Grounding the issue

It's abundant, vast and surrounds us. 

Yet it's finite, restricting and costly.

Land is a precious, finite commodity. Its value varies from person to place. It's arguably one of our most sought-after, used and exploited resources on Earth. The resources in, on and around it, however, are not (depending on the management practice).

The possibilities... (Source)

I could examine land exploitation at this topic from a range of viewpoints. I could look at land conceptually, understanding what it means to different people in different places (Massey, 20... basically anything that Massey has written would fall under this topic). Or I could look at exploitation of land from others, animals and plants for resources or land-use change.

A finite and valuable resource (Source)

All of these topics are valid and an important discussion topics, and I invite anyone who wishes to discuss land and its socio-environmental impacts to do so. However, what I wish to (briefly) look at is how to address the impact of humans on land. As land resources provide the basis for all living systems and are essential to future sustainable lifestyles, it is increasingly important to address.

The 1992 United Nations Sustainable Development conference in Rio resource and conservation management in Agenda 21, looked into the issues surrounding land exploitation (UN, 1992). Their (summarised) solution to managing and mitigating against exploitation of land is to implement supportive government-led policies which promotes sustainable land use through economic and institutional mechanisms and incentives, encouraging the best use of land.

Although the UN (1992) begin to discuss local-level management initiatives, it skims quite nicely over them, neglecting to acknowledge smaller level landowners and issues and instead taking a top down approach. It is the importance of private, small-scale ownership that can help preserve, maintain and sustain land and resources for a continued length of time (Hardin, 1968).

Preventing land exploitation is difficult. Hardin's (1968) Tradegy of the Common's highlights we cannot be trusted with the common resources we have, as humans do not look after them. Although the UN (1992) provides a solution to common resource management, bureaucracy and inflexibility restricts adaptation to new and different requirements of people who rely on the resources.

Until then, we will pollute away...