Vietnam has seemingly been able to shortcut the forest transition (FT) by quickly moving to the reforestation phase. Provincial-level forest cover and socio-economic trends are, however, not necessarily compatible with a standard FT framework. This article compares forest cover change and associated policy reforms in two provinces. Bac Kan is one of the poorest provinces in Vietnam, and has, after years of deforestation and forest degradation, expanded its forest cover during the past two decades.

Tropical forests, and more concretely, the Amazon Basin and the Chocó-Darién, are highly affected by deforestation activities. Households are the main land-use decision-makers and are key agents for forest conservation and deforestation. Understanding the determinants of deforestation at the household level is critical for conservation policies and sustainable development.

Family forest owners (FFOs) own 48% of Sweden’s productive forest land and are responsible for 59% of the annual gross felling. They are thus important suppliers of raw materials to the forest industry and the energy sector. Environmental goals on the national and international level promote an increased use of renewable resources in order to replace fossil-based fuels, but since the current supply of forest products is already fully utilized by the industry, there is a need to find new types of biomass assortment.

Background and Objectives: Plantation forests remain a highly contested element of rural development. Successive reviews of large-scale plantations established under land concessions identify predominantly negative impacts on local farmers’ livelihoods. Although concession models of plantation development have been common in the global South, other models characterised by different forms of land tenure, labour arrangements, and plantation design have also emerged. The impacts of these models on the livelihoods of local farmers are likely to be more varied.

Research Highlights: Age structure was used to infer fire regimes in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve. Uneven-aged structures in stands dominated and co-dominated by pine and fir species, which are distributed according to an altitudinal gradient, indicated a regime of frequent, low-severity, and low-intensity fires. Background and Objectives: Age structure analyses have been used to infer natural and disrupted fire regimes when field-based descriptions of fires are scarce or unavailable.

Projects to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) are designed to reduce carbon emissions through avoided deforestation and degradation, and in many cases, to produce additional community and biodiversity conservation co-benefits. While these co-benefits can be significant, quantifying conservation impacts has been challenging, and most projects use simple species presence to demonstrate positive biodiversity impact.

Research Highlights: Past disturbances occurred naturally in primary forests in the Southern Carpathians. High- and moderate-severity disturbances shaped the present structure of these ecosystems, which regenerated successfully without forestry interventions. Background and Objectives: Windstorms and bark beetle outbreaks have recently affected large forest areas across the globe, causing concerns that these disturbances lie outside the range of natural variability of forest ecosystems.

Research Highlights: The informed decisions on land use require assessment of the impacts of these decisions on the supply of different ecosystem services. Background and Objectives: Scenario modeling can be used to provide harmonized and quantitative information on the impacts of various zoning decisions on the provision of various ecosystem services. In this study, we explored the effects of land-use zoning decisions on the provision of roundwood and energy wood, carbon stock of living tree components, berry yields, scenic beauty and recreation.

In densely populated areas, essential sources of ecosystem services are represented by green infrastructure, which includes trees outside forests (TOF) that, regardless of their cover extension, are found on agricultural or urban land. This research aims to assess landscape preference for TOF along an urban-rural-natural gradient in relation to different levels of landscape heterogeneity. Analyses are based on the integration of a visual choice experiment (360 respondents) with a GIS-based landscape analysis at regional scale in a Mediterranean region in Central Italy.

During land expropriation, it is difficult to form a real antagonistic relationship between farmers and the local Government due to disparities, which means the confrontations between them are difficult to administer. The confrontation between both parties could lead to the distortion of the farmers’ resisting logic, who are supposed to be in a vulnerable position. Hence, the farmers are not necessarily in a weak position; sometimes, they even have advantages compared with the local governments.

Kigali city authorities have recently adopted an in-kind compensation option to mitigate some patterns of spatial injustices, reflected in the displacement of expropriated real property owners towards urban outskirts, where they can afford new properties using the in-cash compensation they receive. This study assesses whether this form of compensation promotes a spatially just and inclusive urban (re)development.

In this study the involvement of the community during expropriation and the utilization of the compensation money of the expropriated farmers are investigated taking Bahir Dar and Debre Markos peri-urban areas as case studies. Survey research methods were applied for data collection. The data were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics. According to the results, there is high land tenure transformation in both study areas.