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Decision-thinking about land use
Decision-thinking about land use John Jeffers
Our present methods of reaching decisions about land use suffer from an over-reliance on adversarial procedures and a failure to examine the likely consequences of adopting various options. This paper argues that decision-making should be preceded by a decision-thinking process that focuses attention on the critical issues, creates the most effective range of alternative solutions, evaluates their consequences, and facilitates the use of judgement in making a final choice. Expert computer systems could facilitate this wider discussion of available options for land use. Professor Jeffers is at the Department of Statistics, University of Newcastle, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK
‘C. Barr, C. Benefield, B. Bunce, Heather Risdale and Margaret Whittaker, Landscape Changes in Britain, Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria, 1986.
LAND USE POLICY January 1988
Recent surveys of land use and land use change have emphasized the dynamic nature of land use, reflecing changes in policies and practices even within relatively short periods of time. The resurvey carried out by the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology (ITE), for example, has shown that there was an increase of 66% in the area of wheat in Great Britain from 1978 to 1984. The greatest increases in wheat acreage were in East Anglia, but the percentage changes were most dramatic in southwest England, where the area under wheat went from 1.7% to 5.4%. Most (93%) of the land under wheat in 1984 had been under annual crops or short-term grass leys in 1978, confirming a general impression that the increase in the area of wheat has been at the expense of other crops (especially barley) rather than through the cultivation of new ground. In contrast, the much-remarked increase in the cultivation of oilseed rape, although conspicous and 10 times the area in 1978, still only represents 1% of the total Great Britain land area.’ Apart from agricultural policy, responding to influences of both national and European Community decisions, the demands of the recreation, wildlife conservation and amenity lobbies all make assumptions about the likely response of land use to legislation, advice and community pressures. Very few of those assumptions are ever tested explicitly, although, again, the ITE resurvey provides some evidence to suggest that the changes in land use were somewhat different from those that many of the lobbies
had advocated. Thus, a total of 39 000 hectares of land had gone to new housing between 1978 and 1984, mainly from land which had been vacant, derelict or under pasture rather than used for arable crops. While much of the new road building during the same period occurred in central England, most of the newly constructed tracks were in south-west England and in Wales and Scotland, and associated mainly with intensification of agriculture and the extension of recreation activities such as shooting and skiing. Management practices, including those advocated by advisory bodies such as ADAS and FWAG, also have a marked effect on patterns of land use. Some 146 000 hectares, ie about 3% of land classified as rough grazing in 1973, had been ‘improved’ by 1984, mostly in south and central England, as well as in north and mid-Wales. The results of such ‘improvement’ on wildlife and on drainage waters running into rivers and estuaries have undoubtedly been far-reaching. Hedgerows and other field boundaries continue to be removed as part of agricultural practice, some 28 000 kilometres having been taken out between 1978 and 1984, together with 12 000 kilometres of wire fence and 1 400 kilometres of stone wall. About eight times as much hedgerow had been removed as had been planted within the same period, and, in 1984, the length of derelict hedgerow in Great Britain was 58 000 kilometres. Despite this recognition that land use rapidly reflects our choice of agricultural, forestry and planning
‘6.
Heirs, The Professional Sidgwick & Jackson, 1986. Thinker,
Decision
London,
policies, and our methods of land management within these policies, the emphasis by politicians, administrators, landowners and managers alike is on decision-making rather than on decision-thinking. Heirs’ has stressed the importance, however. of preceding decision-making by a four-stage decision-thinking process that focuses attention upon the critical issues, creates the most effective range of alternative solutions, evaluates the likely implications and consequences of those solutions, including contingency plans in case the choice of solution proves to be wholly or partially wrong. and facilitates the use of judgement to decide on the final choice of action. [Iis four-stage process is illustrated in Figure I, and is clearly cyclical, coming to an end when it is possible for the decisiontakers to make their final choice on the basis of the discussion generated by the other stages. There appear to be two weak links in our present methods of arguing for
and against land use policies and practices. The first is a failure to generate a sufficiently wide range of alternative solutions to perceived problems. Much of this failure stems from over-reliance upon adversarial procedures which hark back to school and college debating societies. One side proposes a course of action. while the other opposes it. Anyone who refuses to take part in this debate, but instead suggests several, and perhaps many. alternative possiblities is accused of merely confusing the issue, and preventing or delaying the making of necessary decisions. However, the generating of a wider set of options demands genuine creativity,
and ;I willingness
beyond the immediate vious questions one
being
to look
and most ob-
so as to ensure that the
answered
i\ sufficiently
‘rich’ to capture all the considerations that should
be brought
to bear upon
the problem. One
problem
exercising
which
the members
is
currently
of the
Euro-
Action
Stage 1 THE QUESTION Formulating (or reformulating) a question and gathering information
r----W
; r--’
----_--_,
1
1 I I I
I I I I
I I
I I rv
THE
Stage 4 DECISION
Stage 2 THE ALTERNATIVES
Evaluating the alternatives
Creating alternative
developed in stage 2 that survived stage 3 in order to make a decision that selects the best alternative
answers to the question
I 1 i i I I
and associated contingencies
Figure
1.
