Abstract
Land use is a key human activity, which, through the exploitation of natural resources, fosters socio-economic development and alters structures and processes in the environment. At the European level, the Sustainable Development Strategy stresses the need for real integration of economic, environmental and social issues across policy areas. In particular, land use policy aims to promote sustainability pathways of natural resources use and rural development through the decoupling of economic growth from environmental degradation while supporting social cohesion. Manifested with the idea of multifunctional land use,the environment is understood to provide a portfolio of functionalities, which, through proper land use management, can be exploited as environmental goods and services for the benefit of society. A sustainable way of managing land use and exploiting environmental functionalities requires tools that can provide anticipations of possible impacts of land use decisions at all levels of governance.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Helming, K., Tabbush, P., Pérez-Soba, M. (2008). Introduction. In: Helming, K., Pérez-Soba, M., Tabbush, P. (eds) Sustainability Impact Assessment of Land Use Changes. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78648-1_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78648-1_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-78647-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-78648-1
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)