Land is the key asset in the agricultural sector and hence land policy is one of the key elements that determine whether SDGs are achieved in developing counties or not. In developing countries, land titling programs have been seen as a strategy for addressing SDGs. Even though the government of Ethiopia launched the rural land registration and certification program (LRCP) to secure the land rights of rural households in 1998, currently, there are limited empirical studies to examine the contribution of LRCP in addressing sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Ensuring compliance with China’s “1.8 billion mu” (120 million hectares) cultivated land preservation policy is a fundamental goal of land policy. Northeast China has experienced significant cultivated land expansion due to rigorous compensation policies over the past two decades, resulting in sustainable increases in grain output. This research employs remote sensing data to examine the spatial–temporal pattern and vulnerability of newly increased cultivated land expansion in Northeast China and its potential impact on food security.

Land expropriation has always been a hot spot of social conflicts. The land expropriation policy of Merging Villages and Living Together (MVLT) in rural areas has intensified conflicts due to insufficient financial compensation and “demolishing old houses before building new ones”.

Erosive rainfall results in the loss of both soil and nutrients, which indirectly triggers soil deterioration and a reduction in land productivity. However, how rainfall affects runoff, soil erosion, and nutrient loss under different crop rotation patterns and topographic factors remains unclear. This experiment observed nine runoff-erosion plots on the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) from 2019 to 2020 to determine the effects of crop type, rotation pattern, and slope gradient and length on runoff, soil erosion, and nutrient loss.

Spatio-temporal changes in cultivated land have a profound impact on food security and sustainable development. However, existing studies on spatio-temporal changes in cultivated land mostly focus on single factors, for instance quantity, quality and ecology, that cannot comprehensively reflect the changes in total production capacity and the sustainability of cultivated land.

Soil erosion is a global environmental problem and a pervasive form of land degradation that threatens land productivity and food and water security. Some of the biggest sources of sediment in catchments are cultivated and abandoned lands. However, the abandonment of cultivated fields is not well-researched. Our study assesses the level of degradation in cultivated and abandoned lands using a case study in South Africa. We answer three main questions: (1) What is the extent of crop field degradation on used, partly used, and abandoned fields?

In the context of tax sharing reform and land reform during the 1990s, local governments in China relied heavily on land finance. Local governments have fierce competition in attracting investment, omitting the development of green economy. Based on the data of industrial land sales and carbon dioxide emissions, this study constructed the panel data of 196 cities in China from 2007 to 2017 and analyzed the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of urban industrial land price distortion and carbon emission intensity.

Increasing farmers’ income has always been the core task of China’s land reform. In 2017, a nationwide pilot project on the use of collective construction land for the construction of rental housing was launched. This study employed the synthetic difference-in-differences method to examine whether the reform contributed to the growth of farmers’ property income.

The withdrawal of rural residential land-use rights is a major initiative in China’s current rural land reform, and it is of great importance in promoting the rural revitalization and urbanization strategy. The Chinese government encourages farmers to withdraw from their residential bases in an orderly manner to effectively revitalize land resources. The study aimed to explore the key factors that influenced the decision of farmers to withdraw from their rural residential lands in different contexts and proposed suggestions for related policy reforms.

In this article, we contextualise, describe and analyse the last attempt at land reform in Spain—the one passed by the Autonomous Parliament of Andalusia in 1984. The Andalusians had passed their Statute of Autonomy by referendum in 1981, incorporating the mandate to carry out an agrarian reform that would boost the rural economy, generate employment and balance the agricultural structure of this region in Southern Spain, peripheral to both national and European centres of power.

The agricultural land use transition (ALUT) assessment can be a prominent tool for comprehensively implementing suitable agricultural land use and agricultural development in Senegal. Based on remote sensing and survey data, this investigation aimed to simultaneously assess the geographical dispersion of ALUT and its probable mechanisms and determine the agricultural land functions in the Thiès region. Through ArcGIS and ENVI software, the remote sensing data of 2000, 2010, and 2020, the transfer matrix method and a spatial index calculation were used to characterize the ALUT.

Land is the key asset in the agricultural sector and hence land policy is one of the key elements that determine whether SDGs are achieved in developing counties or not. In developing countries, land titling programs have been seen as a strategy for addressing SDGs. Even though the government of Ethiopia launched the rural land registration and certification program (LRCP) to secure the land rights of rural households in 1998, currently, there are limited empirical studies to examine the contribution of LRCP in addressing sustainable development goals (SDGs).