Since around 2011 pilot projects to innovate land tenure documentation are being implemented in various countries in the global south in order to address the shortcomings of formal land registration. A longer-term question, underlying the present study, is how these innovations relate in the longer run to existing institutional arrangements of land governance in the respective context of implementation. Guided by this more general question, we discuss in this paper first the characteristics for 6 of these approaches.

Between 1940 and 2000, nearly 10 million housing units were constructed throughout California. This increased interaction between human and natural communities creates a number of significant socio-ecological challenges. Here we present a novel spatially explicit model that allows better characterization of the extent and intensity of future housing settlements using three development scenarios between 2000 and 2050. We estimate that California's exurban land classes will replace nearly 12 million acres of wild and agricultural lands.

While strengthening women’s land rights is increasingly on national and international agendas, there is little consensus on how to understand women’s tenure security. Analyses of women’s land rights often use very different definitions of land rights, from formal ownership to women’s management of plots allocated to them by their husbands. This paper identifies aspects of women’s tenure that should be included in indicators. It then provides a conceptual framework to identify the various dimensions of women’s land tenure security and the myriad factors that may influence it.

The viability of the climate pledges made by Brazil at the COP21 in Paris, 2015, heavily depends on the success of the country policies related to forest governance. Particularly, there are high expectations that the enforcement of the Brazilian Forest Code (BFC) will drive large-scale forest recovery and carbon mitigation. In this study, we quantified the potential role that ongoing forest regeneration may play in offsetting deficits from private properties with less vegetation cover than determined by the BFC, considering different law implementation settings.

Pervasive food insecurity and poverty in much of the world drives vulnerable populations to harvest natural resources as a means of generating income and meeting other household needs. Wild edible plants (WEPs) are a particularly common and effective coping strategy used to increase socio-ecological resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa where agricultural systems are often sensitive to environmental perturbations and instability. WEPs are collected across the landscape, from agricultural areas to government-managed hilltops with varying degrees of success and legality.

For decades, many cities have introduced densification policy objectives to stop urban sprawl or to promote efficient use of natural resources. In the urban housing sector, however, densification projects often intensify social challenges. Due to rising rents after modernization of existing housing stocks as a consequence of densification, low-income tenants are forced to leave their apartments. Risks of social exclusion and segregation increase simultaneously.

This research develops the novel concept of an economic ecosystem service sustainability index from the perspective of total income theory, and presents its empirical application at the spatial unit scale of the agroforestry farm. This paper compares the results accrued from applying the refined standard System of National Accounts (rSNA) and the authors’ Agroforestry Accounting System (AAS).

The rapid expansion of hybrid maize in the uplands of northern Laos is viewed by the government as meeting policy aims related to green economic development. Yet, growing evidence of negative consequences of maize expansion are emerging.

The present study describes a methodology to quantify the gross soil nitrogen balance (SNB) for agricultural land use in the Tagus Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (TVZ) between 1989 and 2016, including effects of implementation of the EC Nitrates Directive (ND, 91/676/EEC) since 2004. The study uses decadal information from National Agricultural Census at parish level and is supported by a Geographical Information System (GIS). The average SNB of the TVZ decreased significantly (p 

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of irrigation delivery services and agricultural extension services on crop choice in southern Tajikistan. This analysis is motivated by the government’s recent efforts to address the country’s severe malnutrition problem by supporting changes in irrigation service delivery and agronomy to increase diversity in agricultural production and consumption, in an environment where the cultivation of cotton had, until recently, been mandatory.

Farmland ownership fragmentation is one of the important drivers of land-use changes. It is a process that in its extreme form can essentially limit land management sustainability. Based on a typology of land degradation and its causes, this process is here classified for the first time as an underlying cause which through tenure insecurity causes land degradation in five types (water erosion, wind erosion, soil compaction, reduction of organic matter, and nutrient depletion).

The design of efficient Green Infrastructure —GI— systems is a key issue to achieve sustainable development city planning goals in the twenty-first century. This study’s main contribution is the identification of potential GI elements to better align the environmental, social and economic perspectives in the GI design by including information about the use, activities, preferences and presence of people. To achieve this, user generated content from Location Based Social Network —LBSN— Foursquare is used as a complementary data source.