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With immensely growing pressure on land and its scarcity, conflicting societal expectations concerning land use increasingly result in land use conflicts (LUCs). In this paper, we explore local LUCs, which we define as the complex situations, where fragmented planning policies encounter place-based societal conceptions and perceptions of site-specific developmental priorities. The paper adopts a dynamic approach and introduces a theory-driven typology of potentially conflicting planning decisions. The typology is employed as an analytic framework to reveal the open-ended successive planning decisions that lead to complex local LUCs. Two case studies from Central Europe are explored to narrate the evolutionary complexity of LUCs. Our results show that local LUCs emerged as the past planning decisions lined-up into a sequence creating lock-in situations, where different planning policies can be hardly reconciled. Finally, we discuss applicability, transferability and limits of the proposed typology as an analytic framework advancing management of planning conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waste heat from industry or urban facilities represents a largely underused and long disregarded energy source, while heating and cooling count for half the final energy demand in Europe. From the early 2010s onwards, waste heat recovery (WHR) is being recognized as a key challenge for energy transition and tends to be integrated into energy strategies at different levels. This paper provides an analysis of how WHR became a matter of public policy in Europe and in France. Based on a literature review, the analysis shows that WHR has been framed as a techno-economic problem, while some barriers (legal, organizational) to its development remain largely unaddressed. A study of European and French energy agendas illustrates how WHR progressively started to be recognized as an energy resource next to renewables. As a result, questions are raised as to further social science contributions to an extended research agenda addressing WHR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of globalised trends changing the rural environment is often thought to require environmental and ecology-focused policies and actions. But many of the problems have human (societal) causes, and solutions need also to be primarily culturally based. This essay, drawing on the 'CHeriScape' network in western Europe, explores the advantage of seeking a more comprehensive, integrative response to rural change using the twinned concepts of landscape and heritage. It discusses recent developments in conceptualising landscape and heritage, and how these could support effective culturally based approaches that are participatively democratic and also take account of human behaviour. After brief summaries of evolving paradigms for landscape and heritage, and of global challenges, the paper suggests that a landscape–heritage nexus, familiar to the lay public but capable of nuanced and fluid application, offers an effective way ahead. It concludes by identifying some obstacles that hinder the effective implementation of such an approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soil is a multifunctional, non-renewable natural resource for Europe as clearly expressed in the European Union (EU) Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection (COM (2006)231). Soil carries out multiple functions, including the support of food production. Urban development and its associated land take poses a major threat to soil and could have significant effects on agricultural production. This paper aims to evaluate the potential productivity losses in European agriculture due to land-take processes between 1990 and 2006. Agricultural land take was calculated using CORINE Land Cover maps of 1990, 2000 and 2006. For 21 of the 27 EU member states, agricultural land take was computed to be 752,973 ha for 1990–2000 and 436,095 ha for 2000–2006, representing 70.8% and 53.5%, respectively, of the total EU land take for these periods. The impact of this land take on the production capabilities of the agricultural sector for the period 1990–2006 for 19 of the 21 states was estimated to be equivalent to a loss of more than six million tonnes of wheat. The paper demonstrates that Europe's intense urbanisation has a direct impact on its capability to produce food. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using an analytical framework based on current implementation theory, this research examines the transposition of the EU Waste Framework Directive into UK law and local government development control procedures. The study which forms the basis of this paper was commissioned by the UK Government to evaluate the effectiveness of the construction Waste Management Plans introduced as a legal requirement in 2008. It was found that its implementation had largely failed and that these new laws had been ineffective. Subsequently, in March 2012 the UK Government announced its intention to withdraw these Regulations. In the context of current deregulatory pressures, but with the continuing need to minimise construction waste, this research concludes that more attention should be paid by central government to their current ‘top-down’ implementation procedures in order to better roll-out new environmental legislation in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land taken by artificial surfaces has an impact on the quality of life and ecosystems. To reduce possible negative impacts of land take, the European Commission proposed setting a milestone objective for 2020 in terms of future rates of land take. This paper describes a methodology to model the impacts of the 2020 land-take milestone proposed in the RERM in the European Union 27 MS. An integrated modelling framework was configured to assess the spatial impact of two land-take scenarios: a ‘Reference’ scenario, which is driven by demographic and economic trends, and a ‘Target 0’ scenario that follows the 2020 land-take milestone proposed in the RERM. We conclude that the implementation of the 2020 land-take milestone, by reducing future land take in Europe, will foster more efficient use of land (less land taken for the same activity levels) and minimise negative impacts on non-artificial land uses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses land-use changes related to naturbanization processes on three biosphere reserves in Southern Europe. A comparative analysis has been done on the National Parks in Peneda-Gerês in North Portugal, Cévennes in South France and Sierra Nevada in South Spain, using Corine Land Cover data from 1990 until 2006. Results indicate that the process of land-use intensification is taking place in the frame of naturbanization dynamics that could jeopardize the role of Protected Areas. Focusing on the trends faced by National Parks and their surrounding territories, the analysis demonstrates, both in quantitative and spatial terms, the intensification processes of land-use changes and how it is important to know them for coping with increasing threats. The article concludes that in the current context of increasing stresses, a broader focus on nature protection, encompassing the wider countryside, is needed if the initiatives for biodiversity protection are to be effective. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this paper is to propose an alternative approach for outlining policy responses to stimulate the automotive industry. The scientific community has developed and employed the Delphi method to collect and convey perspectives and impressions, and also define a number of financially viable proposals. The panel of experts takes the view that traditional industrial policy measures denote limited effects to stimulate car demand, in a context of a macro-economic downturn. By contrast, the panel also believe incentives for car demand are important for environmental purposes, for safety and for the diversification of energy sources. The policy measures proposed are fundamental from the viewpoint of overturning path dependencies in the automotive industry which impede the diffusion of alternative vehicles, with respect to business models and consumer attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For almost two centuries, green spaces in European cities have been rethought and built based on the shifting ideas and practices about the role of nature in cities. Although there is a great diversity in the quantity and quality of green spaces in European cities today, the ideas and practices behind their creation and destruction are quite common across the continent. Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, European city leaders started bringing nature back into the city to counter the negative effects of industrialization. Later, modernist architects and planners began using scientific methods and populist ideas of nature in an attempt to create accessible healthy quality living for a rapidly expanding urban industrial workforce. Most recently, European cities are embracing sustainability, a sometimes contradictory effort to balance neoliberal commodification of nature with its scientifically legitimated quality of life benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ocean acidification (OA) is increasingly recognized as a major global problem. Despite the scientific evidence, economic assessments of its effects are few. This analysis is an attempt to perform a national and sub-national assessment of the economic impact of OA on mollusc production in Europe. We focus on mollusc production because the scientific evidence on the biological impact on calcifying organisms is ample relative to other types of marine organisms. In addition, Europe and its regions are significant producers of marine molluscs. By performing a partial-equilibrium analysis, we show that the highest levels of overall impact are found in the countries with the largest current production, such as France, Italy and Spain. For Europe as a whole, the annual impact will be over 1 billion USD in 2100. Due to the different production foci of the individual countries and their regions, the distribution of the impact is extremely uneven across countries and their respective regions, with the most affected sub-national regions being those on the Atlantic coast of France, which is an important region for oyster production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New approaches to forest planning are needed to support the transition of European forests to sustainable management. The aim of this study is to review forest planning systems already in place throughout Europe by exploring a set of case-study countries reflecting the main silvicultural schools of Western Europe, including Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, Portugal, and Slovenia. A literature review and case-study data were used to assess the scale factors (vertical logic) as well as the relationships between forest planning and other environmental/land-use planning sectors (horizontal logic). The influence of EU policy on the development of forest planning is also discussed. As assessed using the vertical logic, the multi-scale and multi-topic planning approaches adopted in the countries studied here are highly heterogeneous. The horizontal logic shows that despite the importance of an inter-sectoral and harmonic relational framework between forest planning and the planning efforts of other sectors such as landscape and urban planning, the various plans are barely consistent with each other across the European countries studied here. Although interest is growing in the multi-functionality of forests, their sustainable management calls for the development of better integrated planning approaches across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]