This research explores the intersection between the various federal and state forestry incentive programs and the adoption of sustainable forestry practices on non-industrial private forest (NIPF) lands in the US. The qualitative research reported here draws upon a series of eight focus groups of NIPF landowners (two each in Minnesota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina).

The paper deals with analyses and propositions for adaptive governance of an alpine (A) and an Ethiopian (B) agropastoral system with common-pool pastures. Sustainability can be enhanced by augmenting (i) the ecological and social capitals in relation to costs and (ii) the resilience or adaptive capacity. In (A), a multifunctional agriculture appears to maintain the ecological capital providing many ecosystem services. In (B), the ecological capital can be increased by reversing the trend towards land degradation.

Land degradation is recognized as one of the major threats to the buffer zones of protected areas (PAs) in Vietnam. In particular, the expansion of land degradation into the PAs is exerting pressure on biodiversity conservation efforts. This degradation is partially the result of mismanagement: the utilization of the land is often unmatched with the inherent suitability of the land. Identification of the spatial distribution of suitable areas for cropland is essential for sustainable land-use recommendation.

In recent years it has become clear that climate change is an inevitable process. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the expectation is that climate change will have an especially negative impact, not only a result of projected warming and rainfall deficits, but also because of the vulnerability of the population. The impact upon food security will be of great significance, and may be defined as being composed of three components: availability, access, and utilization.

This study examined environmental and socioeconomic outcomes of a water project in rural Bolivia, and sought insights on how and why its planning was so flawed. The project destroyed an ancient, sustainable irrigation system, and replaced it with one that provides insufficient and diminishing quantities of water to many fewer people, appears to be causing land degradation and groundwater depletion, and has fueled conflicts.

This paper presents the results of a sustainability impact assessment (SIA) of policy induced land use changes in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The regional problems include rapid expansions of urban areas, due to high population pressure, and the conversion of paddy fields and forests into settlements. The objective of this study was to assess the impacts of two land use policies on social, economic, and environmental Land Use Functions (LUFs) in Yogyakarta.

A farmer-managed, agroenvironmental transformation has occurred over the past three decades in the West African Sahel, enabling both land rehabilitation and agricultural intensification to support a dense and growing population. This paper traces the technical and institutional innovations, their impacts, and lessons learned from two successful examples. The first is the story of the improvement and replication of indigenous soil and water conservation practices across the Central Plateau of Burkina Faso.

Agriculture and climate change are inextricably linked. Agriculture is part of the climate change problem, contributing about 13.5 percent of annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (with forestry contributing an additional 19 percent), compared with 13.1 percent from transportation. Agriculture is, however, also part of the solution, offering promising opportunities for mitigating GHG emissions through carbon sequestration, soil and land use management, and biomass production.

Throughout the history of the world, the best-orchestrated and publicly cohesive reforestation event occurred in South Korea. One of the best-known causes for such a success was the leadership of the government at that time, in particular the president Park Chung Hee. However, from forestry point of view, it evolved from Songgye, a traditional method of forest management evolved in late Choson Dynasty of Korea in reaction to rapid privatization of national forests by the elite class and government officials.

Social context as more or less neglected field of sustainable development is crucial for the implementation of forest management measures. We can consider it as a basis to cope with (changing) social structure characteristics. Rationalisation of public services, which we face when coping with economic crisis, might take this into consideration. The Forest Service network serves as a scanner of needs in their social context. It is also a respondent to local specifics in the form of forest management measures.