USAID programs and Missions implement activities that improve land rights, support inclusive land and resource governance, build resilient livelihoods, and promote women’s empowerment. This brief explores the relationship between gender norms and women’s land rights, introducing key social norms concepts and tools to identify and shift harmful norms in the context of land and natural resources.

The present study investigates the forest governance structure for REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) implementation in a protected forest of Bangladesh, namely Rema-Kalenga Wildlife Sanctuary (RKWS). The study analyses the key aspects of forest governance, focusing on drivers of deforestation and forest degradation, governance deficit, institutions and social networks, co-benefits, and opportunities and challenges of REDD+ in RKWS.

The search for a sustainable land management has become a universal issue. It is especially necessary to discuss sustainable land management and to secure a site with enough feed supply to improve the lives of the farmers in the Ethiopian Highlands.

This study explores the relationships between forest cover change and the village resettlement and land planning policies implemented in Laos, which have led to the relocation of remote and dispersed populations into clustered villages with easier access to state services and market facilities. We used the Global Forest Cover Change (2000–2012) and the most recent Lao Agricultural Census (2011) datasets to assess forest cover change in resettled and non-resettled villages throughout the country.

One of the most difficult types of land-related conflict is that between Indigenous peoples and third parties, such as settler farmers or companies looking for new opportunities who are encroaching on Indigenous communal lands. Nearly 30% of Colombia’s territory is legally owned by Indigenous peoples. This article focuses on boundary conflicts between Indigenous peoples and neighbouring settler farmers in the Cumaribo municipality in Colombia. Boundary conflicts here raise fierce tensions: discrimination of the others and perceived unlawful occupation of land.

Strong national institutional arrangements in the geospatial information management are essential for successful implementation of sustainable land administration system. However, it is not only the existence of institutions but also their effectiveness that leads to the intended goals and reaching of objectives.

To properly govern people-to-land relationships, there is a need to formally recognize land rights, and for this to bring recognizable societal change, the established Land Information System (LIS) has to be updated continuously. Though existing literature suggests different parameters to consider when updating an LIS, little is said on how countries are doing this, especially when unconventional approaches through systematic land registration were initially used. This paper comes up with recommendable good practices where the suggested needs for updating land records were made workable.

Wind-farm planning optimization is important for decision-making concerning regional energy planning in developing countries. This process is governed by restrictions on site selection based on land suitability metric variables, wind turbine technology variables, and land-use governing criteria. This study aims to create a framework for land appropriation strategies for locating optimum sites suitable for wind farms.

Global environmental governance (GEG) is one of the world’s major attempts to address climate change issues through mitigation and adaptation strategies. Despite a significant improvement in GEG’s structural, human, and financial capital, the global commons are decaying at an unprecedented pace. Among the global commons, land has the largest share in GEG. Land use change, which is rooted in increasing populations and urbanization, has a significant role in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Land consumption and climate change have intensified natural disasters in urban areas. In response to these emergencies under the European 2030 Agenda, Sustainable Development Goals have been established to improve ecosystem protection and increase resilience and adaptation to natural disasters globally (Goal 13 “Climate action” and Goal 15 “Life on land”).

How land is used is connected to some of the most important issues of our time: sustainable development, economic development, reducing territorial inequalities and the rights of future generations, to name but a few. There is growing recognition that a wide range of policies shape how land is used and managed beyond that of land use and environmental planning systems.

This study’s objective is to assess the socioeconomic effects of good governance practices in urban land management in two particular Ethiopian towns. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed to achieve this objective. Questionnaires, interviews, and focus group discussions were used to collect data, and the collected data were analyzed descriptively. According to the study’s findings, the poor were hit particularly hard by weak governance in urban land management, since they could not afford to bribe authorities to acquire services or legal protection.