Stretegies to minimize agricultural land conversions to urban uses: a case of Bhopal

Abstract

The world’s population is urbanizing rapidly. During early 1980s the share of population living in urban areas were only three percent, today the share of urban to total population is well over half and it is expected to increase further (Muggah, 2012). “In spite of the fact that urbanization give various opportunities to the nations to strengthen their economies and join the positions of wealthier countries in both prosperity and habitability, cities are confronting difficulties to deal with its urbanization which has intensified the process of agricultural land transformation to urban uses” (The World Bank, 2016). The evidence shows that agricultural land conversion has become a serious issue in the country but the extent and intensity vary across different states. India has the second biggest populace in the world yet limited land assets. In 2011, India's populace achieved 121 crores, around 17 percent of the total world's populace while net sown area was around 140 million ha in 2012-13, about 0.12 ha per capita, and less than half of the world average of 0.23 ha (Directorate of Economics and Statistics, 2012-2013). It had also declined by about 1.8 million ha from 1991-92 to 2011-12. This issue of constrained availability of land has been aggravated by development in the population, urbanization, and diversion of productive agricultural land for non-farming purposes. Amid the most recent two decades, India's populace has expanded by around 18.4 crores, while the aggregate arable land has diminished by around 3.2 million ha between 1991-92 and 2012-13 (Directorate of Economics and Statistics, 2012-2013). The area under non-agricultural uses increased from 21.3 million ha in 1991-92 to 26.3 million ha in 2011-12 (at an annual rate of 2.36 hectares) and almost all states witnessed an increase in area under non-agricultural uses. The factors responsible for the loss of agricultural land are rapid economic and industrial development, urbanization, land degradation, infrastructure expansion, and rising population etc. (Sharma, 2015). India has been encountering fast urbanization in the course of last few decades, which quickened amid the most recent decade (Census of India, , 2011). All these facts signify that while the population is continuously increasing and hence exerting pressure on the limited land resources available, the agricultural land is decreasing. Agriculture is a primary occupation of rural people and also the main source of food production. It is very difficult to regain lost agricultural land, once been converted. Land use for residential, commercial, industrial and other urban uses, dominates agricultural land uses in the bid for space in the urban area, hence resulting into loss of agricultural land. Urbanization and priority of urban development over preserving agricultural land is causing loss of agricultural land. To minimise the negative effects of unplanned urbanization on agricultural land and food security, there is a need for such development planning and land management which will ensure a balance between these two competitive usesagricultural and urban by identifying the areas for non-agricultural activities such as commercial and industrial expansion and areas for protecting fertile agricultural land for production. Along with the protecting and preservation of agricultural land, efficient use of available land resources are also required. In urban areas the use and intensity of land is guided by development control regulations such as density, floor area ratios (FAR), height provisions etc. the one of the main reason for the phenomena of urban expansion on agricultural land is lower values of density, FAR and height provisions. Most of the cities in India uses just one FAR values across the cities in contrast to the other cities of the world who uses varied ranges of FAR values across the cities. In maximum cities use of this homogeneous approach of development across all the city has resulted in to urban sprawl which increases the cost of delivering services, suboptimal utilization of land resources and loss of prime agricultural land. Appropriate changes in FAR and density provision to guide the urbanization in most sustainable way is required to minimise the agricultural land loss as a result of urban development process. The aim of the thesis is to recommend strategies to minimise agricultural land conversion to urban uses. The study was performed in three stages. Under the first stage of the study, detailed literature studies were performed in order to understand the issues and causes of the problem. A number of research papers, journal articles, reports, best practices and policy reviews were performed in order to get a clear understanding of the problem and possible solutions. The second stage involved formulating and defining the Aim, Objectives, Scope and limitations of the study along with identification of the case study area. Bhopal city has been selected for case study, because ,like many other cities of the country it has also seen rapid urban growth and increasing demand pressure on limited resources especially land, in the last few decades, which has resulted into the loss of agricultural land. Also one of the main land governing document-Master Plan for future growth is pending in the city since 2005. Currently Master plan 1991-2005 is in the use, which has all the outdated land development control regulations governing the development of the city. The third stage of the study involved the collection of data required in order to achieve the formulated objectives. The first objective was to study the spatiotemporal changes in the agricultural land conversion for the study area. To achieve this objective Land cover land use changes analysis were performed using supervised image classification tool of Arc map 10. The main purpose of this objective was to identify the amount of agricultural land lost, land uses replacing the agricultural land and amount of developed land. The second objective was to study the causes of agricultural land conversion in the study area. Cause and Impact (Fishbone diagram) Matrix was used to identify the main causes and sub causes of the agricultural land loss. One of the important cause of agricultural land conversion, which is urban sprawl has been studied using Shannon’s entropy method in order to measure the magnitude of dispersion and concentration of built up in the study area and to identify the relationship between agricultural land loss and current urbanization process for three different years 1998, 2010 and 2016. Other than this all the causes has been studied in details for the study area. Further for the better understanding of the impacts of main causes of agricultural land conversion, two micro study area Bhaironpur and Lambakheda were selected using the outcomes of Shannon’s entropy, Current administrative status (Urban or village) and land diversion magnitude. The third objective was to identify how changes in development control regulations would impact the agricultural land conversion. Under this, analysis of existing Floor Area Ratio and densities were performed using secondary data from Master Plans, Bhopal and Madhya Pradesh land revenue code 1959, Madhya Pradesh Bhumi Vikash Adhiniyam etc. The master plan, 2005 was proposed to cater the development requirements of 25 lakh population. The population of the Bhopal reached 1.8 million in 2011, less than which was proposed for 2005 master plan. Also the population density of the sub cities are very low. Two sub cities, Mandideep and Neori were selected for the analysis of the existing land use intensity and potential to compare the existing situation of development with the proposed provisions of Master Plan Bhopal, 2005. The current development of the sub-cities shows that the land is not at its optimal disposal and achieved densities are very low from the proposed one. From the analysis, densities and floor area ratios are proposed to encourage the optimal utilization of available land resources. Fourth objective was to recommend strategies and suitable zones for future development. Recommendations are given for two issues first to minimise low density, sprawled urban expansion on agricultural land and second to loss of agricultural land. To minimise urban expansion on prime agricultural land, scenarios with high density and floor area ratios are proposed for the study area. To prevent conversion of agricultural land to urban uses it is proposed to form the agricultural land reserves where only agricultural activities would be allowed and all the other non-agricultural activities would be restricted. For the formation of the agricultural land reserves (ALR), agricultural land suitability analysis were performed to identify the area most suitable for agricultural land and area not suitable for agriculture. The most suitable area is proposed to be saved from urban influences and expansion and the area not suitable for agricultural activities is proposed for urban development. ALR would be able to save almost 35208 hectares of most suitable agricultural land from conversion pressure. And development control regulation recommended would fulfil the need of extra land availability by use of the vertical spaces available