A climate change and land use expert has called on international policy makers to treat land as a global commons, like air, ice and - to an extent - liquid water.

Felix Creutzig, a professor at the Mercator Research Institute in Berlin, and lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, argues that a change in how humans administer land management will ease the multiple different pressures that are affecting this fundamental resource (and contributing to pollution and poverty) in an article published in Nature this week.

Prof Creutzig notes that human activity is driving a number of major pressures, including deforestation, the sealing of fertile land as cities expand, exclusion of communities of people from land they traditionally used and mass extinctions of plants and animals, with agriculture having a significant part to play in this process, overseen by businesses in the world’s largest economies (since 2000, concerns from major world players including the UK and China have bought up an area of farmland greater than the size of Germany to grow food in Africa).

The professor wants to see land proclaimed a global commons (shared resources in which everyone has an equal stake), with international treaties established to ensure its sustainable management. At the current time, however, there are a number of different regulatory systems governing land use, and Prof Creutzig mentions the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as a rare example of international cooperation on land issues - though he does remark that CAP is “Largely unsustainable”.

The Berlin-based professor wants to maintain private property, but is pushing for a shift in the rights and duties associated with landownership, towards a focus on stewardship rather than exploitation and control; he suggests this is already going on in some areas, for example Iowa, where (in theory, at least) landowners may only raise livestock if their actions don’t damage or devalue neighbouring land.

Ahead of publications by the IPCC and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, which are likely to be the next major international reports to consider how we look at land use, Prof Creutzig is calling for legal reform to recognise land as a common resource, and bring national laws on land use, local needs and conditions and sanctions for lawbreakers into step.

With states and international organisations giving increasing consideration to new rights and concepts that govern humans and the world around us - notably the UN, which has appointed special advisors on the ‘Right to Food’, and the Indian government which has enshrined this right in its constitution - Prof Creutzig argues that failure to acknowledge a ‘right to land’ is impinging on people’s human rights, by denying access to food and housing, failing to guarantee that people benefit from nutrient cycling, clean water, space for recreation and other ‘services’ that land provides.

Though Prof Creutzig is adamant that this fundamental shift in thinking will yield benefits, he recognises that these may not be immediately apparent, and will largely be for relatively powerless or voiceless communities, and as such, in the absence of vocal support from major players  - like influential governments or private landowners - must be supported by the scientific community, and policy advisers who influence opinions at higher levels of organisation.

Prof Creutzig’s Nature article can be accessed here.