One Field, Many Expectations: The Challenge of Managing England’s Land

Nguyen Thi Nguyet Nuong

East Asian University of Technology, Hanoi 100000, Vietnam

*Contact: nuongntnt@eaut.edu.vn

© Wix

Imagine a group of people standing in a field in southern England discussing how to use the land.

A housing developer sees future homes.

A conservationist sees habitat for declining species.

A climate scientist sees a potential carbon sink.

A local resident sees open countryside.

A policymaker sees all of these at once.

The field itself remains silent.

This simple scene captures one of the most pressing challenges facing modern societies: how can limited land satisfy an ever-growing list of demands?

Across the world, land is expected to do more than ever before. It must help feed growing populations, provide space for housing and infrastructure, store carbon, support biodiversity, reduce flood risks, and adapt to a changing climate (Royal Society, 2023). Increasingly, researchers argue that landscapes should perform multiple functions simultaneously rather than serving a single purpose. Such "multifunctional landscapes" promise synergies between environmental, economic, and social goals (Selman, 2009; Wei et al., 2024).

In England, this challenge is particularly acute. The country faces severe biodiversity decline, limited land availability, and mounting pressure for housing and development. Recognizing these tensions, the UK Government published the Land Use Framework for England in 2026. The framework envisions a future where land use decisions are guided by multifunctionality, long-term thinking, adaptability, and placing the right land use in the right location (DEFRA, 2026).

Yet turning this vision into reality is not straightforward.

A recent study examining land-use planning in Wealden District identified several obstacles (Delabre et al., 2026). Environmental protections are often weakened when development pressures intensify. National priorities do not always align with local realities. Planning systems frequently favor economic development over biodiversity, carbon storage, or social equity. Decision-making processes can exclude some stakeholders while amplifying the influence of others. Meanwhile, information needed to understand complex landscape interactions is often fragmented across institutions and sectors.

The result is a paradox. People agrees that nature should be protected, carbon emissions reduced, communities strengthened, and housing needs met. Yet the systems responsible for achieving these goals often place them in competition.

It is somewhat like asking a single tree to become a forest (Nguyen, 2026; Tran, 2026).

The researchers argue that overcoming this problem requires more than better intentions. They highlight two practical opportunities. First, greater use of the mitigation hierarchy—which prioritizes avoiding environmental damage before attempting to reduce or compensate for it—could improve planning decisions. Importantly, public participation should occur throughout this process, not merely after major decisions have already been made (Delabre et al., 2026).

Second, new open-access spatial modelling tools could help communities and planners visualize trade-offs and synergies more effectively. Platforms such as Landscape Integrative Mapping and Modelling for Multifunctional Analysis (LIMMMA) allow users to explore how different land-use choices may affect biodiversity, carbon storage, development, and other objectives simultaneously.

The future of England's landscapes may therefore depend less on deciding whether housing, farming, or nature is most important. Instead, it may depend on learning how to navigate a world where every field carries multiple meanings—and where no single map can fully capture them all (Vuong, 2025; Khuc & Nguyen, 2026).

References

Delabre, I., et al. (2026). National targets, local landscapes: Challenges and possibilities for sustainable multifunctional land use planning in England. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 121, 108511. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2026.108511

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). (2026). Land use framework. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/land-use-framework

Khuc, V. Q., & Nguyen, M. H. (2026). Cultural Additivity Theory. Available at SSRN 6767760. https://ssrn.com/abstract=6767760

Nguyen, M.-H. (2026). Ayn Rand and Kingfisher on zero-carbon bombs and a sustainable future. Visions for Sustainability, 25(13474), 1-13. http://dx.doi.org/10.13135/2384-8677/13474

Royal Society. (2023). Multifunctional landscapes: Informing a long-term vision for managing the UK's land. https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/living-landscapes/DES7483_Multifunctional-landscapes_policy-report-WEB.pdf

Selman, P. (2009). Planning for landscape multifunctionality. Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 5(2), 45-52. https://doi.org/10.1080/15487733.2009.11908035

Tran, T. M. A. (2026). Conversations with Kingfisher: Wisdom from Vuong’s wild wise weird stories. Planet Forward. https://planetforward.org/story/kingfisher-stories/

Vuong, Q. H. (2025). Wild Wise Weird. AISDL. https://books.google.com/books?id=C5dDEQAAQBAJ 

Wei, C., et al. (2024). Trade-off or synergy? Dynamic analysis and policy insights on land use functions in China. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 105, 107399. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2023.107399