Impact assessment of land use functions on the sustainable regional development of representative Asian countries - A comparative study in Bangladesh, China and Japan.

Sustainable land use is a fundamental research field for land use planning. However, regional policymakers often lack access to the theoretical impacts that a land use policy might have on local development, especially in remote agricultural areas. Furthermore, knowledge exchange is important, especially in the context of globalization. This research employed the Framework of Participatory Impact Assessment and household surveys to combine multilevel stakeholders and comprehensively assessed the impacts of different land management scenarios on land use functions (LUFs) and local sustainable development. We completed this comparative study in typical remote agricultural areas in Godagari upazila of Bangladesh, Guyuan of China and Noto of Japan, which all have gradient differences in terms of their economic and social aspects, natural conditions and main land use issues. The selected scenarios were business as usual, increase in agricultural input and reform of rural development mode. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) the farmers at the three study sites all showed a decreasing dependence on their land and a relevant level of stress on environmental LUFs, but the rooted reasons were different and even opposing; (2) scenarios with a high aggregate impact on LUFs might not enable a sustainable development model, and the assessment of land management measures should consider the balance among environmental, economic and social dimensions; and (3) land use and management practices should be conducted with consideration of local conditions, and protecting agricultural development and enacting appropriate agricultural reforms could revitalize local agricultural development. The results revealed the demand for location-specific land management practices and underlined the knowledge of agricultural management on an international scale.