Stages
in
decision-
thinking. Source:
fessional Jackson,
76
from 6. Heirs, The ProThinker, Sidgwick & London, 1986.
Redrawn
Decision
L-
L__
Stage 3 THE CONSEQUENCES Predicting the future consequences of acting on each of the alternatives and creating necessary contingency plans
LAND USE POLICY January 1988
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. ....
7
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.
....
.......... . . .::
. :-
c
..t ...... . .................
..I.. :” A..: ,.: .,... .:.....;,._
‘We should not adopt policies or practices which foreclose on future options’
3J.N.R. Jeffers, An introduction to Systems Analysis, with Ecological Applications, Edward Arnold, London, 1978.
LAND USE POLICY January 1988
....
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.........
t.. ........... ... ..:.,.:.
. . ... . .......... !.__.,
......
.
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. ...:
.;.
... ‘.i.!..;
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....
j ........ .......
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1Viewpoint
.~,~;.).~~~.:.‘.,~t!.....!.: .....‘* ........
pean Economic Community is the choice of alternative uses for land which is today contributing to agricultural overproduction. Supposing that it is sensible to reduce agricultural production in a world that is chronically short of food, rather than to change the forms of production to make them more suitable for consumption and distribution in Third World countries. there are many alternative uses that could be considered, including a range of energy crops, forestry, wildlife conservation, recreation, urban and industrial expansion, and combinations of two or more of these uses. Although many of the policyadvocating bodies and special-interest groups are already arguing for some of nobody seems conthese options, cerned to ensure that the full range of possible options has been laid open for discussion, to judge from the recent statement made by the Department of the Environment in Britain, a statement apparently endorsed by the Minister for Agriculture somewhat hastily. There is little sign that the situation is better in any other countries of the European Community. The second weak link in our decision-thinking about land use is the lack of rigorous examination of the likely consequences of adopting each of the possible options. The excuse for this neglect of prediction of future consequences is often that the future is too uncertain for us to make accurate predictions. However, techniques for modelling the behaviour of complex systems in the face of uncertainty have improved greatly during the last IO-20 years, partly because of the greater availability of powerful computers, even on our desktops, but also because of the development of mathematical and logical methods of dynamic modelling made possible by such computers. Furthermore, there is now a sufficient base of theory to enable reasonably accurate predictions to be made about the way in which an ecological system will behave as a result of changes which are made to the environment or to the organisms of that system. There is very little excuse for the inertia which currently prevents policy options being sub-
jected to critical analysis in order to determine the likely consequences of their being adopted. Perhaps even more important is the need to add planning for the contingencies that may follow if the choice turns out to be wrong to the prediction of likely consequences! Would we have been quite so liberal in our use of the pesticides which we now know to accumulate at the far ends of the food chain if we had allowed ourselves to ask the question, Supposing we are wrong in assuming that these substances are safe?’ Similarly, in considering the consequences of the many alternative uses for land currently in agricultural production, we need to ensure that our choice of options does not foreclose future options should our choice prove to have been wrong, or should the economic and social conditions which are forcing the present choice change sufficiently to require us to again modify our pattern of land use. There is little sign, especially in the heat of pre-election politics, that such questions are being asked. The disadvantage of decisionthinking, as an essential process preceding decision-making about land use, is that it requires the combined expertise of a large number of specialists. Economists, sociologists, ecologists, agriculturalists, foresters, wildlife biologists, planners, etc, all have a part to play in ensuring that the questions being answered are the appropriate ones, that the widest possible range of options has been and that the likely congenerated, sequences and necessary contingencies have been predicted. We lack a forum for so wide a range of expertise, and perhaps even a methodology sufficiently comprehensive to encompass the complexity of the interrelationships between the different components of land use questions. Systems analysis has been advocated in the past’ as one possible integrating methodology, but mathematical descriptions of complex relationships quickly become opaque to administrators and resource managers, who are rightly unwilling to accept conclusions derived from mathematical reasoning without adequate explanation as to
