land management, sustainable, policies, highlands, Ethiopia, Agricultural and Food Policy, Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy, Financial Economics,

Rural Development - Rural Land Policies for Poverty Reduction Environmental Economics and Policies Communities and Human Settlements - Land Use and Policies Rural Development - Forestry Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems Environment Agriculture

Land Economics/Use,

International Water Management Institute (IWMI).

In Indonesia, land cover change for agriculture and mining is threatening tropical forests, biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, land cover change is highly dynamic and complex and varies over time and space. In this study, we combined Landsat-based land cover (change) mapping, pixel-to-pixel cross tabulations and expert knowledge to analyze land cover change and forest loss in the West Kutai and Mahakam Ulu districts in East Kalimantan from 1990-2009.

Low-meat and no-meat diets are increasingly acknowledged as sustainable alternatives to current Western food consumption patterns. Concerns for the environment, individual health or animal welfare are raising consumers’ willingness to adopt such diets. Dietary shifts in Western countries may modify the way human-environment systems interact over distances, primarily as a result of existing trade flows in food products.

Soils perform more functions than primary productivity. Examples of these functions are the recycling of nutrients, the regulation and purification of water, the regulation of the climate, and supporting biodiversity. These abilities are generally referred to as the soil quality. Soil management that favors primary productivity may have positive and negative impacts on the other functions, and vice versa, depending on soil and climatic conditions. All these functions are under pressure, particularly in intensive agriculture.

Context: The provision of multiple ecosystem services (ES) within a landscape is commonly referred to as landscape multifunctionality. Modifying landscapes to increase multifunctionality and reduce trade-offs with concurrent services bears the potential to enhance sustainability in human-dominated landscapes. Assessing landscape multifunctionality is thus crucial for land management and planning, but lack of a clear definition and operationalization of multifunctionality impedes comparisons of different study results.

Policy objectives to maintain ecosystem services are increasingly set. Methods to identify priority areas for ecosystem services can assist in the implementation of such policy objectives. While land use change is an important driver of changes in ecosystem services over time, most prioritization studies do not account for land use change or only assess negative effects. We assessed the effect of land use change on ecosystem services in Europe for a 40-year period and the subsequent consequences for identifying priority areas. We quantified five services under current and future land use.

By law, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Ethiopia are severely restricted in their activities towards policy development. In this study we explore to what extent these restrictions have affected NGOs in Natural Resource Management in the Oromia regional state of Ethiopia.

Land use and land cover change is a critical factor of ecosystem services, while water yield plays a vital role in sustainable development. The impact of urban expansion on water yield has long been discussed, but water yield change resulting from cropland protection is seldom concerned. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the impacts of cropland protection on water yield by comparing the water yield in two cropland protection scenarios (i.e., Strict Cropland Protection scenario and No Cropland Protection scenario).

In order to meet future food demand while sustainably managing available land and water resources, irrigated agriculture in semi-arid regions needs to adapt as a response to climate and socio-economic change. In this study, we focus on the Mediterranean region, a dynamic region, which is highly dependent on irrigated agriculture. We provide insight on adaptation strategies implemented on farm level, by doing a systematic review of studies in the region. Our analysis reports 286 implemented adaptations, on 124 different locations throughout the Mediterranean.