ABSTRACTED FROM CHAPTER INTRODUCTION: In Cambodia, the notion of concession (sambathian) traces back to the French colonial period when concessions were introduced to allow for large scale management and exploitation of forest and fisheries resources and the development of agricultural land under plantations. Since their inception, concessions have been much more than a tool for natural resources management; they also function as a central instrument in power and governance systems. In this chapter we focus on forestry and land concessions.

Few things are more defining in a landscape compared to the absence or presence of trees, both in aesthetic and in functional terms. At the same time, tree cover has been profoundly affected by humans since ancient times. It is therefore not surprising that opinions about deforestation and colonization of landscapes by trees have always been strong. Although loss of forests is often lamented, there is also profound cultural affection for open landscapes including some that have been deforested in the past.

Land degradation is a large problem worldwide, especially in agricultural areas. Between 1-6 billion ha of land worldwide is affected by land degradation. With an increasing world population, more food production is needed and, therefore, more land is converted into agricultural areas. This conversion of land to agricultural areas, in turn, leads to more land degradation. Some common forms of land degradation are desertification, salinization and soil erosion by water. The negative effects of soil erosion have been recognized for a long time.

Land is a non-renewable resource with limited availability and, therefore, a very important issue is the preservation of useful properties of land and comprehensive and sustainable land use. The process of land and soil degradation (decline of properties) leading to the formation of degraded land have been observed due to the influence of various economic activities and environmental conditions.

Land is a non-renewable resource with a limited access and therefore a wholesome and sustainable use of land and maintenance of beneficial land properties are very important. Economic activity always has been the main propulsion of use of land resource. With global economic growth, the intensity of use of land resource as a main resource has only increased. Soil is one of the most important components of land, because it provides biodiversity of the land and functioning of ecosystems.

The Kalu Ganga Basin in Sri Lanka is generally flooded once a year. A network of low-lying lands acts as natural retention and storage that captures floodwater, minimizing damage. An increase in the flood frequency has been observed in recent years. It is commonly perceived that this increase is caused by a rise in the frequency and severity of ‘very wet’ precipitation events. We conclude that land-use changes may have played a larger role in generating floods.

Degraded territory is land which has been damaged by either industrial and other activities or no activities at all to the stage where any economic activity is impossible unless special renewable measures are implemented. One of the aims of sustainable environment resolutions adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September, 2015 was ‘to restore degraded land and to aim to achieve having a world neutral to land degradation’. This is the first worldwide document where universal and comprehensive actions regarding land degradation are provided.

limatic and hydrological changes will likely be intensified in the Upper Blue Nile (UBN) basin by the effects of global warming. The extent of such effects for representative concentration pathways (RCP) climate scenarios is unknown. We evaluated projected changes in rainfall and evapotranspiration and related impacts on water availability in the UBN under the RCP4.5 scenario. We used dynamically downscaled outputs from six global circulation models (GCMs) with unprecedented spatial resolution for the UBN.

Soil erosion is a very critical form of land degradation resulting in the loss of soil nutrients and downstream sedimentation of water storages in the highlands of Ethiopia. As it is technically and financially impossible to conserve all landscapes affected by erosion, identification of priority areas of intervention is necessary. Spatially distributed erosion models can help map landscape susceptibility to erosion and identify high erosion risk areas.

Study region : In this study, 33 catchments across the Lower Mekong Basin in Southeast Asia are examined to detect historical changes in their hydrological response via a model-based methodology.Study focus : Intensive development over the past half century across Southeast Asia’s Lower Mekong Basin has inevitably affected natural resources. Large areas have been converted from forests for subsistence and commercial agriculture, and urban development. We implement an innovative approach to screen hydrologic data for detecting impacts of such large-scale changes on hydrological response.

Socio-economic development, public safety of local communities and environmental protection are the major pillars of the concept of sustainable development of rural areas in Europe. Land consolidation is a complex and time-consuming undertaking, which requires high expenditures, yet it plays an important role in the policy of sustainable and multi-functional development. The rapid climate change observed in recent years, resulting in a number of unusual weather conditions, has also had an effect on the directions of land consolidation development.

It is widely known that ecological and socioeconomic functions of the land are the basis for social and economic well-being. Despite this fact, land is still a relatively neglected natural resource, which can be concluded by analyzing the pressures on the land and the lack of systematic monitoring, which involves considering the situation and defining the program for its protection.