Land Use And Land Use Problems In Turkey

Funda KAYMAKNeşe UYANIK

Outline The Definition of Land Use Land Capability Classification Land Use in The World Land Use Policies And Applications In Turkey Main Determinants Of Land Use And Land

Use Problems The Cost Of Land Degradation And The

Economics Results Conclusion

Introduction

Land use is the human modification of natural environment or wilderness into built environment such as fields, pastures, and settlements.

The significant effects of land use include urban sprawl, soil erosion, soil degradation, salinization, and desertification.

Lands are so important for the industry and urbanization like for the agriculture

The land use which is very important for sustainable development should be activated with the policies, planning or obligations by the states because of being insufficient and not renewable source and impossibility of accelerate of land formation time.

Today, there are 22 institutions which apply planning, applications and controls and also 24 laws about these subjects. So, it causes an authority distribution problem.

However, the reconstruction laws about shanty cause crooked urbanization and then wrong land use.

The effects of land degeneration could not be measured exactly, but it is estimated that losses are huge amounts.

The wrong use of lands creates negative effects on extant flora and animal along with agriculture production.

On the other hand, the decreasing output lands have a huge cost to reacquire because of wrong use.

The Land Use And Land Capability Classification

The land use includes the type of activity on a certain area that is available for physical, economic and social conditions of any region and defined characteristics.

In order to efficient land use , experts improved several methods for efficient planning.

Two of the most common the land usage methods which applied international are “Land Capability Classification” and “Land Evaluation Principles” which are determined by The World Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

In our country, “Land Capability Classification” method is mostly used.

In Land Capability Classification Method, lands are classified into 8 category.

The first four category are considered as suitable areas for agricultural production. Other four category are not suitable for agriculture and must be used for urbanization and for other activities.

Land in Class 5 is generally limited to the production of perennial crops or other specially adapted crops. Productivity of these suited crops may be high.

Land Capability Class What they must be used for

Class LandsClass LandsClass LandsClass Lands

Agricultural Production (best)Agricultural Production (good-moderate)Agricultural Production (moderate)Agricultural Production (insufficient)

5. Class Lands Particular Class

6. and 7. Class Lands Forest, Pasture, Grassland, Brushwood

8. Class Lands Urbanization, Industry, Tourism and Other

Table 1. Land Capability Classification

The Land Structure of Turkey

Turkey is the 36th in earth wideness in the world with 779,452 square meters area. But, if we look for productivity, 35-40 % of Turkey’s area is the mountains which are not economic. Although the forest areas are about 30%, 2/3 of them are the marquis, thickets etc.

30-35% of the lands in our country are available for the agriculture but there has the erosion risk. The soil areas which are watered are limited and they are delta plains mostly.

In Turkey, because of the dry and half dry climate, a lot of watering projects realized, but they were not completed, the enough information was not given to the farmers, and not enough measures.

As a result the productive lands started to become barren. So, the barren lands increased. However, Mesopotamia plain which has the wide flatness opened to be watered with completing of Southeast Anatolian Project (GAP); but, there is getting barren and saltinization risks.

Land Capability Class

Hectare %

1. Class Lands 2. Class Lands 3. Class Lands 4. Class Lands

5.012.5376.758.7027.574.3307.201.016

6.58.89.79.5

Total Agriculture Lands

26.546.585 34.6

5. Class Lands6. Class Lands7. Class Lands

165.54710.238.53336.288.553

0.213.347.4

Total Forest, Pasture and Grasslands

46.692.633 60.09

8. Class Lands 3.455.514 4.6

Total Lands 76.694.731 100.0

As it can see from the table, Turkey’s total land quantity is 26.546.585 ha in first four class according to the land capability classification. This amount is 34,6 % of total lands

Quantity of 5., 6. and 7. class lands are 60,9% of total lands and 8. class lands are 3.455.513 ha, meanly 4,6 % of total lands.

Table 2. Land Capability Qualification of Turkey

Souce: Türkiye Ziraat Mühendisliği Teknik Kongresi, 1995.

Table 3. Current Land Use in Turkey

Land Class Dry Agriculture Watery Agriculture Gardens Nut-Olive Total

1 3.155.146 1.413.256 176.264 33.333 4.778.299

2 4.876.280 835.791 187.972 86.823 5.986.866

3 5.438.715 476.222 204.989 109.507 6.229.433

4 4.062.580 233.081 172.414 135.054 4.603.129

5 13.340 3.980 143 - 17.463

6 3.377.458 34.290 201.714 235.037 3.848.499

7 1.683.515 4.260 115.041 442.398 2.245.214

8 - - - - -

Error term 6.111.176 ha (%23) 27.708.903

Source: TEMA Erozyonla Mücadele Seminer Notları

In Table 3, it’s shown the existing usage figures of the lands.

According to table 3, we see that it is made agriculture in the areas which should not be made agriculture according to the land usage classification.

