Weak or Strong Sustainability in Rural Land Use Planning? Assessing Two Case Studies through Multi-Criteria Analysis

Abstract

This paper addresses the debate regarding weak versus strong sustainability in the field of rural land use planning. Both concepts correspond to opposing paradigms on sustainability and both their fundamentals of economic roots and comparative analyses from a theoretical point of view enjoy a contrasting trajectory. However, their inclusion in land use planning has been an issue not sufficiently studied despite their relevance in the field of local development and sustainability. The aim of this study is to shed light on this gap by exploring the assessment of the degree of sustainability in rural land use planning. To this end, two case studies involving forestry in the Basque Country (Spain) have been analyzed based on a multi-criteria analysis technique. As a result, we have observed the importance of setting thresholds in the valuations of the criteria, as well as the effect of varying such thresholds above the compensability degree.