PrintThis week, we will read about land use change, including why land use change is an important planetary boundary. More recent assessments of the planetary bounders suggest that we may have already transgressed the boundary for global land use change. This week, we will spend time thinking about the drivers of land use change in relation to population, consumption, food, energy, and water. Additionally, we will examine the explosion of large scale land acquisitions in many developing countries (also called "land grabbing").
Consider these questions as you go through the material for this week:
- Why is land use change increasingly seen as one of the most problematic planetary boundaries?
- How do population growth and consumption impact land use change?
- What is the relative importance of food, energy, and water for land use change?
- For all of these relationships, think about who benefits and who bears the environmental burden and how these are different in different places.
Lesson 11 Checklist
| To Read |
Read the Lesson 11 course content. |
Use the links below to continue moving through the lesson material. |
|---|---|---|
| To Read | Geist, H. J., & Lambin, E. F. (2002). Proximate Causes and Underlying Driving Forces of Tropical Deforestation. BioScience, 52(2), 143-150. | A link to the reading is located in the Week 11 module in Canvas. |
| To Read | Edelman, M., Oya, C., Borras, S.M., 2013. Global Land Grabs: historical processes, theoretical and methodological implications and current trajectories. Third World Quarterly 34(9), 1517-1531. | A link to the reading is located in the Week 11 module in Canvas. |
| To Submit | See Canvas, course announcements. |
Note: Please refer to the Calendar in Canvas for specific time frames and due dates.