Conflicts in Land Use and Management

Abstract

As land is limited, conflicts between land uses, and, consequently, conflicts between land users about land use inevitably arise. The objective of this paper is to provide a broad, cross-sectional overview of land use conflicts as perceived by different actors and to explore the actors’ experiences with these conflicts. We conducted 45 face-to-face interviews with key land use actors in the Republic of North Macedonia. Then we applied a qualitative text analysis or identification of keywords to identify the most relevant conflicts across all land use sectors (agriculture, forestry, nature protection, etc.) and their impacts on local actors’ daily experiences. The results show that actors are aware of many diverse land use conflicts, most frequently regarding land uses for environmental/species conservation, forestry, and agriculture. Thus, land use conflicts play an important and mostly negative role in the experiences of land use actors. These findings fill current gaps in the literature on land use conflicts regarding the types of conflicts of which actors are aware and the consequences of these conflicts. The results also underline the relevance of addressing conflicts in land use planning and governance, the need for appropriate conflict management, and the necessity of providing local actors with sufficient resources to deal with land use conflicts.