European agri-environmental schemes are being criticised for reinforcing rather than negating an opposition between agricultural production and environmental production, and for assuming instead of securing a public willingness to pay for agri-environmental change. This paper explores if a regionalisation of agri-environmental governance may contribute to overcome these criticisms. The paper empirically explores three regionalised agri-environmental schemes from Flanders, Belgium, with the use of 40 qualitative interviews with farmers and other relevant stakeholders.

The values ascribed to industrial tree plantations are often controversial. Hence knowledge of their perceived impacts is important for improving their integration in rural landscapes. In 2016 we conducted household surveys with 606 respondents living in villages adjacent to acacia, teak and pine plantations across three islands in Indonesia (Java, Borneo, Sumatra). Results show that perceptions toward pine and teak plantations tend to differ from those toward acacia pulpwood plantations in several ways.

An urgent need to stop degradation is frequently cited as support for climate mitigation efforts involving forests. However, lessons learnt from social science research on degradation narratives are not taken into consideration. This creates a risk of problematic degradation narratives being used to legitimise forest carbon projects. This study examined a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) forest plantation in Uganda, where incomplete and partly contradictory evidence on land use change was interpreted in a way that overemphasised degradation.