Land use functions — a multifunctionality approach to assess the impact of land use changes on land use sustainability
Part 5. Regional and local evaluation - 17; International audience; The dramatic changes in land use observed in Europe in the last fifty years have generally resulted in improvement of human welfare and economic development. On the other hand, they have caused serious environmental problems. There is therefore a need for approaches that help to understand in an integrative way the economic, environmental and societal impacts that land use changes have on sustainability. Sustainability Impact Assessment(SIA), which assesses the impact of policies on sustainability, addresses this challenge. SIA partly builds on the concept of the multifunctionality of land which helps to deal with the compl…
Limits and targets for a regional sustainability assessment: an interdisciplinary exploration of the threshold concept
Part 5. Regional and local evaluation-18 ; International audience; Some encompassing terminology is required in order to accommodate different conceptual approaches in the three pillars of sustainability. So, this chapter provides a literature review exploring the threshold concept. In environmental research – especially in ecology – thresholds are often associated with limits which have certain system-inherent processes. In social and economic disciplines, if the notion of limit or critical limit is present, the concept of targets is often more appropriate which are linked to political objectives and social acceptability. The concept of threshold is accommodated within the general framewor…