Those who are working in the field of watershed management are familiar with land capability classification (LCC). For farm lands, the LCC developed by USDA soil conservation service, mainly based on the ability to produce crops without further deterioration, has been adopted by several countries with or without modifications.
In thickly populated tropical countries, however, biophysical capability of the land alone could not decide the land use pattern. For such countries, a “treatment oriented land capability classification” was published by FAO adopting a flexible view on land use. This is a modification of the original LCC, but it is “treatment-oriented” meaning that land is categorized according to the types of major conservation treatments to be recommended for erosion control.
Is there any country in the world who enacted laws for land use according to LCC? If not, what would be the reasons?
In the State of Queensland, Australia, there have been planning restrictions on the development of good quality Agricultural land for at least a couple of decades (though how effective this has been could be argued). Protection of such land (and associated water supplies) is currently enshrined in legislation (Regional Planning Interests Act 2014) and through State Planning Policy. The term given to the land to be protected has changed over the years (good quality agriculture land, strategic cropping land, priority agriculture areas etc), but has always been based on an agricultural land classification systems (land capability or more accurately suitability). Search for the following if you need more detail
Queensland Regional Planning Interests Act 2014
State interest guideline – Agriculture – April 2016. Queensland Department of Infrastructure, Local Government and Planning, Brisbane. April 2016.
State Planning Policy – July 2017. Queensland Department of Infrastructure, Local Government and Planning, Brisbane. July 2017.
In Brazil, each state has regulations about which crops can be planted and where according to agroclimatic zoning principles (coffee examples attached).
They also have laws about amount of land to leave wild but in frontier regions these are often not respected.
Although I am not aware of any country with legislation based on land use capability classification, your question just got me thinking about such possibilities. I believe that rational countries could actually regulate land use to prevent degradation such as lands within watersheds that are vulnerable and can readily become severely eroded and thus agricultural and environmentally degraded. In this regards, those soils that are more prone to erosion or any other form of degradation should be more legally restricted than those that are less so.
Although I am not aware of any country with legislation based on land use capability classification, your question just got me thinking about such possibilities. I believe that rational countries could actually regulate land use to prevent degradation such as lands within watersheds that are vulnerable and can readily become severely eroded and thus agricultural and environmentally degraded. In this regards, those soils that are more prone to erosion or any other form of degradation should be more legally restricted than those that are less so.
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