ABSTRACTED FROM LA VIA CAMPESINA PRESS RELEASE: The UN Declaration aims to better protect the rights of all rural populations including peasants, fisherfolks, nomads, agricultural workers and indigenous peoples and to improve living conditions, as well as to strengthen food sovereignty, the fight against climate change and the conservation of biodiversity. The endorsement of the UN Declaration also constitutes an important contribution to the international community’s effort to promote family farming and peasant agriculture.

The territorial planning and the management of urban surfaces force the decrease of green spaces in urban landscapes. As the urbanization process during past decades of the last century was quite intensive not only in Europe but also in Lithuania, findings describing changes of forest cover as well as spatial structure of the forest land are requested.

Land resources are the basis of economic and territorial development of any country. Land reform in the Russian Federation started in 1990−1991, its goal was to solve a wide range of issues in the field of agriculture, the formation and development of local government, housing construction, and ecology. At the same time, social and economic transformations were carried out, private ownership of land and payment for land use was introduced, and the development of the land market was stimulated.

Type of land use is a territory of land surface according to its natural characteristics and the current economic use of the land. In relation to the changing economic environment, land monitoring institutions are investigating and implementing methods for obtaining new data on land use pattern. With the development of technologies, research on innovative methods of land resource assessment is becoming more and more relevant, which improves and accelerates the process of determining the land use pattern within the territory.

Land resources of Ukraine, having economic, social, natural, cultural and historical significance, mainly are located within rural areas. Despite the fact that Ukraine has a significant land and resource potential of the territories, intensification of the use of land resources, in particular in agriculture, leads to the depletion of soil cover, land degradation and landscape destruction. The environmental policy of Ukraine provides for introduction of the principles of sustainable development in all fields of environmental management.

During the last 50 years the humus content in the arable layer of the soil in the basic agrarian regions of Ukraine (steppe and forest steppe) has diminished by 15−18 %. Optimisation of the structure of land areas and stabilisation of agricultural landscapes should be based on the soil indicators that ensure conservation of land. It has been substantiated that the contour-meliorative system of land use under the conditions of the development of farming enterprises as the main form of the contemporary land system should be modernised.

The scope of export-import operations with food goods (FG) and agricultural feedstock (AF) in 2012-2017 is estimated and the volume of output of the main kinds of agricultural products by 2020 by the EEU countries is forecasted. It is shown that from 2012 till 2016 the scope of export, import, goods turnover and trade balance of FG and AF have reduced from 17871.0; 44363.7; 62234.7 and -26492.7 mln dol to 16941.2; 26491.6; 43432.8 and -5411.4 mln dol, respectively. The mutual trade of FG and AF for the same period reduced 8058.3 to 6847.3 mln dol.

The current state of agricultural production space is the outcome of centuries of human activity, as conditioned by socio-economic, legal, and political factors. The characteristic features of the spatial layout of land, which has been shaped in this historical process in the rural areas of southern and south-eastern Poland, are farms divided into a large number of parcels, lack of access to parcels, irregular shapes of parcels, and their scattering in space.

Agricultural transport roads play an important role not only from the point of view of individual farm holdings, but also the general development of rural areas. Roads constitute an element of the technical infrastructure indispensable for communication and transport; they play a role in shaping the rural landscape, and the routes they follow affect the forms and size of agricultural land and forest areas found within the area covered by a given road system. The existing public road network does not always provide access to all fields.

The article presents the analysis of the current situation of the forest area in Alytus and Vilnius Counties. Comparative, analytical as well as statistical and logical analysis methods were used for the investigation. The aim of the investigation is to carry out the analysis of the Alytus and Vilnius Counties forest area during the period between the years 2006 and 2018. The object of the investigation – Alytus and Vilnius Counties forest area. Tasks of the investigation: 1. To describe the status quo of forest in Alytus and Vilnius Counties. 2.

The article discusses the current state of forest land, the history of formation of large tracts of forest in the Samara region and analyses some of the results of implementation of target programs to improve the forest cover in the region under the Kyoto Protocol. This program was designed for the period from 2006 to 2015, but in 2009 was discontinued. However, large segment of assets was allocated and a number of works was carried out.

Revitalization is a set of urban and planning activities, coordinated by local self-government administration, aim of which is a social, architectural, planning and economical advantageous transformation of the specific area of the municipality, being in a state of crisis resulting from economic and social factors. Whereas, the renewal of the countryside is understood as shaping the living conditions of people in rural areas, with the local community as an animator and subject.