Mission Statement
The strategic goal of the Land Use Change and Agriculture (LUC) Program is to support policy-makers in developing rational, science-based and realistic national, regional and global strategies for the production of food, feed, fibre and bio-energy and other services that achieve long-term sustainability of land and water resources, while promoting rural development.

To achieve this goal, LUC's program is to advance applied science with a focus on the following strategic research objectives:

• Develop new and improved tools and databases in order to provide a spatially detailed understanding of alternative land and rural development options and strategies, against the background of global change.
   
• Analyze synergies and trade-offs of alternative uses of agro-resources (land, water, technology) for producing food and energy, while preserving environmental quality.
   
• Identify hot spots of significant environmental and rural social risks, and clarify their relation to global change.
   
• Verify methodologies and tools in applications for regional/national case studies needed to improve global scenarios and links with region-specific conditions, issues and policy options.

Three areas of research are identified for the period 2006–2010, covering key issues of importance to understanding the interactions between society, land use, agriculture and climate over the coming decades. (See LUC's Research Plan.)

Responsible for this page: Elisabeth Kawczynski
Last updated: 24 Feb 2011