Ecosystems provide a variety of ecosystem services and functions for mankind, and their sustainable use plays an important role in livelihoods. However, the resulting land degradation due to land use and land cover changes leads to loss of valuable ecosystems and associated ecosystem functions and services. This study takes two highly degraded watersheds, Aba-Bora and Guder, in Ethiopia and uses the value transfer valuation method to estimate changes in ecosystem service values.

Although Ghana is a leading global cocoa producer, its production and yield have experienced declines in recent years due to various factors, including long-term climate change such as increasing temperatures and changing rainfall patterns, as well as drought events. With the increasing exposure of cocoa-producing regions to extreme weather events, the vulnerability of cocoa production is also expected to rise. Supplemental irrigation for cocoa farmers has emerged as a viable adaptation strategy to ensure a consistent water supply and enhance yield.

As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded, questions arose as to whether the pandemic would amplify or pacify tropical deforestation. Early reports warned of increased deforestation rates; however, these studies were limited to a few months in 2020 or to selected regions.

To avoid wetland degradation and promote sustainable wetlands use, decision-makers and managing institutions need quantified and spatially explicit information on wetland ecosystem condition for policy development and wetland management. Remote sensing holds a significant potential for wetland mapping, inventorying, and monitoring.

Two remote-sensing datasets were used to estimate land and water use in the Kabul, Kurram and Gomal transboundary basins shared between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The proportion of different land-cover classes within these three basins was estimated. Barren land and rangeland form the largest block of land-cover classes owing to the prevailing semi-arid conditions. Domestic water use ranges from 21.2 million m3 (mcm) in Gomal to 554 mcm in Kabul and 106 mcm in the Kurram. Due to the lack of data, industrial water use was assumed to be one quarter of domestic water use.

Land degradation is one of the contemporary environmental challenges affecting regions inhabited by over one-third of the global population. In response to land degradation, restoration of degraded landscapes through area closure has been implemented through government and bilateral organizations for the last three decades in Ethiopia.

Background

This chapter by Yuliani et al. begins with a brief description of the Adaptive Collaborative Management process that occurred in the early 2000s in the village of Baru Pelepat in Jambi province, Indonesia – a process facilitated by these authors. After a brief introduction to the community itself, Yuliani et al. launch into a description of the bottom-up process that resulted in local communities getting legal rights to manage a special forest area near their community, an area that had been part of Indonesia’s forest estate.

This article explores deforestation and reforestation dynamics over 415,749 hectares of 25 titled Indigenous Community Lands (ICLs) in the Peruvian Amazon over forty years at three scales: total area, regions, and communities. We focus on ICLs as the territorial unit of analysis, as they are increasingly discussed regarding their importance for conservation. Additionally indigenous communities (ICs) are a too-marginalized group in the Amazon that merit more attention. Analyses of this kind are often short-term and use only large-scale Earth Observation methodologies.

The acceleration of deforestation is one of the unexpected consequences of the signing of the Peace Agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP guerrilla in 2016. In recent years, deforested areas have increased in territories previously occupied by guerrilla and paramilitary groups, while illicit crops have expanded, and the violence perpetrated by other illegal armed groups has intensified. This research seeks to understand the relationship between the implementation of the Peace Agreement and deforestation in Colombia, mainly through a quantitative approach.