Scattered trees are declining rapidly on Australian farms, a process that threatens landscape sustainability. Addressing this decline requires, in part, understanding how landholders perceive and manage scattered trees. We explored this via a quantitative survey of landholders in the Lachlan catchment of New South Wales. Although landholders are typically aware that scattered trees are declining more rapidly than other trees on the land they manage, they are less likely to actively encourage their regeneration compared to other trees.

The existing legal framework for water resources management in Guatemala is obsolete, inconsistent and not enforced. To bridge the gap, many indigenous and non-indigenous communities throughout the country successfully regulate water use through oral or written bylaws. This paper classifies the rules and practices adopted by local communities in order to define their scope and anticipate options to recognize customary water rights in future statutory legislation, as well as under the current legal regime, consistently with the public interest.

Key trends in water legislation include: attraction of water resources into the public domain; limitations on governmental authority to allocate water resources; controlled trading of water rights; the “greening” of water laws; capturing the land–water connection; and ensuring user participation in decision making and implementation.