General conditions for successful land use planning

• Characteristics of successful local and development measures are: simplicity, accessibility to the resource-poor majority, low risk and likelihood of rapidly generating significant results. Such successes create an increased demand on land, and this is usually the starting point for land use planning in order to allow for coordinated and concerted action in comparable Resource Management Domains.
  

• The security of land rights has to be guaranteed. Governments should link the extension of land rights and land use concessions to good land care. Gradual and progressive land reform as part of long term solutions should be reviewed and if necessary initiated.
  

• Commitment by local politicians, clear identification of issues, an open process and recognition of mutual dependency are prerequisites for any planning.
  

• Implementation is considered as integral part of local land use planning. The paradigm to be followed is: integral planning, sectoral implementation. The implementation of planning requires a sound legislative cadre at national and subnational levels. Sectoral codes for sustainable land use practices have to be developed as well. Institutional linkages should allow for effective integration of sectoral interests.
  

• In order to foster the approach of equal rights between woman and men, gender differentiation has to be an integral part of the land use planning methodology, and the active integration of women in all planning phases should be ensured.
  

• The use of traditional know-how about the respective local environmental conditions and its use for land classification purposes increases significantly the acceptance of planning in the rural context. Supporting mechanisms like sharing experiences and networking, and the need to translate science into common sense are increasingly important. Methodologies in this field are being developed especially in the West African Sahelian countries.
  

• Institutional integration of land use planning is playing an increasingly important role. Conflict management is becoming an essential task of land use planning on any scale. Coordinating mechanisms in planning for rural and urban areas, already introduced in many Latin America countries via the approach of Municipal Planning, need to be further developed.
  

• Approaches for scaling up of local land use planning activities are still in an initial, exploratory stage. Delegation of responsibilities and ways of representing all parties concerned on higher levels, as well as specific forms of communication and conflict management need to be developed further, maybe through the formulation of national codes of conduct on land use planning.

next chapter: geographical information systems (GIS)
last chapter: stakeholders

back to: land use planning

top