1.1 Introduction
Land is a vital natural resource which is limited and immovable. Land plays a dynamic role in determining the economic, societal and cultural progression of mankind. Since the dawn of human civilization, men have been domesticating land in their need for food, fodder and shelter. However, such land conversion has severely impacted the landscape over the last 300 years through the period of post-industrial revolution. Land conversion is āthe process by which land is converted from one use to another like agricultural to urban use and from one urban use to anotherā and āis indeed a normal outcome of the urban development processā (Firman 1997). With the increasing dependency of the majority of the global population on land for their livelihood, agricultural land conversion is not merely a matter of environmental concern but also significantly related to social well-being. According to Grigg, in England and Wales in the 1930s, about 240,000 hectares/year of farmland was lost, while about half a million hectares of farmland was converted to non-farm uses during 1940ā1950 in California (Grigg 1995). Taiwan has also witnessed significant reduction of cultivated land area by approximately 17,000 hectares, from about 907,000 hectares in 1980 to about 890,000 hectares in 1990. āA large portion of the area lost to farming has been converted to industrial, urban and other development usesā (Tsai 1993). Estimates show that the annual increase in built-up areas was around 3.6% in developing countries between 1990 and 2000 (Angel et al. 2005). Among world regions, East Asia, including the Pacific, and Southeast Asia witnessed the most intensive land consumption, with growth rates of 7.2% and 6.4%, respectively (Siedentop and Nuissl 2021). In the year 2000, there was more than 650,000 sq. km of urbanized land globally, while another 550,000 sq km of fringe area is waiting to be urbanized by 2030 (Berg 2012). In respect of the European Union, Kuemmerle et al. (2016) made this observation in relation to land conversion:
The most widespread changes in the extent of land-use categories in the EU between 1990 and 2006 were cropland decline (ā¼136,660 km2), followed by expansion of grazing land (ā¼75,670 km2), and expansion of forest areas (ā¼70,630 km2). The least common conversion among broad land-use categories was urban expansion (ā¼16,820 km2). ā¦ At the European scale, these area changes translate into moderate land-conversion rates in the agricultural sector between 1990 and 2006, ranging from ā13.4% for permanent crops to +6.5% for meadows and pastures, while urban areas expanded by approximately 21%.
(Kuemmerle et al. 2016)
The various reasons behind the development of the built-up areas include rapid and uncontrolled population growth, industrial development and economic growth which have continuously necessitated transformation of land-use patterns (Dutta et al. 2019). The changes in land use in the suburbs are mainly due to the expansion of urban areas due to the urban sprawl (Bhat et al. 2017) or the development of new towns and the growth of the public transport system which permits a significant amount of the labor force to commute daily (Karasian et al. 2017). The urban areas expand outwards naturally, leading to conversion of agricultural and other natural land cover types into built-up area (Dutta et al. 2020). This land- use change causes global environmental changes (Turner et al. 1994) and the livelihood of the primary sectors are also at stake.
India has witnessed speedy growth in urbanization as the urban population rose from 25.72% (1991) to 27.86% (2001) and in 2011, it was 31.16%. Another data reveals that about 42% of the total urban population (311.7 million in 2011) lives in metropolitan cities resulting in overcrowding and congestion. Average population density of the top seven metropolitan areas in India remains as high as 3,768 persons/km2 (2011). To cope with these problems, new towns are being developed in the vicinity of major metropolises, such as Navi Mumbai near Mumbai, New Town Kolkata near Kolkata and Gurgaon near Delhi. Under the regime of neo-liberalization, these new towns are generally developed by converting agricultural land to built-up areas as they are established purely on a āplantationā basis (Beresford 1967). In this conversion process generally three parties with unequal bargaining power are involved, namely developers, government and the land owners, with the environment, identified as the mute fourth party to this conversion process, mostly remaining unattended and ignored. This land conversion has required huge investments which are generally carried by private investors, which in turn may lead to job creation and a rise in the income of local people. Moreover, the creation of infrastructure speeds up economic development as well as facilitating foreign direct investments, leading to an increase in export revenues and helping maintain the national trade balance (Lohr 2010). On the other hand, additional revenues in the form of different taxes are earned by the local government, and these can be spent on welfare programs. Hence, land conversion and planning for new developments usually occur under the nexus of interest of private investors and the government. Land owners from primary occupations, such as farmers, fishermen and forest dwellers, are obviously weaker parties in the negotiation process, with limited ability to resist land conversion. Also, land conversion is often preceded by land acquisition and eviction of the original inhabitants (both people and other creatures). Though there is land legislation to protect individualsā property rights in most countries, in the case of India, the state enjoys the legitimate power to acquire private land for defined āpublic purposesā or is indirectly legitimized to displace people from their land for the sake of āpublic interestā. Estimates show that 60 million Indians were displaced between independence and 2004, and over 25 million hectares of land, including 7 million hectares of forest land, have been converted for various purposes (Fernandes 2008). 1.5 m...
