The Rights to Ground: Integrating Human and Non-Human Perspectives in an Inclusive Approach to Sustainability

Abstract

This article discusses endemic difficulties in addressing complex sustainability problems that arise from a lack of adequate, effective and inclusive provisions for defining and securing human and non‐human rights to ground in an integrative manner. This concerns the rapid decrease in available ground for ecological and human social collective purposes due to construction and other transformations of ground in combination with the perception that different land uses are incompatible and mutually exclusive. For this reason, the question arises whether an alternative approach can be formulated that could overcome the perceived dichotomy between different needs by way of addressing multiple complex sustainability problems in an integrative manner. This involves correlating political, cultural, social and environmental perspectives concerning individual and collective needs, examining relevant cultural practices, and considering human and non‐human perspectives. The overarching aim of this endeavor is to highlight the need for and to outline the early stages of a more complex and integrative approach to sustainable design and development. This approach entails prevailing general concerns and insights that need to be adapted to locally specific conditions and circumstances with a focus on potential implications for architectural, urban and landscape design. The discussion is informed by mapping culturally specific patterns of ground access and use, as well as the means of regulating this through customary, constitutional and other rights, statutes and provisions. Furthermore, this involves examining exemplary historical and current architectures and settlement patterns that can support specific patterns of ground access and use, which have the potential to be further developed in terms of designs that can address political, cultural, social and environmental sustainability from an integrative human and non‐human perspective.