Productivity and efficiency

Meeting people’s material and cultural needs – essential to sustainability - demands the productive use of land. Principles such as ‘wise use’ and renewability are well-established features of sustainable resource use, however, the tension between high productivity and environmental protection remains a highly important issue for researchers, practitioners, campaigners, and policy-makers.

Discussions and debates about this subject can, however, reveal rigid and restrictive ways of thinking about productivity. These are often tied to pre-existing commitments to particular forms of land-use and management practice. Nonetheless, different ideas about productivity don’t only shape how stakeholders define land and relate to land-use, but also hold the potential to recognise and mobilise the full value of land. New thinking can reveal innovative approaches to productivity that go beyond well-established economic concepts. Consequently, we need novel methodologies, approaches and practices that can reveal trade-offs and synergies that belie supposed conflicts between contrasting forms of productivity.

Efficiency lies at the core of much of this debate: e.g., economic efficiency, carbon efficiency, resource consumption efficiency, spatial efficiency. Efficiency is also closely linked to aspects of justice with disproportional consumption and associated levels of waste and inefficiency clearly apparent between social groups.

Bangor University researchers are developing innovative practices, technologies, and understandings of productive land-use that will enable stakeholders in the sector to meet the dynamic needs of populations in the 21st century. Projects include: