City planners, urban innovators and researchers are increasingly working on ‘future city’ initiatives to investigate the physical, social and political aspects of harmonized urban living. Despite this, sustainability principles and the importance of urban groundwater are lacking in future city visions. Using London as a case study, the importance of groundwater for cities is highlighted and a range of future city interventions may impact on groundwater are reviewed.

Land as an essential resource is becoming increasingly scarce due to population growth. In the case of the Kenyan coast, population pressure causes land cover changes in the Arabuko Sokoke Forest, which is an important habitat for endangered species. Forest and bushland have been changed to agricultural land in order to provide livelihood for the rural population who are highly dependent on small-scale farming. Unclear land rights and misbalanced access to land cause uncontrolled expansion and insecure livelihoods.

Where rights over natural resources are contested, the effectiveness of conservation may be undermined and it can be difficult to estimate the welfare impacts of conservation restrictions on local people. In particular, researchers face the dilemma of estimating respondents’ Willingness To Pay (WTP) for rights to resources, or their Willingness To Accept (WTA) compensation for foregoing these rights.

Increasing food production without further harming biodiversity is a key challenge of contemporary societies. In this paper, we assess trade-offs between agricultural output and two key agri-environmental indicators in four contrasting scenarios for Europe in 2040. The scenarios represent different storylines encompassing assumptions on macro-economic drivers (e.g.

In this paper we draw on in-depth research to explore inter-professional working in rural land and livestock management and introduce the novel concept of inter-professional expertise.

Previous literature on social equity has focused on procedure, distribution and recognition related to land use governance. We propose novel approach to examine social equity by following ideational turn with an aim to explore globally used and locally persistent myths that (mis)inform governance in practice and effect on the three dimensions of social equity for reindeer herding in northern Finland.

This study was undertaken to examine local perceptions of the impacts of small-scale tree plantations, notably of Acacia decurrens (J.C. Wendl.) Willd., in Ethiopia’s Upper Blue Nile Basin. A particular focus of our study was on the different dimensions of livelihood sustainability centering on economic, social, human, physical, and natural capital. The unprecedented expansion of small-scale tree plantations in degraded agricultural land can be attributed to farmers’ efforts to overcome the problems of limited income options and land degradation.

Land grabbing represents a fundamental problem in the transitional and post-transitional economies. The transfer of land property rights impose a dramatically change of agricultural production structure, including affecting the food safety and security. The main aim of this article is the analysis of the possible effects and transformation imposed by the transfer of land property in a post-transitional agricultural economy and to identify possible solution in valuing the lands as main production factors.

Data compatibility and system interoperability are fundamental for crosswalks and collaboration between domains. The most frequently used references for information sharing are time and location. In order to understand the requirements, fundamental processes, and core information concepts of a domain, a comprehensive, but standardised documentation is needed. In spatial data infrastructures models presented in Unified Modelling Language (UML) are widely used to facilitate the uptake of standards and valorise best practices of various communities.

Cash crops have kept expanding at an accelerating rate across the globe during the last decades. It therefore requires elaborate efforts to examine the socioeconomic and ecological consequences of cash crop cultivation. With a case of the Hangzhou region in subtropical China, this paper investigated the dynamic patterns of four cash crop types (tea, fruit, mulberry and nursery) at town level by using aerial photos; and then quantified the subsequent socioeconomic and ecological consequences using spatial regression.

Informed by the ‘quality of life’ model with specific reference to Chinese culture, this article uses reliable and publicly available information seldom used in historical or heritage study to identify the designs of flats and builders of the “Kowloon Walled City” (hereafter the City) and reliable oral testimonies to refute some myths about the quality of life within it. This settlement has been notoriously misrepresented by some as a city of darkness that was razed from the face of the Earth before 1997 to fulfill a pre-war dream of the colonial government.

Conservation decision-making in transboundary regions presents considerable challenges for protected area managers working in countries with differing languages, laws, and cultures. Collaborative decision analysis has informed real-world conservation decisions in non-transboundary contexts. Here we evaluate for the first time its application in two transboundary regions in Europe: Julian Alps along the Italian–Slovenian border, and the Bavarian–Bohemian Forest along the German–Czech border.