77
why those conclusions do not match their subjective expectations. In any case, many of the decisions of human experts depend not solely on a detailed knowledge base. such as might be incorporated in a systems analysis of a land use problem. but also on heuristics (rules of thumb or rules of good guessing) developed through practical and hard-won experience. A similar need to draw together hard data with human experience has been recognized in many other fields, including medicine. mineral prospectengineering :rnd the ing, chemical design of computer systems. In such fields expert systems. defined as knowledge-based computer programs capable of giving intelligent advice for which the basis can be readily explained. have shown themselves to be valuable in drawing together ;I wide range of experience into a usable system.J Perhaps the only way forward to ;I fuller consideration of the available options for land use in Britain, as part of the European Community, lies in the creation of such expert systems to inform and guide those who have to make decisions about land use policies and managcment practices at all levels, from the Community :md national administrators zmd politicians to the owners and managers of particular areas of land. flowever it is achieved, the need is for much fuller discussion of the available options for land use in the future. The likely consequences of each of those options. and the contingency plans that need to be drawn up should the choice of option prove to be wrong, need to be worked out in detail before any one set of interests should be allowed to dominate the discussion. Some fundamental guiding principles can. however. be suggested:
4F. Hayes-Roth, D.A. Waterman and D.B. Lenat, eds, Building Expert Systems, Addison-Wesley, Reading, PA, 1983. %. Allen, How to Save the World, Koran Page, London, 1980.
78
(l)We should not adopt policies or practices which foreclose on future options. For example, to build on productive agricultural land as a response to the current overproduction of food in Europe would permanently remove land from biological productivity, so that, if it later became necessary to increase productivity of food, biomass energy, wood fibre or timber, the total
land resource would have been permanently reduced. (2)The options considered should maintain essential ecological processes and life-support systems. These processes are essential for human survival and well-being, and include soil formation, the rccycling of nutrients and the clezmsing of air and water. The maintenance of soil fertility is especially necessary in a world in which huge quantities of fertile soil are being stripped from the land by poor land management and the removal of hedgerows and woodlands. (3)Preserving the genetic diversity of species, varieties. strains and forms of plants, animals zind microorganisms should be a primary aim of any alternative USC:for agricultural land, not least because modern agriculture, with its liberal use of pesticides and herbicides, has done much to reduce the distribution of many species of wildlife organisms. Genetic diversity. however, is not required solely because of wildlife conservation, It also provides ;I buffer agiiinst harmful cnvironmental change, imd supplies matcrial for medical and scientific innovation in the many industries that depend on living resources. (4)Any alternative use of agricultural hmd should utilize species and ecosystems sustainably. In the Third World, sustainable utilization of all living resources is essential for survival. In the more diverse and flexible economics of the developed Western countries. it may be claimed that there is less need to utilize certain resources sustainably. but correspondingly less excuse for not doing so. It is. of course, no accident that the last three of these principles are the same as those identified in the World Conservation Strategy,’ because the problems of land USC:are central to the questions of resource conservation. Indeed, it may be worth reminding all those currently considering changes in land use policy and management practices in Britain that the UK is ;I signatory to the World Conservation Strategy.
