This document focuses on African compendium of environment statistics 1991. The topics covered in this edition include population density, land use, irrigation, round wood production, agro climatologically conditions, urbanization and disasters related to the environment.

The first Meeting of the Advisory Board on Population, Agriculture and Environment was held in the United Nations Conference Center (UNCC), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 20-21 September 1999. The Meeting was formally opened by Ms. P. K. Makinwa Adebusoye, Director of the Food Security and Sustainable Development Division of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

This document focuses on African compendium of environment statistics. This is the first edition of the African Compendium of Environment Statistics. It is in many ways experimental and covers a limited range of topics but it is intended that future editions will cover a wider range of data and will include more comment and analysis. Environment statistics is a relatively new branch of statistics and very few African countries have yet started systematic data collection or have any statisticians trained in this branch.

The Social License Platform (SLP) matches businesses with the services and expertise they need to ensure that investments in agricultural land create growth opportunities for both business and local communities, while respecting the land rights of the communities that use the land.

Landscope is a system for measuring tenure risk, a term created to describe the financial risk associated with local opposition to a real asset. This kind of opposition to investments is very common across Africa, Asia and Latin America, often causing significant financial losses and operational headaches. It applies a new approach to analysing geospatial data about social, environmental and political issues that is designed to help companies and investors in emerging and frontier markets to prepare a proper assessment of tenure risk at project, supply chain or portfolio level.

Mapping ecosystem services (ES) increases the awareness of natural capital value, leading to building sustainability into decision-making processes. Recently, many techniques to assess the value of ES delivered by different scenarios of land use/land cover (LULC) are available, thus becoming important practices in mapping to support the land use planning process. The spatial analysis of the biophysical ES distribution allows a better comprehension of the environmental and social implications of planning, especially when ES concerns the management of risk (e.g., erosion, pollution).

China’s $1 trillion One Belt, One Road (OBOR) infrastructure project has significant landscape, socio-economic, and political implications in recipient countries. To date, investigation has focused on Chinese motivation and plans rather than OBOR impact in host nations. This paper examines the programme from the perspective of two Central Asian states—Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan—that are at the heart of OBOR.

This paper presents a conceptual model of land as a coupled human–environment system. Land use and land cover are incorporated as elements of the human and environment system respectively. Drivers and associated processes that influence land use, land cover, and land system dynamics are incorporated within a set of sub-systems. The model includes consideration of driving sub-systems as a set of capital funds and flows, and how these are influenced by linkages between processes in the human (socio-economic) and environment systems and sub-systems.

The objective of this study was to examine whether the coupling of a land-use change (LUC) model with a carbon-stock accounting approach and participatory procedures can be beneficial in a data-limited environment to derive implications for environmental management. Stakeholder-based LUC scenarios referring to different storylines of agricultural intensification and reforestation were simulated to explore their impact on above-ground carbon (AGC) for a period of twenty years (2009–2029). The watershed of Mae Sa Mai, Northern Thailand was used as a case study for this purpose.

Complex couplings and feedback among climate, fire, and herbivory drive short- and long-term patterns of land cover change (LCC) in savanna ecosystems. However, understanding of spatial and temporal LCC patterns in these environments is limited, particularly for semi-arid regions transitional between arid and more mesic climates.

From a Mongolian ‘super mine’ to China’s One Belt One Road, rapid infrastructural development is reforging Central Asia as an economic pivot of the future. Such development offers enticing economic benefits, but threatens fragile environments and local livelihoods. Due to the weakness of the state, the emphasis will be on citizens to hold developers accountable to their social and environmental pledges. Reports of political elites influencing the demands of popular protests call into question the ability of citizens to fulfil this function.

Environmental conservation has developed significantly in China over the past 20 years, including more collaborative approaches and recent advances in establishing a national parks system. This study reviews the development of protected areas in the headwaters of the Yangtze River, drawing lessons from experiences of community development and co-management approaches. Community engagement and participation in developing localized plans for natural resource utilization and conservation have been critical features of successful ventures.