Overview of the State of Forests and Forest Management in Azerbaijan derives from the project on the state of forests in the Caucasus and Central Asia and presents the forest resources and the forest sector of Azerbaijan, including trends in, and pressures on forests. The overview describes policies and institutions of forest sector in Azerbaijan and major challenges the sector faces as well as policy responses in place or planned.

Land degradation is a global issue receiving much attention currently. In order to objectively reveal the research situation of land degradation, bibliometrix and biblioshiny software packages have been used to conduct data mining and quantitative analysis on research papers in the fields of land degradation during 1990–2019 (data update time was 8 April 2019) in the Web of Science core collection database. The results show that: (1) during the past 20 years, the number of papers on land degradation has increased.

Mediterranean regions are likely to be the most vulnerable areas to wildfires in Europe. In this context, land-use change has promoted land abandonment and the consequent accumulation of biomass (fuel) in (progressively less managed) forests and (non-forest) natural land, causing higher fire density and severity, economic damage, and land degradation. The expansion of Wildland-Urban Interfaces (WUIs) further affects fire density by negatively impacting peri-urban farming and livestock density.

The concept of a nature-based solution (NBS) has been developed in order to operationalize an ecosystem services approach within spatial planning policies and practices, to fully integrate the ecological dimension, and, at the same time, to address current societal challenges in cities. It exceeds the bounds of traditional approaches that aim ‘to protect and preserve’ by considering enhancing, restoring, co-creating, and co-designing urban green networks with nature that are characterized by multifunctionality and connectivity.

Arid and semi-arid regions are particularly vulnerable to global environmental change because of their fragile climatic conditions. The rapid development of land use is expected to affect aquatic ecosystems in these regions. In this study, we focused on how land use change affects the stream flow and inflow to Urmia Lake in the Mordagh Chay basin, Iran. This case-study exemplifies dynamics found across a much larger region. We mapped changes in land use between 1993–2015 using satellite imagery and modeled future changes using the Dyna-CLUE model.

Ardhi Yetu Programme (AYP Plus) is a national land rights advocacy programme that consolidates on-the-ground interventions, while integrating resilience and adaptation. AYP plus utilizes and builds upon the CSO capacity, national forums and joint advocacy platforms developed during the first phase of AYP, to support the overall objective that; active communities and civil society advocate for an inclusive and transparent land sector, strengthening the land tenure security and resilience of small-scale farming and pastoral communities particularly women.

The move towards sustainable agriculture requires a more detailed understanding of farmers’ knowledge(s) and knowledge practices. Increasingly, it is important to understand not only what farmers understand, but how their knowledge practices incorporate others – especially given the emerging call for environmentally-orientated policy measures to move beyond an individual farmer focus. This paper considers how farmers engage with, utilise and share knowledge through a focus on the Catchment Sensitive Farming (CSF) initiative in the UK.

In Northern, Eastern and Central European countries, peat soils drained for agriculture are a considerable source of greenhouse gas emissions. Since emissions from this source have high mitigation potential, they will likely be a focus of the European Union’s future climate goals. We describe and compare the similarities and differences in the socioeconomic and ecological business environment that policy makers, planners and farmers are confronted with when developing tailored proposals for low emission land use alternatives on peat land.

The presented paper synthesizes and reviews the history of Fist Nation land management, forming the background of three land management regimes types; the Indian Act land management (IALM), First Nations land management (FNLM) and frameworks of self-government land management (SGLM). The three regimes are compared to the Community Well-Being (CWB) index, being a measure of socio-economic development of communities across Canada.

Hybrid land tenure administration occurs in a number of South Africa’s state-subsidised housing projects and in the informal settlements from which the housing beneficiaries tend to be drawn. Ownership is the tenure form in most of these housing projects. Under ownership the law only recognises registered land transactions. Non-government tenure administration in Dunoon was organised by street and area committees that are part of the local South African National Civics Association (SANCO) branch, a community based organisation (CBO).

In response to powerful trends in technology, resource and land supply and demand, socioeconomics and geopolitics, cities are likely to increase use of the subsurface in the near future. Indeed, the subsurface and its appropriate use have been put forward as being of crucial importance if we are to achieve resilient and sustainable cities.

Nature-based solutions (NBS) is the latest contribution to the green concept family. NBS is defined as actions based in nature addressing societal challenges. In this study, we lean on the concept boundary object, broken down into three analytical categories: use, core ideas and granularities, to explore the cohesive and fragmenting powers of the NBS concept, and discuss its future role in green space governance. The study is based on a structured, qualitative review of 112 scientific peer-reviewed publications that use the term NBS.