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Professor Patrick McAuslan's research changed the international development community's view about the role of land law reform in sustainable development and poverty alleviation. Until his research identified how policy-makers should and could use land law reform to achieve their development aims, international agencies did not consider that land law reform had a significant role in furthering economic and social development.
McAuslan disseminated and continued his research during many consultancy assignments for the World Bank (WB), the EU, UN agencies, DFID and other international development bodies. He also reviewed planning and land law in many countries, often significantly shaping the resulting legislation.
With national and international impact, Home's research on land titling and Islamic land law has helped develop donor aid policy, through UN-Habitat initiatives on post-disaster issues and Islamic land law, and World Bank initiatives on the rule of law in Africa. Impacts of his research within the UK include his contribution to the UK Government's Foresight Land Use Futures Project (2010), and to current policy discussions on future new housing provision. The case study title comes from a well-known story illustrating the legally dubious origins of land ownership in land-grabbing.
NRI's research in Africa has been influential in shifting thinking, policy and practice on customary land tenure and promotion of land tenure security. In particular it has promoted the recognition that customary tenure systems can sometimes provide a high degree of tenure security and do not need to be replaced wholesale, and that a variety of alternative approaches to conventional land titling are available. This led international agencies to develop new approaches and guidelines for land policy and set the stage for a new generation of land tenure projects and programme interventions in Africa, to which NRI is also actively contributing.
Research at Newcastle has been used to improve the governance of common land both locally and nationally. Locally: (i) by landowners to develop new models for community management of common land; and (ii) by the Foundation for Common Land and its constituent stakeholder groups to inform the development of self-regulatory commons councils under Part 2 Commons Act 2006. Nationally: (i) by the National Trust to develop new models for community management of its extensive common land holdings across England and Wales; and (ii) the research has influenced the development of policy by the Government Office for Science, and by the UK statutory conservation bodies, for the improvement of the environmental governance of common land.
Research on modelling wildness has resulted in the development of a wildness mapping tool for Scotland's national parks which provides a basis for supporting decision making relating to planning applications that are potentially detrimental to wildness. The methodologies developed have been adopted by Scottish Natural Heritage to map wildness and wild land across Scotland. In 2013, the Scottish Government proposed that the identified `core areas of wild land' should be protected through Development Plans and spatial frameworks for onshore wind energy; this proposal is currently out for consultation. These methodologies have also been used to map wildness and identify priority sites in Europe.
Research at Lancaster has reconstructed the governance systems on common land since the medieval period, informing stakeholders and the wider public about the history of the 554,000ha of surviving commons, mostly in upland terrains in England and Wales treasured for their natural beauty and heritage. By engaging with contemporary users of commons through the Foundation for Common Land, The National Trust, and local commoners' groups, the research has enabled hill farmers to reclaim a sense of ownership over their commons, enhancing the cultural life of upland communities and informing debates about conservation and sustainable use of common land in the shifting legal landscape following the Commons Act 2006.
Meeting rapidly rising food demands at least cost to biodiversity is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. Since 2005, research in the Department of Zoology has demonstrated that measures to reconcile biodiversity and agricultural production are sometimes best focused on spatial separation (land sparing) rather than integration (land sharing).This work has had a significant impact on policy debate, and has informed policy decisions relating to management of the agri-environment at both national and international levels. Policy statements on increasing food production at least cost to nature now make explicit the potential role that land sparing may have, and place greater emphasis on the need for clear scientific evidence of costs and benefits of different approaches.
Whitehead's research on gender, economic liberalisation and land changed the way in which international organisations (the UN, the World Bank and the EU) approach the gendered impacts of land policy. Her work changed policies and programmes to improve women's and poorer people's access to land rights. In particular the International Development Law Organization and national governments in sub-Saharan Africa have acknowledged her findings in their development of best-practice guidance. In Ghana this has helped to deliver changes on the ground by transforming the `Ghana Land Administration Project' to incorporate a gender perspective and civil-society participation in local land administration, advocacy and debate.
Food security and the sustainable production of food for the human population is a critical issue politically and economically. Benton, Cornell & colleagues have developed and validated a conceptual framework to underpin sustainable agriculture, recognising that land can be specialised to producing food or "ecology" and does not need do both equally everywhere. This challenges current approaches to land management and is influencing the development of new policies for sustainable agriculture (UK, EU, G-20), the food industry's approach to, and public perceptions of, sustainable agriculture. The profile of this work directly contributed to Benton being appointed as the cross-government "Champion" for Global Food Security.