The growing awareness of the negative impact of agriculture on the natural environment creates social expectation towards the reduction of this impact through the pro-environmental activities of farmers. Agri-environmental programmes are one of the key instruments of EU agricultural policy aimed at encouraging farmers to do so. Due to their voluntary nature and involvement of farmers in these activities, there has been a scientific discussion for a long time on the factors determining the participation of farmers in these programmes.

Livestock production is under increasing scrutiny regarding its impacts on the environment and its wider role in climate change. Consequently, there are a growing number of private agri-environmental schemes (AES) now operating alongside public AES that offer farmers economic rewards to maintain and enhance the environment. This study focused exclusively on a small number of commercial dairy producers located in the North West of England who were all suppliers of a global food producer and members of the producer’s own private AES.

Within the ecosystem services framework, cultural ecosystem services (CES) have rarely been applied in state-wide surveys of protected area networks. Through a review of available data and online research, we present 22 potential proxy indicators of non-material benefits people may obtain from nature in Natura sites in Greece. Despite the limitations due to data scarcity, this first distance-based study screens a recently expanded protected area system (446 Natura sites) providing steps towards an initial CES capacity review, site prioritization and data gap screening.

Coal-waste dumps are an integral part of the environment and shape the landscape of coal basins. This study aimed to present an analysis of environmental changes in terms of land use and changes in vegetation on self-heating coal-waste dumps of different ages. Spatial and temporal analyses of land relief and land cover in the area of the investigated coal-waste dumps were performed. The investigated areas differed in size, shape, management, and land cover. Thermally active zones were identified.

Bioenergy is an important and feasible option for mitigating global warming and climate change. However, large-scale land-use change (LUC) to expand bioenergy crops, such as sugarcane, raises concerns about the potential negative environmental and socioeconomic side effects. Such effects are context-specific, and depending on the LUC scenario and management practices, several co-benefits can be attained.

The increasing pressure from land cover change exacerbates the negative effect on ecosystems and ecosystem services (ES). One approach to inform holistic and sustainable management is to quantify the ES provided by the landscape. Using the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model, this study quantified the sediment retention capacity and water yield potential of different land cover in the Santee River Basin Network in South Carolina, USA. Results showed that vegetated areas provided the highest sediment retention capacity and lowest water yield potential.

Ecosystem services are benefits that the natural environment provides to support human well-being. A thorough understanding and assessment of these services are critical to maintain ecosystem services flow through sustainable land management to optimize bundles of ecosystem services provision. Maximizing one particular ecosystem service may lead to reduction in another. Therefore, identifying ecosystem services tradeoffs and synergies is key in addressing this challenge. However, the identification of multiple ecosystem services tradeoffs and synergies is still limited.

Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) is considered worldwide as a powerful approach to recover ecological functionality and to improve human well-being in degraded and deforested landscapes. The literature produced by FLR programs could be a valuable tool to understand how they align with the existing principles of FLR. We conducted a systematic qualitative review to identify the main FLR concepts and definitions adopted in the literature from 1980 to 2017 and the underlying actions commonly suggested to enable FLR implementation.

Nature-based Solutions (NBS) are increasingly promoted to support sustainable and resilient urban planning. However, design and planning urban NBS targeted at the needs of the local context require knowledge about the causal relationships between NBS, ecosystem services (ES) and urban challenges (UC) This paper aims at contributing to this knowledge, by systematically identifying nexuses (i.e. qualitative links) between UC, ES and NBS, and describing plausible causal relationships.

Dachas (collective gardens with summer houses in post-Soviet countries) is one of the most common features of peri-urban landscapes within the region that is the erstwhile USSR, with dacha conglomerates constituting half of the areas in the exurbs of major cities. In Belarus, Russia and Ukraine dachas largely preserved their original form and function. Arguably, they are at the turning point now, and can be further transformed sustainably if appropriate incentive structures will be created within national governance systems.

The articles in this Bulletin are written by the following organizations and individuals: National Coordinator for the Defense of the Mangrove Ecosystem (C-CONDEM), Ecuador; Yayasan Pusaka Bentala Rakya (Bentala Raya Heritage Foundation), Indonesia; Venezuelan Observatory of Political Ecology and members of the WRM international secretariat in close collaboration with several allies who are part of grassroots groups in different countries.