The article shows results of compiling recommendation land use maps for land use and land resources management of the university experimental farm “Velykosnitynske”. Large-scale GIS mapping of experimental farms allows to improve land use and decision making, prepare recommendations to solve land management issues, planning of technology processes and efficient crop growing technology. Compiled recommendation maps are aimed to assist in rational land use planning and sustainable development of the territory.

This report was produced in the frame of the Project titled “Sustainability and Operationalization of Established Regional Agricultural Research Centers in Five Arab Countries”, funded by the Arab Fund for Economic & Social Development and implemented by ICARDA.

As new industries emerge in rural areas, land use change can have important implications for affected communities. In-turn, social responses to developments can have important implications for industry. The idea that communities may, or may not, approve of landuse change has been conceptualised in the literature on ‘social license to operate’.

Processes of globalization have generated new opportunities for smallholders to participate in profitable global agro-commodity markets. This participation however is increasingly being shaped by differentiated capabilities to comply with emerging public and private quality and safety standards. The dynamics within Indonesia’s oil palm sector illustrate well the types of competitive challenges smallholders face in their integration into global agro-commodity chains.

City planners, urban innovators and researchers are increasingly working on ‘future city’ initiatives to investigate the physical, social and political aspects of harmonized urban living. Despite this, sustainability principles and the importance of urban groundwater are lacking in future city visions. Using London as a case study, the importance of groundwater for cities is highlighted and a range of future city interventions may impact on groundwater are reviewed.

Oil palm plantations in Indonesia have been linked to substantial deforestation in the 1990s and 2000s, though recent studies suggest that new plantations are increasingly developed on non-forest land. Without nationwide data to establish recent baseline trends, the impact of commitments to eliminate deforestation from palm oil supply chains could therefore be overestimated. We examine the area and proportion of plantations replacing forests across Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Papua up to 2015, and map biophysically suitable areas for future deforestation-free expansion.

Many efforts have been invested in the Dry Areas to combat land degradation and desertification. Different strategies and approaches for conserving soil and water and restoring degraded lands have been developed by local, national and international agents to synergise efforts towards land degradation neutrality achievement. Tunisia is a dryland country facing a high risk of land degradation over more than 50% of its territory. It is a country with high investment programs for soil and water conservation (SWC), and large level adoption of SLM practices.

Problems in agriculture and land use are increasingly recognised as complex, uncertain, operating at multiple levels (field to global value chains) and involving social, economic, institutional, and technological change. This has implications for how projects navigate complexity to achieve impact. However, few studies have systematically evaluated how project actors engage with other actors to configure capabilities and resources across multiple levels in agricultural innovation systems (AIS), from the individual to the network, to mobilise and build systemic innovation capacity.

Change in Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) is inevitable and accuracy and time are important
to detect the change in different seasons to monitor trends and status of water quality.
Understanding LULC and Water Quality Parameters (WQP) is necessary for efficient water
management and reduction of operation water treatment cost. Therefore, the effect of
agricultural land uses on water quality in Ndakaini, Gatanga, Muranga County, the LULC and
WQP were analyzed using Remote Sensing (RS), Geographical Information System (GIS) and

To help break the cycle of poverty, improve food and nutritional security, halt or reverse the alarming process of resource degradation in the dry areas, and help communities adapt to the impacts of climate variability and change, ICARDA’s Strategic Plan 2017-2026 outlines our research and organizational approach for action to achieve our vision of thriving and resilient communities in the dry areas of the developing world.