Stimulating an effective provision of public goods and ecosystem services from Europe’s farmland and forests is a critical challenge for policy-makers. In this paper we focus on three aspects of this challenge. Firstly, we explore the different drivers that influence the provision of public goods and ecosystem services by farming and forestry. Secondly, we identify the key motivational, institutional and socio-economic factors that can encourage the provision of these benefits.

Over the last 20 years, Uganda has emerged as a testing ground for the various modes of carbon forestry used in Africa. Carbon forestry initiatives in Uganda raise questions of justice, given that people with comparatively negligible carbon footprints are affected by land use changes initiated by the desire of wealthy people, firms, and countries to reduce their more extensive carbon footprints.

Inequities in land ownership and access are possibly one of the most common injustices that have persisted in Uganda since the pre-colonial times. Unfair land use policies and practices and the lack of security of tenure must be immediately addressed if Uganda is to achieve its development goals under the National Development Plan II and most of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Oxfam is working in Uganda together with partners to address the drivers of extreme inequality and injustice such as Land.

Les Directives Volontaires sur la Gouvernance Responsable des Régimes Fonciers applicables aux Terres, aux Pêches et aux Forêts dans le Contexte de la Sécurité Alimentaire Nationale (DVGF) ont défini des principes et des standards internationalement reconnus pour des pratiques responsables, fournissant un cadre aux gouvernements, au secteur privé et à la société civile à utiliser pour l’élaboration de politiques et de programmes visant à améliorer la sécurité alimentaire.

The USAID's Investor Survey on Land Rights aimed to provide a more systematic understanding of the drivers of tenure risk to land-based investments from the perspective of the private sector, and of how investors and operators assess, mitigate and are affected by such risks. The findings from the survey will provide readers with useful insights into the current treatment of land tenure risks in land-based investments.

Current urban developments are often considered outdated and static, and the argument follows that they should become more adaptive. In this paper, we argue that existing urban development are already adaptive and incremental. Given this flexibility in urban development, understanding changes in the so-called ‘rules of the game’ which structure and change collective action, is increasingly relevant. Gaining such insights advances the ability of planners to deal with perceived spatial problems. The aim of this paper is twofold.

Urbanization changes urban landscapes and results in ecological and environmental problems. To solve these problems, it is essential to quantify the dynamics of urban expansion and better understand the modes of urban sprawl. This study evaluated urbanization in metropolitan Guangzhou, China from 1990 to 2020 and explored its modes of urban growth using Landsat Thematic Mapper images and simulated landscape maps based on the Conversion of Land Use and its Effects (CLUE) modeling framework.

The lack of land ownership can discourage agricultural technology adoption, yet there is scarce evidence of the impact of land rental contracts on the adoption of improved crop varieties in developing countries. The current study investigates such impact using a nationally representative survey of Ethiopian maize farmers. In contrast to many previous studies, we show in a simple model that cash-renters are as likely to adopt improved maize varieties as owner-operators, while sharecroppers are more likely to adopt given that such varieties are profitable.

Worldwide semi-natural habitats of high biological value are in decline. Consequently, numerous Agri-Environment Schemes (AESs) intended to halt biodiversity loss within these habitats have been implemented. One approach has been the application of “adaptive management”, where scientific knowledge is applied alongside the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of stakeholders in order to establish an integrated approach that is adjusted as outcomes are assessed. In this paper we examine the effectiveness of the adaptive management approach of Norway’s Action Plan for Hay Meadows (APHM).

Land use decision making requires knowledge integration from a wide range of stakeholders across science and practice. Many participatory methods and instruments aiming at such science-practice interaction have been developed during the last decades. However, there are methodological challenges, and little evidence neither about the methodological applicability and practicability under diverse socio-political conditions nor about their dynamics. The objective of this paper is to offer some insights on the design and implementation of reasonable science-practice interaction.

Interventions to strengthen forest conservation in tropical biomes face multiple challenges. Insecure land tenure and unequal benefit sharing within forest user groups are two of the most important. Using original household-level survey data from 130 villages in six countries, we assess how current wealth inequality relates to tenure security and benefit flows from forest use. We find that villages with higher wealth inequality report lower tenure security and more unequal flows from forest income and externally sourced income.

This note is part of an Action Notes series and provides guidance for governments on how to create an investment climate that is conducive to attracting high-quality, responsible investment in agriculture.