The sustainable management of soils is crucial to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. This is evidenced by the analysis of the role soils play across the proposed agenda. However, some key aspects have not been sufficiently considered so far. Moreover, the SDGs will place increased demand on soils. Further advocacy is therefore needed to ensure that important soil and land related issues remain in the final declaration of the post-2015 agenda.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will amount to little unless backed by reliable indicators. Only with good metrics can the agenda be implemented and progress measured. Just like the SDGs themselves, the indicators are still in the discussion phase, with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) one of the many players in this process. They outline their recommendations in the following article, using rural development as an example to describe them.

The Sustainable Development Goals differ radically from the current Millennium Development Goals in many aspects. Our author demonstrates the challenges that departing from a donor-oriented development framework poses – particularly for the North, and also with a view to its own development.

Is it right to attach financial values to nature and to incorporate that valuation into the post-2015 agenda? Will such valuation help to protect species diversity and ecosystems? Or does it not rather harbour the risk that we cheerfully go on destroying nature since other aspects of the national accounts can be seen as compensation? Civil society is split on this issue. Our author points out why.

The main aims of this study are to highlight the differences and the similarities between the European model of agricultural and rural development, and the state of play in the Romanian agricultural sector. Statistically speaking, the agricultural sector's indicators of the past two decades place Romania outside the family picture of the EU countries, with very slight resemblances, and very strong discrepancies between their economic, technical, and institutional characteristics.

Brazil has the fifth-largest national land area in the world and this land resource represents a critical asset for the country’s urban, agricultural, and economic development, also providing essential environmental services. Nevertheless, it has a historical lack of governance over its lands, failing to provide secure land rights and to control the extensive frauds resulting in public and private land grabs. The objective of this study is to depict evidence of these land grabs and propose a typology for analyzing them.

The draft report on the public hearings on the Implementation of the Recapitalization and Development Programme (RDP) of the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (the Department) was presented before the Committee for approval and comments. The main issues that arose in the approval of the draft report were the oversight role of the Committee, sustainability and implementation.

Sustainable agriculture has emerged as a key issue in agricultural development and natural resource management because of widespread and growing concern about the seriousness of degradation of the world's natural resource base and ever-increasing pressures on these resources from continuing rapid population growth. This paper examines the changes in land use and the problem of tropical deforestation affecting the world's land resource base for sustainable agricultural development. Global land-use changes have been slow in the last decade.

Unequal and insecure access to land undermind women's farm productivity, limit employment options, depress their earnings, and degrade the environment. Factors limiting women's access to land include legal discrimination, land scarcity, inappropriate government policies, and lack of political power and social status. Policies to promote sustainalbe development rather than focusing on family planning, as is commonly done, should directly support women's economic activities.

The turnaround strategy for the Recapitalisation and Development Programme (RADP) was presented against the backdrop of the Committee’s public hearings on 4 and 5 February 2015 on the implementation of the programme. The evaluation process conducted by the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) indicated that even though RADP had made some progress towards achieving its intended objectives, there was room for significant improvement.

The Committee received submissions from the Langa Livestock Farmers Association, The Congress of South African Trade Unions and its affiliate, the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union, the Legal Resources Centre and the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies on the second day of public hearings on the Recapitalisation and Development Programme (RADP).