Zoekresultaten

Production in peatlands

The majority of Dutch peatlands are drained and used intensively as grasslands for dairy farming. This delivers high productivity but causes severe damage to the provisioning of ecosystem services. Peatland rewetting is the best way to reverse the damage, but high water levels do not fit with intensive dairy production. Paludiculture, defined as crop production under wet conditions, provides viable land use alternatives, but these alternatives are rarely compared to conventional drainage-based systems. Here, we compare ecosystem services of six theoretical production systems on peatland following a gradient of low, medium, and high water levels. This includes conventional and organic drainage-based dairy farming, low-input grasslands for grazing and mowing, and high-input paludiculture systems with reed and Sphagnum cultivation. For each production system, a theoretical 1 ha unit was designed using data from literature. Four aspects of ecosystem services were quantified and monetized, including agricultural productivity, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, water storage, and biodiversity potential. Results show that drainage-based dairy farming systems only support high milk production without any of the other ecosystem services included, even with organic farming practices. Biomass producing paludiculture systems have high ecosystem services value, but do not lead to production values comparable to the present dairy farming. Capitalizing GHG reduction and other ecosystem services from peatland rewetting with carbon credits or other payment schemes would close this production and income gap. However, standard practice to monetize provision of ecosystem service is currently unavailable. Sustainable use of peatlands urges more fundamental changes in land and water management along with the financial and policy support required.

An ecosystem services analysis of oil palm and alternative land use systems on peat in Malaysia

In this article, we assess the potential of alternative land use systems using non-drainage peatland species which could eventually phase out or partly replace oil palm plantations on undrainable peatlands. We have used the ecosystem services approach to analyse what scenarios using drainage-free peatland species could be suitable alternatives for oil palm cultivation on peat and how these scenarios compare to oil palm plantations in terms of selected ecosystem services. Our results indicate that alternative paludiculture systems will provide more direct and indirect ecosystem services than oil palm plantations on peat. We also found that stakeholders were aware of issues with growing oil palm on peat, and that there was a general intention for sustainable use of peatlands amongst several groups of stakeholders. Replacing oil palm with alternative systems such as paludiculture in Malaysia is not yet realistic. The most important impediments are a lack of knowledge on potential of non-drainage peatland species and its associated value chains, as well as the technical difficulty for smallholders to implement such a system. We recommend starting experimental plantings with paludiculture systems to further test species performance, life cycle analysis, growth, intercropping limitations and possibilities, yields and improvements in the value chain.

Planning in a place of co-becoming

Vacant land can provide social and ecological benefits to cities as they are informally used by people and spontaneously populated by animals and plant-life. However, planners and policy makers often frame vacant land as ‘empty’, ‘blank’ spaces, making it difficult to acknowledge informal and more-than-human shaping of these places. This paper demonstrates how a reconceptualization of vacant land through a relational lens enables the inclusion of informal and more-than-human placemaking in planning policy. Analysing the recent Scottish planning policy debate on vacant land through the analysis of policy documents and key informant interviews, we demonstrate that the inclusion of informal and more-than-human placemaking in the Scottish planning policy is fostered by growing recognition of concepts such as urban biodiversity, but hindered by persistent nature-culture divisions. Waymarkers for future policy making are, firstly, strengthening the presence of informal and more-than-human actors in policy debates by seeking representatives who can speak on their behalf and, secondly, supporting new placemaking traditions specifically for vacant land that are incremental and collaborative.

The interplay between land use, travel behaviour and attitudes: a quest for causality.

Stad en land aflopen in Europa

In opdracht van het ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties heeft het lectoraat Changing Role of Europe van De Haagse Hogeschool de rol van de Dutch Urban Envoy geëvalueerd. De betekenis, de inzet, het vervolg en de toekomstige invulling van de rol van de Dutch Urban Envoy komen aan bod. Op basis van de inzichten van 37 interviews met 39 betrokken partijen (van het Ministerie van BZK, Nederlandse steden, Europese steden, koepelorganisaties, Europese instellingen en andere ministeries binnen de Rijksoverheid) en deskresearch zijn de volgende conclusies en aanbevelingen geformuleerd.

Crypto/Space

This paper explores how so-called ‘Web3’ blockchain projects are materially and socially constituted. A blockchain is an append-only distributed database. The technology is being hyped as applicable for a whole range of industries, social service provisions, and as a fix for economic disparities in communities left behind by mainstream financial systems. Drawing on case studies from our ongoing research we explain how, despite being virtual, Web3 projects are dependent on clearly defined spaces of production from which they derive their speculative value. We conceptualise this relationship as Crypto/Space, where space and blockchain software are mutually constituted. We consider how Crypto/Spaces are produced in three ways: 1) how project developers are adopting a parasitic relationship with host locations to appropriate energy, infrastructure, and local resources; 2) how projects enable ‘virtual land grabs’ where developers are engaging in land acquisitions, and associated displacement of local people, with no real intention to use the land for the declared purpose; and 3) how blockchain technology and speculative finance imaginaries are inspiring new anarcho-capitalist crypto-utopian ‘Exit zones’, often in the Global South. Far from being a zero-sum virtual game world, we argue that cryptocurrency projects are parasitic, often requiring predation on poor and otherwise marginalised communities to appropriate resources, onboard new users and enable favourable regulation.