This is a Forest Management Plan posted on OpenLandContracts.org. It lists Timber (Wood) as the primary resource(s)

This is a Social Agreement posted on OpenLandContracts.org. It lists Timber (Wood) as the primary resource(s)

This is a Social Agreement posted on OpenLandContracts.org. It lists Timber (Wood) as the primary resource(s)

This is a Social Agreement posted on OpenLandContracts.org. It lists Timber (Wood) as the primary resource(s)

This is a Social Agreement posted on OpenLandContracts.org. It lists Timber (Wood) as the primary resource(s)

This is a Forest Management Plan posted on OpenLandContracts.org. It lists Timber (Wood) as the primary resource(s)

The current pressures on land are huge and expected to continue growing: there is rapidly escalating competition between the demand for land functions that provide food, water, and energy, and those services that support and regulate all life cycles on Earth.

The Congo Basin Forest Partnership aims to reconcile forest conservation with forest use. This article explains what a “policy network” of this sort can achieve and where its limits lie.

In rural areas of many developing countries fuelwood constitutes the only energy source – often with negative impacts on humans and the environment. Wise management and modern technology can guarantee a sustainable use of this valuable resource, as some examples from Latin America demonstrate.

Kenya is still largely agrarian with 80 percent of its population depending on agriculture for food, employment and income. The dilemma facing the country is that only 20 percent of the land is suited for agricultural production. A greater proportion of the country, however, consists of agroecologically less favoured areas (LFAs). Another dilemma in Kenya?s agricultural sector is that economic development impacts are not homogeneously spread even among the agriculturally favoured areas.

There is growing degradation in sylvo-pastoral lands that were originally under common property regimes, but over which the state now asserts ownership. User associations are being given the right to take charge of regulating how these areas are sustainably exploited by means of use agreements, and are proving an effective instrument in halting the degradation process.

Since 1996, the Centres for Agriculture in the Tropics and Subtropics of the Universities of Hohenheim and Göttingen and of Berlin's Humboldt University have organised a conference, the ''Tropentag'', once a year to present and discuss recent findings in research on agriculture and rural development. Other universities, like Kassel-Witzenhausen, have joined in, and the number of participants, papers and posters presented has more than doubled.