Municipalities worldwide are confronted with the need to take long-term decisions about ageing water infrastructure in the face of unpredictable future developments. Previous studies on long-term decision making have proposed solutions targeted at the domain of either politics or planning. This study combines insights from the domains of policy, politics, and planning by using the Multiple Streams Framework to explain what enables municipalities to take forward-looking investment decisions.

The first occurrence of wheat blast in Bangladesh was confirmed in wheat (Triticum aestivum) fields in February 2016 and re-occurred in the subsequent years. This study explores the potential of alternative use of current wheat land as a strategy to combat the disease. Economically feasible alternative crops would need to be cultivated in the current wheat area by implementing a potential ‘wheat holiday’ – that is discontinuing wheat cultivation for a few years – be it in the 10 blast affected districts, in blast vulnerable districts or the entire country.

This paper addresses changes in land use and in the spatial distribution of land units and their influence on the soil erosion risk in two areas with a different geomorphology and a different historical and political development: an intensively-used lowland agricultural watershed in central Bohemia, Czech Republic, and a partially hilly agricultural and wine-producing municipality in northern Austria.

Avoided ecological loss is an appropriate measure of conservation effectiveness, but challenging to measure because it requires consideration of counterfactual conditions. Land-use simulation is a well suited but underutilized tool in this regard. As a case study for the application of land-use simulation to assess the impact of protected areas, we present a scenario analysis exploring conservation options in Canada’s western boreal forest.

Does ownership status of agricultural land determine farmers’ soil use behaviour? Why (not)? We investigate this old question using multiple methods and data. We apply econometric analysis to plot-level data to determine whether planting decisions differ between rented and owned plots. In addition, we analyse interviews with Austrian farmers with the aim of explaining (a lack of) differences. We find a very small influence of tenancy on crop choice in the quantitative part of the study, and qualify these findings in the qualitative part.

Whereas ecosystem service research is increasingly being promoted in science and policy, the utilisation of ecosystem services knowledge remains largely underexplored for regional ecosystem management. To overcome the mere generation of knowledge and contribute to decision-making, scientists are facing the challenge of articulating specific implications of the ecosystem service approach for practical land use management.

Evidence-based policy guidance necessary for addressing mixed outcomes of community-based rangeland management (CBRM) is limited, dominated by case studies, and lacking coverage of diverse ecological settings. In remedy, we studied 65 traditional neighborhoods and 77 formally-organized CBRM groups across four ecological zones and investigated how and when CBRM obtains greater social outcomes than non-CBRM neighborhoods.

This article discusses different issues pertaining gender and land governance with focus to access and control of land by rural women and how this affects their resilience in G5-Sahel region- Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Mauritania. Findings show that land remains the property of men, customary chiefs, male members of the family who have the full control of land use; women continue to serve as servants of their husbands in the farming activities.

This paper shares findings from new research on gender and land in a pastoralist community in central- western Mongolia, with a complex structure of investment and operations in gold mining. The paper examines what has been learned from the research about people's coping strategies in the face of social and environmental change, specifically in the context of the development of mining since the transition from socialism and in a relatively isolated area.

This edition of Unasylva comes in the wake of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20,which, among other things, produced a document called The Future We Want. In it, world leaders renewed their commitment to sustainable development and stated that “the wide range of products and services that forests provide creates opportunities to address many of the most pressing sustainable development challenges”. Foresters should be pleased with these words because they indica te that forests are starting to get the recognition they deserve.

The critical role of forests in climate change mitigation and adaptation is now widely recognized. Forests contribute significantly to climate change mitigation through their carbon sink and carbon storage functions. They play an essential role in reducing vulnerabilities and enhancing adaptation of people and ecosystems to climate change and climate variability, the negative impacts of which are becoming increasingly evident in many parts of the world.

In the last 40 years, large areas of the Mau forest, the largest contiguous tropical montane forest in East Africa, have been cleared for agriculture. To date, there are no empirical data on how this land use change affects carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes from soil respiration and soil methane (CH4) fluxes. This study reports measured annual soil CO2 and CH4 fluxes from the native Mau forest and previously forested lands converted to smallholder grazing land, smallholder and commercial tea plantations and eucalyptus plan- tations.