The aim of this article is to analyze the effectiveness of land-use policy in Mexico City in controlling the expansion of informal human settlements in peri-urban zones of high ecological value. It is argued that Mexico City's land-use policy has been reactive and internally inconsistent, failing to take informal settlements into account, has not offered the poor access to housing with adequate services and greater security in terms of land tenure, and lacks the necessary financial resources and institutional capabilities for providing solutions to these problems.

In article is devoted to problems of land relations in agriculture, which provides an analysis of the nature this dynamics in recent decades, assess the rationality of land use in the context of globalization and offers an innovative solution for forming a model of land relations in agriculture. The authors is a traced the cyclic processes in the history of the development of land and property relations, assesses the present stage of the next cycle and are historical parallels in socio-economic development.

Forest certification has emerged as a marketing tool for linking the good forest management practices with the environmentally conscious consumers. Its genesis can be attributed to the society’s concern for the social and environmental significance of forests. Forest management certification when coupled with the chain-of-custody certification; then, the supply chain stages for such forest products can carry an ecolabel. Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) are of socio-economic and cultural importance for the forest dwelling communities, particularly for the tropical countries like India.

Protected areas (PAs) are key elements for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services. Brazil has the largest PA system in the world, covering approximately 220 million ha. This system expanded rapidly in the mid‐1990s to the mid‐2000s. Recent events in Brazil, however, have led to an increase in PA downgrading, downsizing, and degazettement (PADDD). Does this reflect a shift in the country's PA policy? We analyzed the occurrence, frequency, magnitude, type, spatial distribution, and causes of changes in PA boundaries and categories in Brazil.

As China becomes increasingly influential in international affairs, it is important to understand the unique characteristics of Chinese environmental values and policy processes. This is especially true given the rate and scale of China’s environmental impacts on natural ecosystems from local to international levels. Currently, however, Chinese conservation values, policies and practices are not well-integrated.

Irrigation plays a fundamental role in world food provision but, to date, it has performed below expectations in Sub-Saharan Africa. The present study assesses and diagnoses the performance of 22 small and medium size community-managed irrigation schemes, mainly devoted to rice production, in different locations along the Mauritanian banks of the Lower Senegal River.

Climate change is projected to have serious environmental, economic, and social impacts on Ghana, particularly on rural farmers whose livelihoods depend largely on rainfall. The extent of these impacts depends largely on awareness and the level of adaptation in response to climate change. This study examines the perception of farmers in Sekyedumase district of Ashanti region of Ghana on climate change and analyzes farmers’ adaptation responses to climate change. A hundred and eighty farming households were interviewed in February and October 2009.