Research and policy debates over natural resource management in developing countries have largely focused on identifying the set of institutions that best supports resource sustainability and poverty alleviation. We argue that beyond finding the right institutional fit for a social-ecological system, it is equally important to understand how context affects the design and outcomes of institutional reforms. We propose a refined conceptualisation of context, based on a revision of the Institutional Analysis and Development framework.

From a theoretical point of view, the authors have grounded a new paradigm of theoretical planning of land management, which is based on space definition of a complex of factors of rational use of the existing land resources in correlation of interests of subjects-land-users and corresponding land relations in the terms of support of a balanced social-ecologic-economic environment.

The current situation in land leasing in Ukraine is analysed, when a tenant of a land parcel with immovable property is sold in part, which causes the following controversy: the land parcel in someone’s lease has buildings or constructions owned by another physical or legal person (other than the tenant). The interested party wastes a lot of time on resolving this controversial situation with the existing procedures in Ukraine. This problem is not always solved professionally because of the lack of sellers’ and buyers’ knowledge of specific features of land management and geodesy.

The main idea of the project on the cross-border cooperation of Latvia, Lithuania and Belarus, as well as a unified methodology for its implementation, is based on cooperation between local and regional authorities and the use of innovative technologies: current remote sensing data (space images, aerial photographs and images from unmanned aerial vehicles), land information system, GIS and WEB-technologies.

In a course of the research there was studied the historical path of the emergence of private property in the world and in what is now Belarus. The evolution of concepts of private property during the XIX - XX centuries was analyzed. Based on the history of private ownership of land, the provisions of Roman law, the need to raise interest of peasants in the effective management, it was shown a possible in the future way of the transfer of agricultural land to private ownership of peasants. The foregoing provisions are theoretical justification for these proposals.

This paper investigated the cause of abandoned farm land in hilly and mountainous area and proposed correspondence to cope with this problem. The progress of depopulation is also violent, and the population will be almost reduced by half from 1960 in fiscal year 1980. The farmland of the ratio of the abandoned cultivated land made a forest is also abundant 20% and in those. Through the investigation and the field survey focusing on the home pattern and the farmland condition, the generation factor of the abandoned cultivated land was analyzed.

In the structure of the land fund of the Altai Region the category of agricultural lands is the most extensive, it is more than 11.5 million hectares. More than 6.1 million hectares belong to individual citizens. There are more than 5 million hectares of state and municipal ownership. The rest of the lands are owned by legal entities. There were analyzed the natural and climatic conditions of the land fund of the Altai Region and its patterns in the natural subzones.

With current rates of land degradation reaching ten to twelve million ha per year, there is an urgent need to scale up and out successful, profitable and resource-efficient sustainable land management practices to maintain the health and resilience of the land that humans depend on. As much as 500 million out of two billion ha of degraded land, mainly in developing countries, have restoration potential, offering an immediate target for restoration and rehabilitation initiatives.1 In the past, piecemeal approaches to achieving sustainable land management have had limited impact.

Land degradation is one of the most pressing problems ensuring sustainable use of land. In order to provide a clear understanding of land degradation and its risks, as well as to implement unified measures for prevention of land degradation in Latvia, the Land Management Law came into force in 2015. It individually defines the concepts of land and soil degradation, thus separating them from each other, as well as clarifying the term “degraded territory”.

The possibilities of using the geospatial analysis methods for visualizing land monitoring data and modelling the spatial distribution of the main agrochemical soil indicators are discussed in the article. The research was conducted within the limits of land use of RUP “Uchkhoz BGSHA” (Republic of Belarus, Mogilev region, Goretsky district). The total area of the surveyed territory was 3187.0 hectares. The geospatial analysis of the spatial distribution of humus, mobile phosphorus, mobile potassium and pHKCl was carried out using the Geostatistical Analyst module of the ArcGIS software.

The analysis results of common terms in land management and their interpretations in normative-legal acts of Ukraine are presented. It have been established collisions and significant differences in the wording of even such common terms as a land parcel, a boundary of land parcel, a size of land parcel, etc. The purpose of the study is to identify collisions and contradictions of some key terms used in land surveying and geodetic works, as well as development of concrete proposals for improving and perfection the relevant terms.