Land Use, Sustainability, and Democratic Backsliding

Patrick Meyfroidt 

Land use and land systems, i.e. how human societies manage and interact with land through social-ecological systems, are at the core of sustainability issues. Democratic backsliding, i.e. the decline or degradation of the institutions and social norms that sustain democratic societies, is a widespread and impactful trend, with strong but understudied two-ways linkages with land use dynamics. From protests instrumentalized by the far right against agricultural, nature restoration and land management policies, to regimes rejecting democracy and furthering extractivist economies based on mining, logging and large-scale investments, to right-wing populist discourses and movements blending denial of sustainability issues and nationalism, or authoritarian regimes spearheading tropical deforestation, the articulation between democratic backsliding and land use unsustainability is a massive challenge for contemporary societies and nature. Novel and robust scientific knowledge on these linkages is crucial to unlock this feedback loop and identify pathways to reconcile land use sustainability and democracy. In this paper, I argue that we need key contributions to understanding the linkages between these issues, with (i) explicit articulation and embedding of democratic backsliding concerns and knowledge within land system and sustainability science – moving beyond a focus of democratic backsliding research on social, economic and political aspects, and beyond a focus of sustainability science on policy rather than politics – ; (ii) spatial, quantitative causal analyses of linkages between multiple forms of democratic backsliding and land use changes and related environmental impacts – moving beyond mostly qualitative, political analyses – ; (iii) syntheses and theory building on these two-way interactions.