This study investigated the implications of large-scale land concessions in the Red River Delta, Vietnam, and Northeast Cambodia with regard to urban and agricultural frontiers, agrarian transitions, migration, and places from which the migrant workers originated.

Increasing global demand for natural rubber began in the mid-2000s and led to large-scale expansion of plantations in Laos until rubber latex prices declined greatly beginning in 2011. The expansion of rubber did not, however, occur uniformly across the country. While the north and central Laos experienced mostly local and smallholder plantations, rubber expansion in the south was dominated by transnational companies from Vietnam, China and Thailand through large-scale land concessions, often causing conflicts with local communities.

New approaches to collect in-situ data are needed to complement the high spatial (10 m) and temporal (5 d) resolution of Copernicus Sentinel satellite observations. Making sense of Sentinel observations requires high quality and timely in-situ data for training and validation. Classical ground truth collection is expensive, lacks scale, fails to exploit opportunities for automation, and is prone to sampling error.

Soil databases are very important for assessing ecosystem services at different administrative levels (e.g., state, region etc.). Soil databases provide information about numerous soil properties, including soil inorganic carbon (SIC), which is a naturally occurring liming material that regulates soil pH and performs other key functions related to all four recognized ecosystem services (e.g., provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting services). However, the ecosystem services value, or “true value,” of SIC is not recognized in the current land market.

Agricultural land conversion (ALC) is an incentive-driven process. In this paper, we further investigate the inter-relationship between land economic value (LEV) and ALC. To achieve this goal, we calculated the LEV for agricultural and non-agricultural (housing) uses in two areas of East Java, Indonesia. The first area represents peri-urban agriculture, which is facing rapid urbanization and experiencing a high rate of ALC. The second area represents rural agriculture, with zero ALC. Furthermore, we identified factors affecting LEV in both areas for both uses.

There is extensive scientific evidence that both adaptation and mitigation are essential to address the problem of climate change. However, there is still limited knowledge about the possibilities for exploiting the interrelationships between these measures in the design and implementation of climate change activities. In this paper, first the adaptation–mitigation dichotomy and definitions of adaptation and mitigation are discussed.

WEBSITE INTRODUCTION: This report presents a synthesis of the main findings from case studies carried out in six countries in Africa (Ghana, Sierra Leone, United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia) and Asia (Laos and Philippines). The findings were disseminated and discussed in multistakeholder initiatives at regional and country level. The report illustrates how poor rural women and men are affected differently by agricultural investments, and demonstrates that they may not benefit equally from emerging opportunities.

There has been a trend to encourage organic agriculture in response to improve global food security. This article investigated how organic agriculture contributed to food security of small land holders experiencing organic agriculture. It involved in-depth interview, focus group, and participatory observation from a purposive sample of thirty participants at San Sai and Muang Wa Villages, Luang Neua Sub-District, Doi Sa Ket District, Chiang Mai Province, the north of Thailand.

WEB INTRODUCTION: The literature on agricultural large-scale land acquisition in Myanmar is rather fragmented and consists mainly of case studies. While these provide key insights into particular stories, they often fail to identify the main patterns and trends at country level. To fill such gaps, this thematic study aims to present an updated synthesis of the genealogy, institutional complexity and the ins and outs of large-scale land acquisition processes for agricultural development in Myanmar.

This paper investigates how climate change strategies and resource conflicts are shaping each other in the Greater Aural region of western Cambodia. Agro-industrial projects linked to climate change goals are reshaping both social and ecological dynamics, by altering patterns of access to land and water resources as well as the nature of the resources themselves. Using a landscape perspective, we investigate these social and ecological changes occurring across space and time.

Agricultural large-scale land acquisition (LSLA) is a process that is currently not captured by land change models. We present a novel land change modeling approach that includes processes governing LSLAs and simulates their interactions with other land systems. LSLAs differ from other land change processes in two ways: (1) their changes affect hundreds to thousands of contiguous hectares at a time, far surpassing other land change processes, e.g., smallholder agriculture, and (2) as policy makers value LSLA as desirable or undesirable, their agency significantly affects LSLA occurrence.

Mainstream analysis of contemporary livelihood transformations and rural development in the upland regions of Southeast Asia has hitherto focused primarily on the role of agricultural commercialization and cash crops. This is reflected in policy narratives that conflate the fortunes of rural households to the expansion of a particular kind of entrepreneurial agriculture. In this article, we problematize the dynamics of economic and social change in the little-studied uplands of Chin State, Myanmar, against this policy backdrop.