Land-use planning is increasingly being recognized as a central part of the formulation and implementation of strategies to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, contributing to both climate change mitigation and adaptation. Conflicting interests and competition over land and resources have been major driving forces of forest conversion, with increasing pressure due to population growth, degradation of lands, economic interests and, not least, the impact of climate change.

This case study in the World Resources Report, “Towards a More Equal City,” examines transformative urban change in Ahmedabad, India, by analyzing the land pooling and readjustment mechanism called Town Planning Scheme (TPS). This paper reviews the evidence on whether the TPS mechanism has enabled transformative change with equitable outcomes in Ahmedabad City—and if so, how.

Methods to map nature-based recreation are increasingly used, especially in ecosystem services research and practice. Researchers that map nature-based recreation beyond local scales, however, have relied much on physical attributes, e.g. land cover and topography. In such instances the recreational potential of land is modeled based on expert judgement and not on public preferences. Participatory mapping data is based on public preferences and as such can be used to improve proxy-based methods to map the recreational potential of land.

Rapidly urbanizing Indian cities need mechanisms to ensure that land is acquired, planned, and serviced with adequate infrastructure and social amenities, to prevent the occurrence of haphazard urban expansion and under-provisioned inner-city areas.

Such mechanisms should help government agencies recover their costs through land value capture, a method by which agencies recover part of the increase in the value of private property after it is serviced by new public infrastructure.

The growing challenges of population growth, demands on limited resources by diverse actors, land degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change require the rational use of resources to sustain and enhance productivity and maintain resilient ecosystems. The availability of suitable planning tools and information to support the decision-makers at different scales and across sectors is limited.

La tercera edición de la WRB incorpora, en el nuevo capítulo 2, elementos que permiten generar nombres taxonómicos mucho más informativos que llevan a deducir con facilidad la génesis y funciones de los suelos. Por otro lado, esta nueva versión de la WRB facilita la elaboración de leyendas de mapas a varias escalas para uso multifinalitario.

La première édition de la Base de référence mondiale pour les ressources en sols (WRB) a été publiée lors du 16ème Congrès Mondial de la Science du Sol à Montpellier en 1998. Lors du même événement, elle fut adoptée comme système de corrélation des sols et de communication internationale de l'Union Internationale des Sciences du Sol (IUSS). La seconde édition de la WRB a été publiée au 18ème Congrès Mondial à Philadelphie en 2006.

Participatory land-use planning (PLUP) refers to a bottom-up method of analyzing land and water resources. In its current form, PLUP integrates inputs about climate change and sea level rise to help the community utilize the resources within its vicinities. In utilizing its resources, the community will be able to improve the people’s livelihoods and help them sustain such resources for the benefit of the next generations. This publication in implementing PLUP focused on climate-smart adaptation in Climate-Smart Villages (CSVs).

Against the background of climate change, current and future provision of ecosystem services (ES) will also change. The recording of current provision potentials and its development in future is important for adapted regional planning. ES assessments are frequently carried out in the context of expert-based surveys, which have, however, revealed little information to date about uncertainties. We present a novel approach that combines the ES matrix assessment with the Delphi approach, confidence ratings, standardized confidence levels, and scenario assessment.

This open access book examines more than two centuries of societal development using novel historical and statistical approaches. It applies the well-being monitor developed by Statistics Netherlands that has been endorsed by a significant part of the international, statistical community. It features The Netherlands as a case study, which is an especially interesting example; although it was one of the world's richest countries around 1850, extreme poverty and inequality were significant problems of well-being at the time.

The 2017 South African Urban Conference took place at the Moses Mabhida Stadium, Durban on 30 October 2017. It was hosted by the South African Cities Network (SACN) in collaboration with the Departments of Human Settlements (DHS) and Cooperative Governance (DCOG), the National Treasury, the South African Local Government Association (SALGA), South African Council for Planners (SACPLAN), and the Ethekwini Municipality.