Understanding the impact of changes in cultivated land in terms of structure, distribution, and quantity on grain production potential (GPP) is essential for a sustainable land utilization strategy and food security. Cultivated land balance (CLB), as a critical policy aiming at protecting farmland in China, has greatly restricted the loss of cultivated land. However, changes in cultivated land were largely generated due to the land-use activities led by the CLB policy.

Due to water scarcity, which is worsening due to climate change, rural areas often face the challenge of rural exoduses. Limited water resources restrict local farmers as the opportunities for cultivation in the fields are reduced. This makes rural areas increasingly unattractive. To strengthen rural areas, sustainable water management with a focus on water-reuse is required. Since treated wastewater is a daily resource with calculable quantities available, reused water can contribute to the sustainable strengthening of a region.

By signing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, the Netherlands also envisions a sustainably managed Netherlands in 2030. This requires sustainable transitions in the fields of agriculture, energy production and climate policy. We describe how the soil plays an essential role in these transitions. If we use the soil more sustainably, the soil can be the key to achieving many of the social challenges such as climate change (SDG 13), food security (SDG 2), energy (SDG 7) and biodiversity restoration (SDG 15).

Semiarid regions are often secondary on the national to global (scientific) agenda, especially if abundant vegetation elsewhere draws attention and the local population is considered backwards thinking and poverty-stricken. The Caatinga, our case study, is such a region, home to millions of Brazilians and a vast biodiversity. Unfortunately, a widely uncoordinated land use change and biodiversity decline are happening, while farmers’ livelihoods are at risk. We hypothesize substantial weaknesses in the current governance practices.

Non-technical summaryUntil the past half-century, all agriculture and land management was framed by local institutions strong in social capital. But neoliberal forms of development came to undermine existing structures, thus reducing sustainability and equity. The past 20 years, though, have seen the deliberate establishment of more than 8 million new social groups across the world.

The adoption of the EU land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) regulation ensures that for the first time afforestation in Europe will contribute toward the achievement of European Union (EU) climate change commitments under the Paris Agreement. However, increased afforestation in Europe could have unintended environmental trade-offs that may hamper the achievement of EU Water Framework Directive targets.

Transdisciplinary research is a well-recognised approach to address complex real-world problems. However, the literature on a central aspect of transdisciplinarity, namely stakeholder involvement, largely lacks a reflection on its objectives. In response, we present a framework defining four general rationales for stakeholder involvement: normative, substantive, social-learning, and implementation objectives.

Few longitudinal studies link agricultural biodiversity, land use and food access in rural landscapes. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that, in a context of economic change, cash crop expansion is associated with deforestation, reduced agrobiodiversity and changes in food access. For this purpose, we analysed data collected from the same 53 upland and floodplain mestizo households in Ucayali, Peru, in 2000 and 2015. We found an emerging transition towards less diversified food access coupled with loss of forest cover and reduced agricultural biodiversity.

The tension between biodiversity conservation and multipurpose forest management may lead to conflicts. An internationally prominent example is the Białowieża Forest Massif (BFM), an extensive forest complex with high levels of naturalness. We apply a systematic, multidisciplinary assessment process to review empirical evidence on different dimensions of the BFM conflict.

Deforestation and drought are among the greatest environmental pressures on the Amazon rainforest, possibly destabilizing the forest-climate system. Deforestation in the Amazon reduces rainfall regionally, while this deforestation itself has been reported to be facilitated by droughts. Here we quantify the interactions between drought and deforestation spatially across the Amazon during the early 21st century.