Beyond Net Land Intake? Unravelling Stakeholder Perspectives on Wartime Land Use Governance in Ukraine

In the current debates on land use policy under global conditions of land scarcity, there is a lack of attention to decision-making on the local level. Despite municipalities being key in regulating competition for land they are rarely the focus of such research. In this article, we offer a systematisation of the relationship between land use pressures, local actors’ perspectives, and local policy measures.  The study focuses on land use decision-making in Ukraine where the local effects of the global land use pressures are exacerbated by the effects of war but also growing normative demads in land conservation and land take reduction. The specific case of Vinnytsia is examined to obtain a more nuanced understanding of their representation in the local agenda. We supplement it with Q-methodology for the analysis of perceptions of local civil servants towards land use amidst these pressures and crises and identify three major perspectives. We provide an outlook on how stakeholders’ perspectives find implementation in local-level policies and measures and the extent to which they respond to generalised pressures. This allows for new ways of informing knowledge exchange and the development of resilient local land use policies.