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Prospects for sustainable land-use policy in Germany: Experimenting with a sustainability heuristic

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  • Fischer, Beate
  • Klauer, Bernd
  • Schiller, Johannes

Abstract

Land is an essential yet limited natural resource. Its current unsustainable use highlights the need for sustainability policies. In order to explore potential policy strategies, we use the concepts of stocks and durable institutions as tools for analysing temporal structures in nature and society. These concepts are incorporated into a heuristic aimed at reducing complexity and finding windows of opportunity for policy action. The heuristic is applied to current German land-use policy. We show that the German government is highly unlikely to achieve its declared sustainability goal to reduce the rate of land conversion to 30ha/day by 2020. Analysis of the inherent dynamics of major stocks and institutions reveals that, even in a situation with stagnating or declining population, the inertia of institutions such as local municipal self-administration and the municipal financial system prevents the government's sustainability goals from being achieved.

Suggested Citation

  • Fischer, Beate & Klauer, Bernd & Schiller, Johannes, 2013. "Prospects for sustainable land-use policy in Germany: Experimenting with a sustainability heuristic," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 213-220.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:95:y:2013:i:c:p:213-220
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.09.006
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    Cited by:

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    2. Bizer, Kilian & Henger, Ralph & Meub, Lukas & Proeger, Till, 2014. "The political economy of certificates for land use in Germany: Experimental evidence," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 225, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    3. Yunfeng Hu & Batu Nacun, 2018. "An Analysis of Land-Use Change and Grassland Degradation from a Policy Perspective in Inner Mongolia, China, 1990–2015," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-22, November.
    4. Bimonte, Salvatore & Stabile, Arsenio, 2015. "Local taxation and urban development. Testing for the side-effects of the Italian property tax," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 100-107.
    5. Proeger Till & Meub Lukas & Bizer Kilian & Henger Ralph, 2017. "Die Effizienz von Zuteilungsmechanismen bei Flächenzertifikaten zwischen Versteigerung und Grandfathering – experimentelle Evidenz," Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 66(1), pages 80-109, April.
    6. Kauškale Linda & Geipele Ineta, 2015. "Land Use Analysis in Latvia in The Context of Sustainable Development," Baltic Journal of Real Estate Economics and Construction Management, Sciendo, vol. 3(1), pages 14-25, December.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sustainability; Land-use policy; Stocks; Institutions; Inherent dynamics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q24 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Land
    • Q56 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth
    • R14 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Land Use Patterns
    • R52 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Regional Government Analysis - - - Land Use and Other Regulations

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