LAND USE POLICY January 1988
Our present methods of reaching decisions about land use suffer from an over-reliance on adversarial procedures and a failure to examine the likely consequences of adopting various options. This paper argues that decision-making should be preceded by a decision-thinking process that focuses attention on the critical issues, creates the most effective range of alternative solutions, evaluates their consequences, and facilitates the use of judgement in making a final choice. Expert computer systems could facilitate this wider discussion of available options for land use. Professor Jeffers is at the Department of Statistics, University of Newcastle, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK
‘C. Barr, C. Benefield, B. Bunce, Heather Risdale and Margaret Whittaker, Landscape Changes in Britain, Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria, 1986.
LAND USE POLICY January 1988
Recent surveys of land use and land use change have emphasized the dynamic nature of land use, reflecing changes in policies and practices even within relatively short periods of time. The resurvey carried out by the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology (ITE), for example, has shown that there was an increase of 66% in the area of wheat in Great Britain from 1978 to 1984. The greatest increases in wheat acreage were in East Anglia, but the percentage changes were most dramatic in southwest England, where the area under wheat went from 1.7% to 5.4%. Most (93%) of the land under wheat in 1984 had been under annual crops or short-term grass leys in 1978, confirming a general impression that the increase in the area of wheat has been at the expense of other crops (especially barley) rather than through the cultivation of new ground. In contrast, the much-remarked increase in the cultivation of oilseed rape, although conspicous and 10 times the area in 1978, still only represents 1% of the total Great Britain land area.’ Apart from agricultural policy, responding to influences of both national and European Community decisions, the demands of the recreation, wildlife conservation and amenity lobbies all make assumptions about the likely response of land use to legislation, advice and community pressures. Very few of those assumptions are ever tested explicitly, although, again, the ITE resurvey provides some evidence to suggest that the changes in land use were somewhat different from those that many of the lobbies
had advocated. Thus, a total of 39 000 hectares of land had gone to new housing between 1978 and 1984, mainly from land which had been vacant, derelict or under pasture rather than used for arable crops. While much of the new road building during the same period occurred in central England, most of the newly constructed tracks were in south-west England and in Wales and Scotland, and associated mainly with intensification of agriculture and the extension of recreation activities such as shooting and skiing. Management practices, including those advocated by advisory bodies such as ADAS and FWAG, also have a marked effect on patterns of land use. Some 146 000 hectares, ie about 3% of land classified as rough grazing in 1973, had been ‘improved’ by 1984, mostly in south and central England, as well as in north and mid-Wales. The results of such ‘improvement’ on wildlife and on drainage waters running into rivers and estuaries have undoubtedly been far-reaching. Hedgerows and other field boundaries continue to be removed as part of agricultural practice, some 28 000 kilometres having been taken out between 1978 and 1984, together with 12 000 kilometres of wire fence and 1 400 kilometres of stone wall. About eight times as much hedgerow had been removed as had been planted within the same period, and, in 1984, the length of derelict hedgerow in Great Britain was 58 000 kilometres. Despite this recognition that land use rapidly reflects our choice of agricultural, forestry and planning
‘6.
Heirs, The Professional Sidgwick & Jackson, 1986. Thinker,
Decision
London,
policies, and our methods of land management within these policies, the emphasis by politicians, administrators, landowners and managers alike is on decision-making rather than on decision-thinking. Heirs’ has stressed the importance, however. of preceding decision-making by a four-stage decision-thinking process that focuses attention upon the critical issues, creates the most effective range of alternative solutions, evaluates the likely implications and consequences of those solutions, including contingency plans in case the choice of solution proves to be wholly or partially wrong. and facilitates the use of judgement to decide on the final choice of action. [Iis four-stage process is illustrated in Figure I, and is clearly cyclical, coming to an end when it is possible for the decisiontakers to make their final choice on the basis of the discussion generated by the other stages. There appear to be two weak links in our present methods of arguing for
and against land use policies and practices. The first is a failure to generate a sufficiently wide range of alternative solutions to perceived problems. Much of this failure stems from over-reliance upon adversarial procedures which hark back to school and college debating societies. One side proposes a course of action. while the other opposes it. Anyone who refuses to take part in this debate, but instead suggests several, and perhaps many. alternative possiblities is accused of merely confusing the issue, and preventing or delaying the making of necessary decisions. However, the generating of a wider set of options demands genuine creativity,
and ;I willingness
beyond the immediate vious questions one
being
to look
and most ob-
so as to ensure that the
answered
i\ sufficiently
‘rich’ to capture all the considerations that should
be brought
to bear upon
the problem. One
problem
exercising
which
the members
is
currently
of the
Euro-
Action
Stage 1 THE QUESTION Formulating (or reformulating) a question and gathering information
r----W
; r--’
----_--_,
1
1 I I I
I I I I
I I
I I rv
THE
Stage 4 DECISION
Stage 2 THE ALTERNATIVES
Evaluating the alternatives
Creating alternative
developed in stage 2 that survived stage 3 in order to make a decision that selects the best alternative
answers to the question
I 1 i i I I
and associated contingencies
Figure
1.
