China has made some remarkable achievements in sustainable development, but the constant deterioration of the overall trend of the environment has not yet been effectively curbed. To achieve the goal of sustainable development, we must first ensure coordination and coherence of national development goals in different areas and adhere to green development road. To achieve the objectives related to green development, and to clarify the direction of green development in the next 20 years, a road map is needed to guide and coordinate the process.

Over the past year, USAID has led a global effort in the land and resource governance sector to improve donor coordination and support the Voluntary Guidelines for the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the Context of National Food Security(Voluntary Guidelines). Working with the Global Donor Working Group on Land, a newly formed group of bi-lateral and multi-lateral donors and development agencies, USAID led a data collection and visualization project that gathered information on land and resource governance programs from around the globe.

USAID welcomes The Coca-Cola Company’s recently announced commitments to ensure that its sugar suppliers protect the land rights of local communities. Coca-Cola - the world’s largest purchaser of sugar - agreed to revise its corporate Supplier Guiding Principles to incorporate principles that recognize and safeguard local communities’ and indigenous peoples’ rights to land and natural resources.

A guest post by Dr. Paul Munro-Faure, Deputy Director, Climate, Energy and Tenure Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

A guest post by Dr. Paul Munro-Faure, Deputy Director, Climate, Energy and Tenure Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Last month, the 40th Session of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) was held at the headquarters of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome. Land governance and responsible tenure were a strong thread of interest and discussion throughout the week-long meeting.

This paper analyzes the rationale and limits of using labor contracts as a risk-sharing mechanism by (1) discussing types of contracts and their characteristics; (2) deriving the optimal labor contract for risk-neutral firms and risk-averse workers; (3) contrasting the predictions of contract labor and spot labor markets; (4) discussing the limits of labor contracts as a mechanisms to allocate risks; (5) focusing on rural labor markets, where labor and land contracts provide substitutes and have implication in relation to risk allocation; (6) discussing government interventions; and (7) rev

Why are secure property rights and good land governance fundamental to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)? Earlier this month, a group of experts provided answers to this question – and worked to build support for a prominent role for land tenure security and property rights in a Post-2015 MDG framework - at a side event at the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS).

USAID’s Land Tenure and Property Rights (LTPR) Division has released a new suite of tools and methodologies created under the recently completed Property Rights and Resource Governance (PRRG) Project. These tools were designed to enhance the understanding of LTPR challenges and improve programming to advance the global development objectives of the United States, including food security, global climate change, conflict mitigation and women’s economic empowerment.

Most studies that incorporate spatial effects use a very limited number of spatial variables in the growth model, e.g. growth spillovers or infrastructure impacts of neighbouring regions. This article innovates on previous work in spatial econometrics by differentiating among spatial contributions to economic development; e.g. infrastructure, capital, human capital, land and labour.

The strong main shock of the Great East
Japan Earthquake (GEJE) of March 11, 2011, caused little
damage to buildings. Buildings designed under the current
building code and those with base isolation fared well.
However, seismic design guidelines for nonstructural members
had not been considered adequately, which resulted in
problems such as the collapse of ceiling panels. Soil
liquefaction occurred in reclaimed coastal area along Tokyo

Recent critical analyses of global land grabs have variously invoked global capitalism and neocolonialism to account for this trend. One line of inquiry approaches land grabs as instances of “primitive accumulation of capital” whereby lands in the Global South are “enclosed” and brought within the ambit of global capitalism. Another perspective invokes the history of Anglo‐American colonialism for critiquing the developmentalist discourse that depicts Africa as the “last frontier” to be tamed by the techno‐industrial civilization of the North.

With increased global interest in biofuels, Zambia, a Sub-
Saharan African country that entirely depends on imports
for its petroleum supply, is planning to implement
blending mandates for biofuels. But, a large number
of issues—including production costs of biofuels, land
requirements to meet the mandates, and environmental
benefits—have not yet been explored. This study aims to
contribute in filling this gap. It finds that depending on
feedstock type, costs of ethanol production range from