In Colombia, one-third of the land is devoted to cattle farming, which is one of the main drivers of deforestation, land degradation, loss of biodiversity, and emissions of greenhouses gases. To mitigate the environmental impacts of cattle farming, agroforestry practices have been extensively promoted with mixed results. Despite research and extension efforts over the last 20-year period, agroforestry systems still involve a complex knowledge process among stakeholders that needs to be addressed.

India has committed to reduce emissions with a goal to increase renewable energy production to 175 gigawatts (GW) by 2022. Achieving this objective will involve rapidly increasing the deployment of solar and wind energy, while at the same time addressing the related challenges of the financing requirements, environment impacts, and power grid integration. Developing energy on lands degraded by human activities rather than placing new infrastructure within natural habitats or areas of high production agriculture would reduce cumulative impacts and minimize land use conflicts.

The historically rooted suburbanization of Flanders and the Brussels Capital Region (BCR) in Belgium has resulted in severe urban sprawl, traffic congestion, natural land degradation and many related problems. Recent policy proposals put forward by the two regions aim for more compact urban development in well-serviced areas. Yet, it is unclear how these proposed policies may impact residential dynamics over the coming decades.

Desertification is a form of land degradation principally in semi-arid and arid areas influenced by climatic and human factors. As a country plagued by extensive sandy desertification and frequent sandstorms and dust storms, China has been trying to find ways to achieve the sustainable management of desertified lands. This paper reviewed the impact of climate change and anthropogenic activities on desertified areas, and the effort, outcome, and lessons learned from desertification control in China.

Changes in the frequency or intensity of rainfall due to climate always affect the conservation of soil resources, which leads to land degradation. The importance of assessing past and future climate differences plays an important role in future planning in relation to climate change.

The plant–microbe–soil nexus is critical in maintaining biogeochemical balance of the biosphere. However, soil loss and land degradation are occurring at alarmingly high rates, with soil loss exceeding soil formation rates. This necessitates evaluating marginal soils for their capacity to support and sustain plant growth. In a greenhouse study, we evaluated the capacity of marginal incipient basaltic parent material to support native plant growth and the associated variation in soil microbial community dynamics.

Land degradation is perceived worldwide as a key process of resource depletion, representing a paradigmatic issue in national and supra-national political agendas for the 21st century in both advanced and emerging economies. Trying to delineate a ‘new lexicon of land degradation’, the present study contributes to a holistic thinking of driving forces in local communities and regional contexts through a refined analysis and discussion of (apparent and latent) factors of land degradation.

A gigantic project named Gully Land Consolidation (GLC) was launched in the hill-gully region of the Chinese Loess Plateau in 2011 to cope with land degradation and create new farmlands for cultivation. However, as a particular kind of remolded loess, the newly created and backfilled farmland may bring new engineering and environmental problems because the soil structure was disturbed and destroyed. In this study, current situations and characteristics of GLC are introduced.

Despite its contributions to the development of the country, the mining sector in Sierra Leone, has been attributed to a multitude of impacts on the environment. This article focuses on assessing the environmental impacts of mining in mining edge communities in Sierra Leone. A survey of 360 people from three mining edge communities (Sierra Rutile Limited (SRL), Bonthe district; Octea Mining Company (OMC), Kono district and Sierra Leone Mining Company (SLM), Port Loko district) was conducted.

The study set out to understand drivers of Land-Use Land Cover (LULC) changes in dry-land areas and investigate factors helping mitigate the adverse impacts of climate anomalies on LULC changes. By employing a mixed-methods design, it combined LULC data with socioeconomic and climatic data, to analyze the pattern of LULC changes and its socioeconomic and climatic driving forces along with moderating factors. It was found that rangeland decreased by 764 km2 (13% of total area) between 1986 and 2015.

Rural environmental protection has received increasing attention in recent years. The economic development and population growth of rural areas results in many problems, such as environmental pollution, land degradation, resource depletion, biodiversity loss, income loss, and public health risks. Although much progress has been made, many major challenges to rural environmental management remain to be addressed. The question of how to deal with these problems through sustainable approaches has become an urgent issue in rural areas.

Agroforestry is often discussed as a strategy that can be used both for the adaptation to and the mitigation of climate change effects. The climate of southern Africa is predicted to be severely affected by such changes. With agriculture noted as the continent’s largest economic sector, issues such as food security and land degradation are in the forefront. In the light of such concerns we review the current literature to investigate if agroforestry systems (AFS) are a suitable response to the challenges besetting traditional agricultural caused by a changing climate.