Researchers and policy makers are increasingly looking at the drivers of forest recovery (or forest transition) for inspiration in their search for win-win solutions to deforestation. However, causal generalizations regarding forest transitions are subject to significant problems. First, forest transition theory (FTT), at least in its simplest renditions, tends to emphasize socially benign processes and fails to pay sufficient attention to the causal role—and social impacts—of negative (push) dynamics.

Ethiopia has implemented one of the largest, fastest and least expensive land registration and certification reforms in Africa. While there is evidence that this ‘first-stage’ land registration has had positive effects in terms of increased investment, land productivity and land rental market activities, the government is now piloting another round of land registration and certification that involves technically advanced land survey methods and computer registration.

The first occurrence of wheat blast in Bangladesh was confirmed in wheat (Triticum aestivum) fields in February 2016 and re-occurred in the subsequent years. This study explores the potential of alternative use of current wheat land as a strategy to combat the disease. Economically feasible alternative crops would need to be cultivated in the current wheat area by implementing a potential ‘wheat holiday’ – that is discontinuing wheat cultivation for a few years – be it in the 10 blast affected districts, in blast vulnerable districts or the entire country.

The scholarly debate around ‘global land grabbing’ is advancing theoretically, methodologically and empirically. This study contributes to these ongoing efforts by investigating a set of ‘small-scale land acquisitions’ in the context of a recent boom in banana plantation investments in Luang Namtha Province, Laos. In relation to the actors, scales and processes involved, the banana acquisitions differ from the state-granted large-scale land acquisitions dominating the literature on ‘land grabbing’ in Laos.

This paper addresses changes in land use and in the spatial distribution of land units and their influence on the soil erosion risk in two areas with a different geomorphology and a different historical and political development: an intensively-used lowland agricultural watershed in central Bohemia, Czech Republic, and a partially hilly agricultural and wine-producing municipality in northern Austria.

The ecosystem services concept is increasingly gaining momentum in land-use policies and landscape planning. Yet, cultural ecosystem services often lack proper assessments. With this study, we use novel methodological approaches to map the cultural ecosystem service landscape aesthetics for its enhanced consideration in land-use policies. Our study uses expert-based participatory mapping and crowd-sourced (social media) photo data to examine the spatial distribution of landscape aesthetics in the Province of Barcelona, Catalonia.

Landscapes changes are a result of a wide range of interactions between actors and driving forces (DFs). In this study, we quantify the contribution of different types of DFs to processes of land change in the Northern Coast of São Paulo State (NCSP), Brazil, an important region for tourism and the energy sector. We analysed the relationship between DFs and the processes of land change from 1985 to 2000 and from 2000 to 2015 with partial least squares path modelling.

This article explores the potential of a farm technology to simultaneously improve farm efficiency and provide wider environmental and social benefits. Identifying these ‘win-win-win’ strategies and encouraging their widespread adoption is critical to achieve sustainable intensification. Using a nationally representative sample of 296 Irish dairy farms from 2015, propensity score matching is applied to measure the impact of milk recording on a broad set of farm sustainability indicators.

Nigeria's once thriving plantation economy has suffered under decades of state neglect and political and civil turmoil. Since Nigeria's return to civilian rule in 1999, in a bid to modernize its ailing agricultural economy, most of its defunct plantations were privatized and large new areas of land were allocated to ‘high-capacity’ agricultural investors.

Based on a multilevel and quantile hedonic analysis regarding the local public bus system and the prices of residential properties in Cardiff, Wales, we find strong evidence to support two research hypotheses: (a) the number of bus stops within walking distance (300–1500m) to a property is positively associated with the property's observed sale price, and (b) properties of higher market prices, compared with their cheaper counterparts, tend to benefit more from spatial proximity to the bus stop locations.

Land tenure remains one of the most critical factors determining equity under REDD+, as we demonstrated through our previous article, ‘Roots of inequity: how the implementation of REDD+ reinforces past injustices”. Githiru responded to this paper, with some apparent challenges to both the empirical basis and theoretical arguments, that we had put forward.

Mobilising under-utilised low carbon (ULC) land for future agricultural expansion helps minimising further carbon stock loss. This study examined the regency cases in Kalimantan, a carbon loss hotspot, to understand the key factors for mobilising ULC land via narrative interviews with a range of land-use actors and complementary desktop analyses.