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+.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: In recent years, various actors, from big foreign and domestic corporate business and finance to governments, have initiated a large-scale worldwide enclosure of agricultural lands, mostly in the Global South but also elsewhere. This is done for large-scale industrial and industrial agriculture ventures and often packaged as large-scale investment for rural development.

Chinese and European privets are among the most aggressive invasive shrubs in forestlands of the southern United States. We analyzed extensive field data collected by the U.S. Forest Service covering 12 states to identify potential determinants of invasion and to predict likelihood of further invasion under a variety of possible management strategies.

One-third of the forestland in the U.S. is owned by 10.4million family forest owners. Their collective decisions have a great impact on the sustainability of forest landscape across the country. Public policies and programs for encouraging landowners to properly manage their land include cost-share, forest certification, and conservation easements. However, to date, less than 6% of the family forest owners have participated in a cost-share program, less than 1% have certified their land, and less than 2% have an easement.

Transition from corporative property to incorporative (possession of territorial formation by each native resident) could be an evolutional continuation of the development of land property relations at the local territorial level in the conditions of the Republic of Belarus. Incorporative approach helps to solve a number of key economic problems in rural areas, connected with the growth of wealth of people constantly residing here, with their security and safety of their property and investments.

Study on household food security is very essential now that Nigeria is currently facing the problem of food crisis. This study presents findings on household food security in the North Central Nigeria (NCN). The first objective was to review and highlight the commonly used measures of households' food security with their pros and cons; second, to determine the food security status of households; and third, to analyse the determinants of household food security status in the study area.

Forest fragmentation threatens the sustainability of forest communities in the eastern United States. Forest communities exhibiting either a low total area or low percentage of intact forest are subject to relatively higher risk of shifts in stand composition towards edge-adapted and invasive species. Such changes in stand composition could result in local extirpation of communities, homogenization of forest communities at broader spatial scales, and a consequential reduction of the biodiversity values of forestland.

This article analysed farmers' perceptions of the effects of coconut mite in their livelihood and assessed crop diversification as a copping strategy for reduced coconut production. A socio-economic model of farmers' decisions on intercropping as an indicator for overall crop diversity was developed. The study was conducted between November 2009 and March 2010 in five districts in Tanzania, which were selected on the basis of the coconut's economic importance, using structured questionnaires which were administered to 200 household heads.

Land privatisation has been initiated in many transition countries to provide land ownership rights to citizens in order to facilitate the socio-economic development of the country through enhanced access to land. However, the implementation of land privatisation laws is still problematic in many transition countries because of the uncertainty involved. Mongolia is an example. The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework for understanding uncertainty as it exists in land privatisation and to determine the best way to respond to this uncertainty.

Rapid land ownership changes in the Northern Forest of the eastern United States have spurred development as well as conservation. Local people have experienced differing degrees of participation in land use decisions. We examine two conservation projects from the Northern Forest state of Maine. This paper presents the policy processes from these projects and an assessment of their impact on conflict and support for the project. One project was a top-down approach, and the second was a grassroots, private effort by local citizens to conserve forestland.

Local and national public sector stakeholders are considered to be primary stakeholders and their knowledge and support for conservation initiatives of transfrontier parks are important for sustainable management of resources. Hence, it is critical to assess the attitudes and opinions of a major stakeholder group in order to establish partnerships between protected areas (PAs), adjacent communities and other management agencies.

This study detects patterns of land-use and land-cover changes in the last three decades (1972–2004) and analyses its causative factors in the Upper Dijo River catchment, Midwest escarpment of Ethiopian Rift Valley. Data captured through the synergy of an aerial photo, satellite image and ground-based socio-economic survey were analysed by GIS and SPSS. The results showed a decline in shrub-grassland and riverine trees at 21.5 and 16.3 ha per year, respectively, and increase in plantation trees, annual crops and bare/open grasslands at 2.8, 12.5 and 24.8 ha per year, respectively.