The Proceedings of the Global Symposium on Soil Organic Carbon 2017 (GSOC17) presents the abstracts of all scientific presentations held during the GSOC17. 103 oral presentations and 35 poster presentations built the core of this event triggering fruitful discussions on the state-of-science in measuring, preserving and enhancing soil organic carbon in different soils of the world.

Over the past decades, progress towards Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) in Africa has been made at national and subregionallevels. At national level, 43 African countries have developed specific forest law and 40 have a national forest policy. At subregionallevel, efforts to harmonize policies and programmeshave resulted in the development of the Convergence Plan of the Central African Forests Commission and the Convergence Plan for the Sustainable Management and Use of Forest Ecosystems in West Africa.

Настоящие издания, разработаны на основании материалов теоретических и лучших практик демонстрационных участков, созданных в рамках проекта Сельскохозяйственной и Продовольственной Организации Объединенных Наций и Глобального Экологического Фонда «Устойчивое управление горными лесными и земельными ресурсами в условиях изменения климата».

We conducted a 12-year field experiment to study the combined effects of rice straw compost and chemical fertilizer application on a double rice cropping system in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam and established 7 treatments using a randomized block design with 3 replications. We calculated the yields of treatments relative to those of conventionally fertilized plots (i.e. with no added rice straw compost), and analyzed their annual trends. In the plots with rice straw compost, we observed a positive trend over 12 continuous wet cropping seasons.

Realizing sustainable urban development requires setting planning processes on ecological grounds and a design approach that strengthens ecology-economics-energy relations for a life consistent with nature.

Sürdürülebilir kentsel gelişimin gerçekleşmesi, planlama süreçlerinin ekolojik temele oturtulmasını ve doğayla uyumlu bir yaşam için ekoloji-ekonomi-enerji ilişkisini güçlendiren bir tasarım yaklaşımını gerektirmektedir.

The article discusses the basic concepts of sustainable land use. The analysis of land use in Kazakhstan for sustainable land use in the formation of the economy was carried out, the economic foundations of a balanced land use were defined as well as the ways for their implementation were identified. The analysis of changes in the areas of land of different categories during the period between the years 1991 and 2015 was carried out. It was established that sharply decreased the area of agricultural land, and greatly increased the areas of reserve land, human settlements and woodland.

The CAP reform 2014 – 2020 maintains the two pillars and introduces a new architecture of direct payments; better targeted, more equitable and greener, an enhanced safety net and strengthened rural development. In order to highlight the gap between CAP implementation and pastures sustainable management, a case study was done in the area of Tzoumerka Mountain.

The research studies the issue of ecological stability of rural territories that is the most important component of the national environmental policy of Ukraine. A special attention is paid to degradation of arable lands as the main ecological problem of land management. On the example of Lviv region, the authors calculated the index of ecological nonconformity of current use of arable lands, proving a considerable excess of permissible ploughing of lands in the region.

Increasing global demand for natural resources is intensifying competition for land across the developing world, pushing companies onto territories that many Indigenous Peoples and rural communities have sustainably managed for generations.

Cognizant of the centrality of land policy issues in Africa, a joint initiative was undertaken by the African Union Commission (AUC), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) in 2006, forming the genesis of the Land Policy Initiative (LPI). Through the LPI important actions and measures have been launched including a series of regional studies on land issues across Africa accompanied by rigorous consultations and discussions at regional and continental levels.