Stages
in
decision-
thinking. Source:
fessional Jackson,
76
from 6. Heirs, The ProThinker, Sidgwick & London, 1986.
Redrawn
Decision
L-
L__
Stage 3 THE CONSEQUENCES Predicting the future consequences of acting on each of the alternatives and creating necessary contingency plans
LAND USE POLICY January 1988
*..;.v;..:;. ..:..... . _.,
.....
. ....
7
..I’...
....... .::..;...:
....
...
..,
..i...l.....
.. . ......
... ..k. ’:: i..,“~‘....~....‘...: ....... ..... . “I”=“::::_;,; .., ... .
.
....
.......... . . .::
. :-
c
..t ...... . .................
..I.. :” A..: ,.: .,... .:.....;,._
‘We should not adopt policies or practices which foreclose on future options’
3J.N.R. Jeffers, An introduction to Systems Analysis, with Ecological Applications, Edward Arnold, London, 1978.
LAND USE POLICY January 1988
....
;., .“,.,?
.........
t.. ........... ... ..:.,.:.
. . ... . .......... !.__.,
......
.
-.,*,r ,.,*._:
.. ‘t ;>,., . ........... ;l.. ..‘. .. . ‘:;::i.;t.
i,,;.
...
:.,.‘a.:’ ,: ; ....
.~.~....::;y:.‘-‘)
;$
. ...:
.;.
... ‘.i.!..;
.\
....
j ........ .......
:I.
1Viewpoint
.~,~;.).~~~.:.‘.,~t!.....!.: .....‘* ........
pean Economic Community is the choice of alternative uses for land which is today contributing to agricultural overproduction. Supposing that it is sensible to reduce agricultural production in a world that is chronically short of food, rather than to change the forms of production to make them more suitable for consumption and distribution in Third World countries. there are many alternative uses that could be considered, including a range of energy crops, forestry, wildlife conservation, recreation, urban and industrial expansion, and combinations of two or more of these uses. Although many of the policyadvocating bodies and special-interest groups are already arguing for some of nobody seems conthese options, cerned to ensure that the full range of possible options has been laid open for discussion, to judge from the recent statement made by the Department of the Environment in Britain, a statement apparently endorsed by the Minister for Agriculture somewhat hastily. There is little sign that the situation is better in any other countries of the European Community. The second weak link in our decision-thinking about land use is the lack of rigorous examination of the likely consequences of adopting each of the possible options. The excuse for this neglect of prediction of future consequences is often that the future is too uncertain for us to make accurate predictions. However, techniques for modelling the behaviour of complex systems in the face of uncertainty have improved greatly during the last IO-20 years, partly because of the greater availability of powerful computers, even on our desktops, but also because of the development of mathematical and logical methods of dynamic modelling made possible by such computers. Furthermore, there is now a sufficient base of theory to enable reasonably accurate predictions to be made about the way in which an ecological system will behave as a result of changes which are made to the environment or to the organisms of that system. There is very little excuse for the inertia which currently prevents policy options being sub-
jected to critical analysis in order to determine the likely consequences of their being adopted. Perhaps even more important is the need to add planning for the contingencies that may follow if the choice turns out to be wrong to the prediction of likely consequences! Would we have been quite so liberal in our use of the pesticides which we now know to accumulate at the far ends of the food chain if we had allowed ourselves to ask the question, Supposing we are wrong in assuming that these substances are safe?’ Similarly, in considering the consequences of the many alternative uses for land currently in agricultural production, we need to ensure that our choice of options does not foreclose future options should our choice prove to have been wrong, or should the economic and social conditions which are forcing the present choice change sufficiently to require us to again modify our pattern of land use. There is little sign, especially in the heat of pre-election politics, that such questions are being asked. The disadvantage of decisionthinking, as an essential process preceding decision-making about land use, is that it requires the combined expertise of a large number of specialists. Economists, sociologists, ecologists, agriculturalists, foresters, wildlife biologists, planners, etc, all have a part to play in ensuring that the questions being answered are the appropriate ones, that the widest possible range of options has been and that the likely congenerated, sequences and necessary contingencies have been predicted. We lack a forum for so wide a range of expertise, and perhaps even a methodology sufficiently comprehensive to encompass the complexity of the interrelationships between the different components of land use questions. Systems analysis has been advocated in the past’ as one possible integrating methodology, but mathematical descriptions of complex relationships quickly become opaque to administrators and resource managers, who are rightly unwilling to accept conclusions derived from mathematical reasoning without adequate explanation as to
