In Sub-Saharan Africa, the popular perception of rangelands and their management is that these vast areas have major problems without solutions: the common narrative focuses on overgrazing, herds of undernourished livestock, erosion and desertification, drought, famine, and conflict.

However, evidence compiled and analysed in this book show that such a view of rangelands – as being unproductive and mismanaged systems – does not reflect reality. It needs reconsideration and revision.

The UNCCD-SPI technical report “Realising the Carbon Benefits of Sustainable Land Management Practices: Guidelines for Estimation of Soil Organic Carbon in the Context of Land Degradation” provides decision guidance for the estimation of soil organic carbon (SOC) in support of appropriate deployment of sustainable land management (SLM) technologies, in order to maintain or increase carbon in the soil and contribute to the achievement of land degradation neutrality (LDN).

Land degradation exacerbates the unique vulnerabilities of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to environmental challenges, such as climate change, flash floods, soil erosion, lagoon siltation, coastal erosion and sea level rise, undermining their economic potential. Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) contributes to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in SIDS, preserving biodiversity and increasing resilience to climate change. Land degradation has a strong negative impact on climate-sensitive sectors like agriculture, water resources management and coastal zone management.

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are continuously under the threat from the adverse effects of climate change and land degradation impacts. Erratic climatic patterns have made daily weather previsions unreliable and are becoming a challenge for communities to take appropriate timely and preventive measures. Land degradation directly increases CO2 emissions, contributing to climate change and vice versa.

For two decades, increasing concerns about urban sustainability have driven Australian metropolitan planning efforts to call for fundamental changes to existing urban forms. These changes are intended to develop more compact cities characterised by a poly-nodal network of dense activity centres. In this paper we provide the first long-term, comprehensive evaluation of the implementation of this policy in greater Brisbane.

Users of transport infrastructures nearby hazardous plants may represent important populations potentially impacted by a major accident. Toulouse catastrophe in 2011 has been an illustrative example as it strongly impacted highway users. Therefore, transport infrastructure users (Roads and railways mainly) represent a population to be protected within a land use planning policy as it is the case for inhabitants.

This paper develops a unifying framework for spatial and environmental economics, based on equilibrium considerations for population games. The main contribution of this paper consists of introducing a consistent concept for spatial welfare. Following the introduction of estimable locational sorting models for valuation methods in environmental economics, the relationship between the theoretical underpinnings of the hedonic pricing model and the bid rent concept in urban economics is re-examined.

Studies evaluating potential of Green Infrastructure (GI) development using traditional Boolean logic-based multi-criteria analysis methods are not capable of predicting future GI development under dynamic urban scape.

Why has job growth over the past decades been weaker in the Dutch Randstad area than in surrounding regions? In a simultaneous equations analysis, we find that employment adjusts to the regional supply of labour. Net internal migration is predominantly determined by regional housing supply and not by employment growth. Growth of the regional housing stock responds only moderately to changes in the number of people and jobs.

ERES:conference

Objective: we want to explore values and methods of public participation in land use planning through analysis on values of public participation and case of Ji’an County in Jiangxi Province. Methods: document and data method, case analysis method, qualitative and quantitative combined methods. Results: public participation in land use plays a positive role in improving science and practice of planning.

This paper reports on a stated preference study of exurban Rhode Island residents that assessed the relative attractiveness of a variety of commercial and recreational land uses. Focus group participants and town planners proclaimed a demand for certain commercial developments such as grocery stores and fine-dining restaurants, but survey respondents generally exhibit a strong preference for no additional development beyond the status quo current rate of development.