On this table, the most important point is that the standard deviation is too high. And this shows the difficulties to measure.

An Outlook of Land Use in the World

According to the datas of UNCCD, 70 % of 5,2 billion ha agriculture area has been deteriorated and for fighting land use corruptions in a global scale, it is required that 10-22,4 billion dollars of investment must be done over 20 years.

Kyoto Protocol that is on the agenda is very important for sustainable development and shows given importance by the world. The land use, land use changing and forestry activities are put on Kyoto Protocol in order to apply the carbon dioxide discount emission contract of developed countries.

In this way, both planned and efficient land use and decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide would be provided.

Because land-use change, together with use of fossil fuels, are the major anthropogenic sources of carbon dioxide, a dominant greenhouse gas

Land Use Policies and Applications in Turkey

Today, there are lots of laws and institutions that determine how lands will be used. For example in 1982 Constitution, in Environmental Law, in Law of Agricultural Reform, in Law of Municipalities and in Law of Reconstruction there are many provisions about usage of lands.

In planning processes, some complications occur about which rule will be applied and which institution is the top authority.

Main Determinants of Land Use and Land Use Problems in Turkey

Main determinants of land use are natural structure, legal and institutional effects, demography, economical situations and infrastructure investments.

Rapid increase in industrialization and increase in population caused a requirement of new housing places. Hence, this ended up with unplanned and uncontrolled urbanization process and land use in cities.

According to the end of 1987 registration of Ministry of Industry and Trade, 62% of 17,999 hectare that appropriated for organized and small industry is on the earths that available for I-IV. class agriculture

This situation shows insensitivity of the ministries to this subject. Because, the importance of agriculture and land usage are not taken into consideration by this acts.

Touristic areas have used planless and improperly for attracting more tourist. Owners of lands in these areas have been selling them to earn more money for non-agricultural use.

At the same time there are some problems originated from planning deficiencies. For example, in Kuşadası-Davutlar 24 hectare land has opened to tourism with license

On the other hand some public investments by government have destroyed the productive lands.

Infrastructure, highways, railways, brick and roofing-tile factory and such investments damage to existing lands with high costs. At these investments, more importance is given to cost and so, the land structure is not concerned.

Brick and roofing-tile factories demolish more than 17.000.000 tones valuable alluvional lands and it is very hard to regain them

Today, there are 22 institutions and foundation and 24 laws that enforce planning, implementation and governance. Naturally, this creates an authority problem and enables unplanned or wrong land use.

Although the planning and implementing

power deputed to municipalities, localization of planning and implementations cannot be realized as technical and financial deficiency.

On the other hand, attendances of people to planning process take place by only elections and so it is not provided to attendance of public to every stage of planning.

The Cost Of Land Degradation And The

Economic Results The cost of land degradation is quite high and to

calculate this cost, it is necessary to estimate the primary situation of the land, existing conditions and the potential returns in the future.

However, in Turkey, more importance is given to short term returns rather than long term returns and long term effect are not taken into consideration.

There are many factors that increase the cost of regaining efficient lands such as destroyer effects to flora and fauna, the decrease in the value of land

Today, agriculture areas are generally used for housing, tourism, industry and infrastructure, but guiding these areas differently will increase efficiency. At the same time, wrong choices about agriculture areas have decreasing agricultural efficiency.

Complexity of authority and some reconstruction laws channel people to irregular urbanization. Especially in election periods, the increase in wrong land use can be easily seen, and this situation causes many uncontrolled housing problems which create not only ecological problems but also environment pollution.

In our country, some regional plannings and projects were done after 1980’s such as Çukurova Project, GAP Project and ATAK Project, but it is hard to say that they were successful.

Especially in GAP region, lands have been irrigating too much and this causes saltinization. Its economical meaning is decreasing of efficiency and investment will be turn into loss in the long term.

Effects of land degradation do not harm only agricultural area, at the same time this affects the whole environment.

Most significant effects of land use include urban sprawl, soil erosion, soil degradation, saltinization and desertification. Land use change is one of the sources of carbon dioxide that is a dominant greenhouse gas.

All of these are the examples of externality, because both government and the owners of lands take into consideration only short term returns of them; but this will affect not only Turkey’s economy but also next generation.

In order to achieve an optimum efficiency level in land use, direct, indirect and cumulative effects must be calculated in the process of planning.

Conclusion And Policy Implications

In recent times, the concept of “sustainable development” has come into prominence so much. However, in Turkey, it is concentrated only economical and industrial development and the importance of environment does not set off. It is not thought that it will be faced with high costly environmental problems in the future.

Some arrangements must be realized with continuity improvement framework to provide a healthy environment for new generation.

Otherwise, buildings would increase on the areas that should be made agriculture and use up agriculture lands. That’s why; it must not be thought the costs of the present time and so planning, arrangements and auditing must be realized to provide benefits in the future.

As a result