Abstract: Growing populations, continued economic development, and limited natural resources are critical factors affecting sustainable development. Ex-ante impact assessment is an emerging field poised at the science-policy interface and is used to assess the potential impacts of policy while also exploring trade-offs between economic, social and environmental sustainability targets. The Framework for Participatory Impact Assessment (FoPIA) was selected for this study because it allows for the integration of various sustainability dimensions, the handling of complexity, and the incorporation of local stakeholder perceptions. FoPIA was adapted to the conditions of developing countries, and its implementation was demonstrated in five selected case studies. Based on the findings from the five case studies, FoPIA was found to be suitable for implementing the impact assessment at case study level while ensuring a high level of transparency. FoPIA supports the identification of causal relationships underlying regional land use problems, facilitates communication among stakeholders and illustrates the effects of alternative decision options with respect to all three dimensions of sustainable development.

Abstract: Government policy is a major human factor that causes changes in land use. Decisions on land management and land-use planning, as well as the analysis and quantification of policy consequences, may greatly benefit from the simulation of the dynamics of land-use systems. In the present study, we predicted land-use changes and their potential impacts on food security in the environmentally fragile Guyuan District, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region (north-central China), under the influence of a program to convert sloping agricultural land to conservation uses. Baseline and conservation policy scenarios (2005 to 2020) were developed based on input from local stakeholders and expert knowledge. For the baseline and conservation policies, we formulated high-, moderate-, and low-growth scenarios, analyzed the driving mechanisms responsible for the land-use dynamics, and then applied a previously developed “dynamics of land systems” model to simulate changes in land uses based on the driving mechanisms. We found that spatially explicit policies can promote the conversion of land to more sustainable uses; however, decreasing the amount of agricultural and urban land and increasing grassland and forest cover will increase the risk of grain shortages, and the effect will be more severe under the conservation and high- growth scenarios than under the baseline and low-growth scenarios. The Guyuan case study suggests that, during the next decade, important trade-offs between environmental conservation and food security will inevitably occur. Future land-use decisions should carefully consider the balance between land resource conservation, agricultural production, and urban expansion.