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Land Use Governance and Development

Land and topsoil are vital to human life on earth but severely underappreciated and understudied in research. To fully understand the complexity of the relations between land and society, an advanced interdisciplinary research approach is central.

Woman in a field in Africa for LUCSUS land use theme. Illustration: Catrin Jakobsson.

Our research on land integrates social and natural dimensions in order to generate knowledge that leads to action for a sustainable society. Our researchers study land degradation, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, in terms of its ecological implications and social causes and costs.

We also develop new and improved methods for studying multiple issues related to land by harnessing state-of-the-art remote sensing- and GIS techniques. We learn from different scales of analysis, from the global to the local and back.

Our researchers integrate concerns about land and land degradation into value and supply chains related to food and renewable energy. Politics of land is often a key aspect in our research approach, and this entails issues of justice and fairness of three intersecting dimensions: international, intergenerational, and intersectional.

Keywords: agroecology, food security/sovereignty, adaption/mitigation, low carbon, livelihoods, biodiversity, ecosystems, global health, land politics, gender.

Ongoing research projects

Research videos

How land grabbing effect food production in Africa

Video about researcher Emma Johansson's research on how land use is affected by large-scale land acquisition, also referred to as land grabbing, mainly in Tanzania

Is the future of Agriculture Perennial?

A video about perennial agriculture

Making Research Matter More

From knowledge to action with farmers in Uganda.