For all uses of biomass, it is of paramount importance that we not only have information about biomass availability and its usefulness for bioprocessing for making any kind of commodity or chemicals, but that we are also aware that the use of biomass for bioprocessing often competes with a growing need for food. This chapter gives an overview of the global need for food, the potential of biomass production, and an introduction to the carbon cycle. The reader is introduced to production and collection of biomasses from land use, biomass of the future from the ocean, and biomass by separation of organic waste. Usefulness and ease of using biomass are related to composition; therefore, methods to analyze biomass composition and quality are presented.

The Oceania region, particularly Australia and New Zealand, has recently welcomed a suite of strategies and policies to support the development of hydrogen. Australia’s current National Hydrogen Strategy strives to position the country as a top three global exporter of hydrogen by 2030. New Zealand’s Interim Hydrogen Roadmap aims to utilise hydrogen to decrease domestic emissions, foster economic development, and enhance energy security while supporting its 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2030 target. To achieve these hydrogen strategies and targets, it is essential to establish enabling regulatory frameworks. Regulation is required to strategically plan, identify, assess, and permit the development of onshore hydrogen production facilities and associated infrastructure, ensuring coexistence with multiple and diverse land uses. The chapter investigates the strategies, policies, and developing planning and licensing regulatory regimes for the development of renewable hydrogen in Australia and New Zealand. Specifically, it examines recent regulatory developments in two Australian states, Western Australia, and South Australia. Regulatory developments in both states are designed to facilitate the assessment and award of hydrogen production licences on Crown-owned pastoral leasehold land. As interest increases in the assessment and structure of hydrogen production licensing on complex land uses, the experiences in Australia and New Zealand provide important legal case studies. These experiences highlight the diverse approaches to planning and permitting hydrogen on pastoral land uses and offer valuable insights to support the development of future hydrogen economies.

This chapter seeks to debunk the myth that rural disadvantage does not exist, or is unworthy of investigation, because rural populations hold disproportionate political power. Noting other scholars’ efforts to challenge common assumptions regarding rural voters’ inordinate power in legislatures and the Electoral College, the chapter takes an alternate approach by exploring widespread challenges rural local governments have encountered in the face of economic transformation over the past several decades, which, for some regions, has come with regional depopulation, high rates of property vacancy, broad socioeconomic distress, and strains on municipal and county budgets. Officials in distressed local governments often struggle to provide even the basic services needed to keep a community afloat, such as enforcement of the building code. Rural local governments’ struggles challenge the stereotype of the overly empowered, enraged, conservative rural voter holding the rest of the country hostage to his political whims. The story this chapter tells is one of a shrinking public sphere, the limits of law’s efficacy in places with few resources, the role property plays in regional prosperity, local efforts to work with little to achieve what they can, and the national abandonment of places no longer deemed useful for extractive purposes.

Comprehensive citywide planning is a practice that many cities undertake regularly. In theory, the principles laid out in citywide plans can help guide the distribution of public and private investments that shape the future development of that city. In recent years, many major cities have been incorporating equity goals and frameworks into planning efforts in attempts to close long-standing racial gaps. Although urban planning, as a field, has espoused goals of participation and shared power in development decisions, power and influence is often concentrated among wealthier households and institutions. Participation in planning processes often involves conflict between opposing interests, and development outcomes are often inequitable. Comprehensive planning has the potential to change some development rules and processes that lead to inequitable outcomes, but this is contingent upon shifting power and influence away from wealthy and elite citizens and institutions. Research on power and empowerment is critical to understanding how influence is manifested through planning policies and processes. The City of Chicago’s “We Will Chicago” plan provides a case example of how city planning processes attempt to engage stakeholders in developing a vision and goals that align with traditionally marginalized groups.

Humans are part of Nature. Although the mind often separates them, the two were never apart. The nearest experience of Nature is land: land use and land cover (LULC). Various classifications have been proposed, based on averages and patterns of precipitation, sunshine, soils and others. Human activity has changed the land on earth significantly, which has in combination with natural processes often negatively affected its ecological and agricultural functions (degredation in the form of erosion, desertification, salinization). Ecology is the prime science of Nature: (models of) ecosystem dynamics, foodwebs, biodiversity, ecosystem services (ES) and their evaluation, and (ecological) resilience are at the heart of sustainability science. Ecosystem models provide insights into land restoration and preservation of biodiversity, in particular regarding impacts of and adaptation to climate change. Which actions are undertaken, individually and collectively, depends greatly on the perspective on Nature - they diverge and so do the policies and prospects.

