While I was participating in The European Sustainability Summit in May in Berlin, I was listening to a very interesting keynote speech by Sir David A. King. That speech was on “Climate Change and the Built Environment”, and King, as the Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford and former UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser and Head of the Government Office of Science, was introducing the Foresight sustainable energy management an the built environment project.

In April 2008, Foresight, the Government’s futures think tank, has announced a new project. This project will examine land use in the UK. How people will use land fundamentally affects the economy, the environment and the society. Over the coming decades we will face new and potentially competing pressures for land. The Foresight study is a fresh chance to explore the ways people view and value land as a resource in the future.

Demographic changes in the UK, the evolution of the global economy and the impact of climate change, are among the challenges that will affect the demands we make on land. For example, climate change will affect patterns of agriculture and biodiversity whilst changing demographics will create further demands for housing and infrastructure.

Foresight’s new ‘Land Use Futures’ project will explore how the use of land may need to evolve to meet future challenges and how it can deliver economic, social and environmental benefits sustainably. It will look at both urban and rural land use.

The current Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser and Head of the Government Office for Science John Beddington, who oversees the Foresight projects, said, "With the world’s population rising and a rightful emphasis on living sustainably, the Foresight ‘Land Use Futures’ project is very timely. We have a limited amount of land but an increasing number of demands upon it. We need to closely examine the factors at play in order to make the best decisions. […] I will shortly be inviting a number of leading academics and senior stakeholders to work closely with us throughout the project. He adds, “Foresight has demonstrated that evidence-based futures analysis and horizon scanning are crucial tools for Government. If we are going to develop policies that can stand the test of time, we need to ensure that policymakers can think strategically about future uncertainties and opportunities. That is why Foresight’s mission to embed futures thinking across Government is so important".

The project will be an in-depth two-year study involving experts and scientists from a wide range of disciplines. Combining the most up to date scientific evidence with well-informed futures work it will assist policymakers in developing strategies to manage our future better.

We are looking to the findings that will be launched towards the end of 2009.

Picture © Foresight

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