Since the early 1990s, the industrial timber plantation (Hutan Tanaman Industri - HTI) scheme has been intended to serve as a major source of timber to meet domestic and export demand. The need to meet a large gap between legal wood supply and demand for forests products has been the recent years as high as 50 million

From the mid-2000s, a commodity boom underpinned a wave of land use investments in low- and middle-income countries. While agribusiness, mining and petroleum concessions often involve promises of jobs and public revenues, they have also prompted concerns about land dispossession, exclusionary investment models and infringements of the rights of vulnerable groups. One of the major challenges is in empowering rural people to make informed choices, exercise their rights and have their voices heard.

In this research highlight, we present analysis of agricultural land use, distribution, access, tenure, land markets, and historical patterns of ownership and disposal. Findings are derived from a representative survey of 1578 rural households in Myanmar’s Central Dry Zone - the Rural Economy and Agriculture Dry Zone Survey (READZ). The READZ survey was conducted from April to May 2017 in four townships (Magway, Pwinbyu, Myittha, and Budalin) in Magway, Mandalay and Sagaing regions.

Variants of Indigenous forest management reflect distinct historical and political-economic contexts. Indigenous forest management was largely unrecorded in the colonial period and, in the present, can range from industrial to ecosystem-based forest management, autonomous management and rentier practices. Evidence of Indigenous forest management has assumed political importance in those nation-states that require historical evidence of past land use and occupancy as the basis for negotiation of Indigenous-titled lands.

Assessment of ecosystem services has been set a strategically important role in the European Union countries, including it to the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020. The EU Biodiversity Strategy determines that “Member States, with the assistance of the Commission, will map and assess the state of ecosystems and their services in their national territory by 2014, assess the economic value of such services, and promote the integration of these values into accounting and reporting systems at EU and national level by 2020”.

Land as a production factor occupies a special position in the economic activities of the urban population. Land resources in big cities are not only territorial basis for placing industrial and production structures, but also a space for urban life in general. However, to assess the effectiveness of urban land use, primarily the ecological and economic potential of the use of the urban land resources should be determined aimed at sustainable development of urban agglomerations (Volodchenkov, 2010).

The Kalu Ganga Basin in Sri Lanka is generally flooded once a year. A network of low-lying lands acts as natural retention and storage that captures floodwater, minimizing damage. An increase in the flood frequency has been observed in recent years. It is commonly perceived that this increase is caused by a rise in the frequency and severity of ‘very wet’ precipitation events. We conclude that land-use changes may have played a larger role in generating floods.

Degraded territory is land which has been damaged by either industrial and other activities or no activities at all to the stage where any economic activity is impossible unless special renewable measures are implemented. One of the aims of sustainable environment resolutions adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September, 2015 was ‘to restore degraded land and to aim to achieve having a world neutral to land degradation’. This is the first worldwide document where universal and comprehensive actions regarding land degradation are provided.

The spatial structure of land in south-eastern Poland is characterized by a high fragmentation, small farms and a road network that is not adjusted to the requirements of modern, mechanized agricultural production. The patchwork pattern of land ownership is one of the main factors that negatively affect agricultural production. Fields located in an external patchwork can be fully used for agricultural production, but the production costs are higher, and the income from the farm is smaller.

The article presents the main results of investigation of the land market and its problems in Ukraine. Three stages of agricultural land market are singled out and described. The necessity of a moratorium on the sale of agricultural land is present in Ukraine. Basic arguments are considered in relation to organization of land market on the basis of lease. The authors emphasize the necessity of introducing the market mechanism in agricultural production and the ecological aspects of the land market development.

The agricultural lands have a special legal regime and are subject to the protection aimed at limiting the seizure of these lands, preserving and increasing their fertility. The area of lands of this category in the structure of land Fund accounts for 100.8 million hа, or 38.6% of used land. Their share in the land Fund of the regions ranges from 70-75% (North-Kazakhstan, Akmola region) to 10-20% (Kyzylorda, Atyrau region). It is mainly related to different climatic conditions and vast areas of desert and semi-desert rangelands.