This study analyzed the influence of government policy and tenure issues on farm and village forest use practices in Ekiti State, Nigeria. Three rural communities that were still far from urban influence were selected from each of the 16 local government areas of the state. In each community, 20 household heads were selected and interviewed with the aid of a semi-structured matrix. The interviews aimed at the determination of respondents' socioeconomic status, awareness and belief in the effectiveness or otherwise of the forest laws and regulations, land use, tenure and property rights.

Land tenure relations have both social and environmental implications, ranging from potential power issues to land stewardship. Drawing upon survey data of landowners collected in the Great Lakes Basin of the U.S., this study builds upon existing research by examining absentee landlords of agricultural land—a vastly understudied but growing category of landowners.

In China, rural land is collectively owned at the village level. Village officials usually have the power to reallocate land property across families on an ongoing basis due to demographic changes in the village. Realizing that frequent land reallocation and abusive land requisition will undermine economic productivity as well as social stability, the “Rural Land Contract Law” passed in 2002 explicitly reads that farmland tenure security must be maintained for at least 30 years since the last nationwide reallocation in 1998.

In Ethiopia, farmers’ adoption and continued use of introduced land management technologies have not been widespread to reduce soil erosion and soil fertility depletion to an acceptable level. An important set of factors in farmers’ use of improved agricultural technologies is generally known to be their possession of livelihood assets. This study examines the influence of ownership of livelihood assets in farmers’ decisions to use cattle manure as land improvement technology, which is currently being promoted by Ethiopia’s agricultural extension system.

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.

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.

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.