Climate change and other global processes shape and are shaped by local process such as land use change. Does the idea of sustainability help us take account of both human well-being and the environment at the local and global level? To answer, we have to unpack what is involved in decision-making and what sustainability means. Decisions are made in multiple roles: consumer, citizen, role model for others, organizational participant, investor, and resource manager. In all of these roles, context, including inequalities, shapes opportunities and constraints and thus decisions. Context often reflects a long history of previous decisions, including discrimination. Thus context and choice are two views of the same process.

Indonesia represents an interesting case for analysis of the relationship between multi-level governance and climate governance for three main reasons. It is a highly decentralized country; it is a major contributor to land-based greenhouse gas emissions; and it is extremely vulnerable to climate change. The chapter first provides a broad overview on Indonesia’s climate governance in the context of decentralization, and then focuses on sub-national governance of climate change mitigation in the land use sector, the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the country. Our research suggests that Indonesia illustrates key advantages of highly decentralized polity structures. Political autonomy has facilitated sub-national climate action through direct engagement of provinces with transnational climate initiatives, and the multiplicity of forums for policymaking has allowed certain provinces to champion sub-national engagement in climate change policy. Decentralization has also facilitated experimental policies in the form of innovative sub-national jurisdictional approaches to climate action in the land use sector. At the same time, peculiarities of the decentralization approach in the land use sector have led to perverse incentives that hamper forest-based climate change mitigation action.

The sanctuary of Artemis on the island of Korkyra, modern Corfu, is presented as a case study of the relationship between the changing environment and the monumentalization of Greek sanctuaries through Doric stone architecture. Although the sculptural decoration of the Artemis temple, which is one of the earliest Doric temples known so far, is relatively well preserved, modern scholars disagree on the interpretation of the sculptures. The question of how the representations of Medusa and other mythological figures on the pediments and metopes related to the divinity worshipped in the sanctuary and to the local context are particularly controversial. However, as the chapter argues, the builders of the temple had no interest in highlighting this relationship in the first place. The temple and its sculptural decoration were meant to express Panhellenic values and standards rather than local traditions. Thus, the local elite of Korkyra presented themselves as part of a Panhellenic elite network. At the same time, the elite showed the local population that they were taking care of the religious landscape in an unstable and radically transformative situation.

One thoroughgoing assumption of both classical liberal and neoliberal thinking has to do with the supreme importance of property rights. Accompanying most liberal notions of property ownership is the ability to exclude all others from using your property should you wish to. This has led to a curious phenomenon – the absentee landlord. The absentee landlord owns property, controls its use, and profits from it despite not being physically present or practically using the property. In this chapter, Goel looks at how a group of holy, third-gender people in India, hijras, think about property ownership and use. Due to a century or two of colonial degradation, hijras have been stripped of many of their rights to property and its use, and occupy a marginal place in Indian society today. As a result, they maintain an elaborate system of communally maintained use-rights in the cities they live in, apportioning the ability to walk mendicant rounds and grant blessings. This chapter, more than just offering a strict dichotomous set of cases, invites the reader to think about what possession of land or space looks like when we abandon contractual exclusive ownership and instead embrace rights that come from use. The chapter thereby moves beyond the neoliberal tradition and takes the reader right to the edge of the classical liberal tradition of thought, with its emphasis on property rights as an intrinsic component of individual liberty.

This chapter compares the ways that two similarly sized cities, Chicago and Amsterdam, have chosen to govern their streets. Chicago sold a seventy-five-year concession to manage street parking to a consortium of private investors, whereas Amsterdam’s government maintains the ability to directly govern its streets. In turn, Chicago is an illustration of how privatization of a common good according to money-lending logics, far from allowing for flexibility and efficient governance, completely prevents a city from changing with the times. Chicago has lost control over its own streets and can no longer decide what their best use is without paying an extortionate price. Any governing of a shared communal space that has a broader concern than generating profit for a private corporation is here effectively undermined by allowing marketized parking. For the purposes of this book, the Chicago/Amsterdam comparison illustrates the limitations of using privatized business actors to efficiently govern shared city space. It also serves as a counterexample to the neoliberal dogma that government should abstain from planning, because their attempts at doing so cannot outperform the market.

This chapter studies the role of the EU and EU Member States in relation to disasters and land-use planning. The work analyzes how land-use planning can evaluate and manage risks to avoid disasters, paying special attention to European use of the precautionary principle. The analysis uses especially, but not only, the example of the Spanish legal system, taking into account its inclusion in the more general EU legal system. The study also considers private and public liability in relation to disasters, underlining how, in recent years, EU law and European caselaw have created a common framework based on the right to good administration. The study includes a reference to the famous case decided by the Dutch Supreme Court at the end of 2019 ordering the Government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the duty of due diligence or due care. Finally, this chapter explores possible consequences of maladministration when taking planning decisions in relation to possible public liability, using two real Spanish cases as specific examples.