77
why those conclusions do not match their subjective expectations. In any case, many of the decisions of human experts depend not solely on a detailed knowledge base. such as might be incorporated in a systems analysis of a land use problem. but also on heuristics (rules of thumb or rules of good guessing) developed through practical and hard-won experience. A similar need to draw together hard data with human experience has been recognized in many other fields, including medicine. mineral prospectengineering :rnd the ing, chemical design of computer systems. In such fields expert systems. defined as knowledge-based computer programs capable of giving intelligent advice for which the basis can be readily explained. have shown themselves to be valuable in drawing together ;I wide range of experience into a usable system.J Perhaps the only way forward to ;I fuller consideration of the available options for land use in Britain, as part of the European Community, lies in the creation of such expert systems to inform and guide those who have to make decisions about land use policies and managcment practices at all levels, from the Community :md national administrators zmd politicians to the owners and managers of particular areas of land. flowever it is achieved, the need is for much fuller discussion of the available options for land use in the future. The likely consequences of each of those options. and the contingency plans that need to be drawn up should the choice of option prove to be wrong, need to be worked out in detail before any one set of interests should be allowed to dominate the discussion. Some fundamental guiding principles can. however. be suggested:
4F. Hayes-Roth, D.A. Waterman and D.B. Lenat, eds, Building Expert Systems, Addison-Wesley, Reading, PA, 1983. %. Allen, How to Save the World, Koran Page, London, 1980.
78
(l)We should not adopt policies or practices which foreclose on future options. For example, to build on productive agricultural land as a response to the current overproduction of food in Europe would permanently remove land from biological productivity, so that, if it later became necessary to increase productivity of food, biomass energy, wood fibre or timber, the total
land resource would have been permanently reduced. (2)The options considered should maintain essential ecological processes and life-support systems. These processes are essential for human survival and well-being, and include soil formation, the rccycling of nutrients and the clezmsing of air and water. The maintenance of soil fertility is especially necessary in a world in which huge quantities of fertile soil are being stripped from the land by poor land management and the removal of hedgerows and woodlands. (3)Preserving the genetic diversity of species, varieties. strains and forms of plants, animals zind microorganisms should be a primary aim of any alternative USC:for agricultural land, not least because modern agriculture, with its liberal use of pesticides and herbicides, has done much to reduce the distribution of many species of wildlife organisms. Genetic diversity. however, is not required solely because of wildlife conservation, It also provides ;I buffer agiiinst harmful cnvironmental change, imd supplies matcrial for medical and scientific innovation in the many industries that depend on living resources. (4)Any alternative use of agricultural hmd should utilize species and ecosystems sustainably. In the Third World, sustainable utilization of all living resources is essential for survival. In the more diverse and flexible economics of the developed Western countries. it may be claimed that there is less need to utilize certain resources sustainably. but correspondingly less excuse for not doing so. It is. of course, no accident that the last three of these principles are the same as those identified in the World Conservation Strategy,’ because the problems of land USC:are central to the questions of resource conservation. Indeed, it may be worth reminding all those currently considering changes in land use policy and management practices in Britain that the UK is ;I signatory to the World Conservation Strategy.
LAND USE POLICY January 1988