A range of supranational policy frameworks highlight the need to manage land and soil resources in a more sustainable manner, with the EU Soil Strategy for 2030 even setting a non-binding policy objective to reduce net land take and soil sealing to zero by 2050. However, approaches to and ambitions for net land take reduction vary across countries. The Nordic countries have not set explicit goals or policies to limit land take and soil sealing. Against this background, this memo clarifies how the Nordic countries currently facilitate reductions in net land take through planning and land governance. The focus has been on the strategic orientations and broader mechanisms that support or constrain net land take reductions in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.
Land take is not yet widely established as a distinct policy issue or shared terminology in the Nordic countries, although many existing policies and initiatives address related concerns. The Nordic countries have long-standing policies on environmental conservation, as well as on densification and the compact city model. Prime agricultural lands are being preserved from development. In recent years – reflecting global and transnational governance developments and the emergence of policy actions such as the EU Nature Restoration Law – the Nordic countries, regions and municipalities have shown a growing commitment to biodiversity-related targets. This is evident, for example, in the nature positivity commitments of Finnish municipalities and in the Tripartite Green Agreement between the government, business interests and civil society organisations in Denmark. Advancing increasingly ambitious biodiversity targets, alongside other environmental targets such as climate resilience, carbon sinks and carbon storage, will require a careful assessment of current land consumption practices.
In the Nordic context, the highly decentralised planning systems present both opportunities and challenges for limiting overall land consumption: Municipalities have the autonomy and tools to implement ambitious land use policies. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that providing land for industrial, commercial, residential and holiday-home development, for example, is an important component of inter-municipal competition and may lead to sub-optimal land use outcomes when viewed across higher spatial and administrative scales. This makes coordination and cooperation within and across government levels crucial in progressing towards zero net land take.
Indeed, land take is a cross-cutting issue related to various policy domains, although discussions around it are often limited to urban sprawl and housing development. Other drivers of land take include transport and logistics infrastructure, renewable energy production plants, (green) industries, data centres, recreational and tourist facilities, and forest and agricultural industries. Some sectoral policies, such as environmental conservation policies, align more naturally with the land sparing agenda. Others, including industry, energy and transport policies, are less directly connected to it and may generate tensions and land use conflicts that require explicit policy attention. Moving forward, it is important to advance a more integrated framing of sectoral objectives, in which land take is recognised as a broader, underlying policy problem, and to identify and manage both the trade-offs and synergies between different land use sectors and policy domains. Such an integrated framing requires acknowledgement that conversions from one land use form to another generate highly varying environmental and socio-economic impacts – which, in addition, are tied to the specific locations in which these conversions occur. Relying solely on narrow land take metrics that do not consider the qualities of land consumed, restored or spared can therefore be misleading.
The next steps in this research project will examine:
Nordic governance responses to land take reduction ambitions, and
implementation strategies at urban fringes and rural areas.
The first step will involve outlining the main drivers for developing and implementing policies aimed at reducing land take and how existing multi-level governance structures and land policy support or work against land take reduction strategies. The second step will study how municipalities use land policy to reduce land consumption and to promote nature-positive outcomes. Barriers that hinder the uptake of land take reduction policy and instruments that might redirect development towards forms with reduced land take will be discussed, alongside the key strengths and weaknesses of the various Nordic approaches.