Land Use and Land Use Control

One fundamental objective of good land administration is to ensure sustainable development. All landscapes change over time, whether through human interference or by natural processes. It is essential that these changes are monitored and understood and that the uses to which the land is put are sustainable and that development: ‘meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (WCED 1987). To be sustainable, development must meet both economic objectives related to returns on investment and social objectives related to meeting people’s material, cultural, and spiritual needs. Development must also be ecologically sustainable such that it preserves the long--term viability of the underlying ecosystem (Dalal-Clayton et al. 1994). In 1992, virtually all the nations of the world signed up to the United Nations Agenda for the twenty-first century, known as Agenda 21 (UNCED 1992) and committed themselves to develop national strategies for the good management of the environment. Since then there has been a growing awareness of the need for sustainability. From a land administration perspective, the challenge for sustainable development will require in part reconciling perceptions of the nature and value of land which range from: 1. a commodity that can be bought and sold; 2. a functional space; 3. an aesthetic resource; to 4. the setting for activities, such as ‘the patterned ways in which households, firms and institutions pursue their daily affairs’ (Kaiser et al. 1995). Of special importance are the ways in which the land is or will be used. The term ‘land use’ has many different interpretations but in the present context it may be defined as the economic and cultural activities practised upon the land. As such, it is distinguished from land cover, which denotes the physical state of the land and describes the quantity and type of vegetation and other material that occurs on the earth’s surface. Land use and land cover are interconnected by human actions that directly alter the physical environment such as bio-mass burning, irrigation, reforestation, and the applications of fertilizers.