Eco-Friendly Land Planning: Conservation, Utilisation and Conversion

In one line

Decide what land must not be built on, decide what the rest may carry, and control the moment at which one use becomes another.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: eco-friendly land planning is the allocation of land among uses so that the ecological functions of the land are maintained, and MU's three words name its three operations: conservation, keeping land in the state its function requires; utilisation, deciding what use the remaining land may carry and at what intensity; and conversion, controlling the change from one use to another. In Indian law they are performed by the development plan under the State town planning legislation, by reservation in that plan, and by the permission for non-agricultural use under the land revenue code, supported by the environmental clearance regime and by the forest and coastal notifications.

Conservation

Conservation in land planning is not preservation of everything. It is the identification of the land whose ecological function is worth more than any building on it, and the removal of that land from the developable pool.

Five categories a plan should conserve, and the instrument for each.

Water bodies and their catchment, because a filled tank floods the town below it. The instruments are the reservation in the development plan, the Wetlands (Conservation and Management) Rules, 2017, for a notified wetland, and the public trust doctrine, on which Hinch Lal Tiwari v. Kamala Devi, AIR 2001 SC 3215, held that ponds and tanks are the material resources of the community.

Forest, whatever the revenue record calls it, on the Godavarman principle, and section 2 of the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Adhiniyam, 1980, for any diversion.

Steep slopes and unstable ground, which is the Joshimath lesson, and for which India has no general instrument.

The coast, through the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification, which classifies the zone and prohibits or regulates activity within stated distances of the high tide line.

And agricultural land of high quality, which is conserved almost nowhere in India, because the conversion regime treats agriculture as the default from which land is released rather than as a use to be protected.

Utilisation

Utilisation is deciding what the developable land may carry. The instruments are the ordinary tools of planning law, and a student should be able to name them.

Zoning, which assigns a use to a parcel: residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural, public and semi-public, recreational.

Density and the floor space index, which decide how much building a plot may carry. A high index is not by itself unecological: concentrating people reduces the land taken per person and shortens the journeys, which is why compact development is usually better for the land than sprawl.