PUBLISHER'S ABSTRACT: This report discusses the political, economic and social opportunities and constraints that will influence the design and implementation of REDD+ in Vietnam. In particular, four major direct drivers (land conversion for agriculture; infrastructure development; logging (illegal and legal); forest fire) and three indirect drivers (pressure of population growth and migration; the state's weak forest management capacity; the limited funding available for forest protection) of deforestation and degradation in Vietnam are discussed, along with their implications for REDD+.

The world’s population and food consumption are increasing drastically while natural resources are decreasing. In particular, energy use is an important component of reaching sustainability in agricultural production processes because of its shortage as resource, its influence on air pollution and its role in the economics of production. This study used system modeling to examine interactions between crop and livestock procedures and between levels of different input factors and their effects on yields in order to determine agricultural energy intensity.

There is a strong need for accurate and spatially referenced information regarding policy making and model linkage. This need has been expressed by land users, and policy and decision makers in order to estimate both spatially and locally the impacts of European policy (like the Common Agricultural Policy) and/or global changes on farm-groups. These entities are defined according to variables such as altitude, economic size and type of farming (referring to land uses).

Urban planners are increasingly interested in agriculture around cities and have to decide whether to maintain or not areas of agricultural land use within and close to growing cities. There is therefore a need for researchers to design tools to guide public decision-making on land use. Various approaches, originating from different disciplines, may be adopted in this respect. We designed an interdisciplinary research program in order to test two related concepts: the “sustainability” and the “multi-functionality” of agriculture.

This paper explores farming landscapes in Orkney, Scotland, focusing particularly on local responses to the rise of the environmental movement and agri-environmental schemes. It argues that where institutional designations of ‘nature’ tended to invoke a generalised temporal stasis, local and regional understandings of ‘landscape’ emphasise specific histories, transience, and movement.

Agricultural land abandonment and the consequent natural forest regrowth in areas once cultivated has significantly transformed Alpine ecosystems and landscapes. In this paper, we estimated the loss of agricultural areas due to reafforestation in the Belluno Province (Eastern Italian Alps) and integrated socioeconomic indicators with topographical features to evaluate the drivers of this change.

This article explores the gendered experience of monocrop oil-palm expansion in a Hibun Dayak community in Sanggau District, West Kalimantan (Indonesia). It shows how the expanding corporate plantation and contract farming system has undermined the position and livelihood of indigenous women in this already patriarchal community. The shifting of land tenure from the community to the state and the practice of the ‘family head’ system of smallholder plot registration has eroded women's rights to land, and women are becoming a class of plantation labour.

There are uncertainties in the definition of phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) transfer pathways within agricultural river catchments due to spatiotemporal variations such as water recharge and the farming calendar, or catchment soil and hydrogeological properties. This can have implications for mitigation policies. This study combined detailed pathway studies with catchment integrated studies to characterise N and P transfer pathways for four agricultural catchments with different land management, soil drainage and geology.

A diagnostic study of the development potential of livestock for the rice-based economy of the Office du Niger (ON) was conducted in Mali. The functioning of selected farming systems and value chains were studied by means of interviews, surveys and farmer group discussions. The findings show that in the ON rice remains the prime agricultural activity; although half of the farm households own cattle (for capital insurance and draught power), livestock management is troublesome because of a lack of grazing land and water points.