. It is structured in three main parts, summarised below, with an introduction and concluding reflections.

PART 1: Understanding (in)justice in land use

This section integrates knowledge from multiple academic disciplines and social movements on issues of environmental and social justice. Readers can learn how to understand and think about (in)justice in land use change through:

• The concept of environmental justice and the history of the environmental justice movement in different geographies.
• A vocabulary for justice-related work in land use research and practice that clarifies how to make use of terms signifying different aspects and dimensions of justice (such as distributive, recognitional, procedural, restorative, intergenerational, more-than-human).
• A Justice Lens tool that integrates and visualises the different aspects and dimensions of justice which can be used to identify, analyse and plan for action.

PART 2: Navigating (in)justice in land use

This section presents a stepwise process that different actors involved in decision-making on land use change can follow when aiming to generate more just processes and outcomes. The steps follow the structure of the Justice Lens from Part 1 in drafting an Equity and Justice Plan. This process seeks to ensure that research and planning activities are sensitive to the justice implications of the work they are proposing in relation to land use change. The main steps are:

• Creating awareness of what (in)justice in land use change may mean and how (in)justice manifests.
• Identifying justice situations in the specific (geographic-social-cultural-institutional) contexts of work.
• Analysing justice situations, using the aspects and dimensions of justice presented in the Justice Lens.
• Planning for action, when working on land use change in contexts with complex and contextual justice situations.

PART 3: Inspiring through examples from PLUS Change

This section presents examples from PLUS Change that illustrate ways of approaching justice in land use research and practice. It aims to exemplify and to inspire by:

• Overviewing the justice issues that manifested in the work of 22 partners, common trends and relative importance of justice dimensions in partners’ work.
• Showcasing the differing framings of justice in land use processes across different geographical, socio-cultural and political contexts in Europe.
• Exemplifying how three partners used the Justice Lens

The Ethics Handbook also includes an Annex with Equity and Justice Plans by 22 partners in PLUS Change which detail specific challenges and opportunities that the partners faced in their work. These plans illustrate that one of the main challenges consists in reaching out to those sectors of the population who are most vulnerable and affected, for example, by climate change, but who are often neither represented nor heard in decision-making processes related to land use. The design of the processes, different kinds of bias (e.g., in theoretical frameworks, methods, interpretation of results), rigid institutional rules, language barriers and power dynamics are mentioned as factors hindering equity and transparency. At the same time, the plans show that important opportunities emerge when leveraging existing partnerships that build trust and support mutual learning.

The Ethics Handbook presents general guidelines meant to inspire and structure justice work, in the form of tools, steps, and recommendations. Necessary reflection and adaptation depend on the people involved and contexts where equity and justice issues are addressed. Given the difficulty and discomfort of justice work, the Ethics Handbook can help to structure and orient a learning process, generating outcomes that contribute to a better world.