With current rates of land degradation reaching ten to twelve million ha per year, there is an urgent need to scale up and out successful, profitable and resource-efficient sustainable land management practices to maintain the health and resilience of the land that humans depend on. As much as 500 million out of two billion ha of degraded land, mainly in developing countries, have restoration potential, offering an immediate target for restoration and rehabilitation initiatives.1 In the past, piecemeal approaches to achieving sustainable land management have had limited impact.

The most important area of the common agricultural policy of the European Union (EU) is the sustainable development of rural territories. This issue is the priority for EU countries due to a number of factors (migration of rural population, low incomes in rural areas, deterioration of quality of soils and waters, loss of biodiversity, etc.) that negatively affect the development of rural areas. The experience of the EU in implementing the policy supporting rural development was analyzed, as well as change of goals and priorities of this policy within different programme periods.

Land consolidation – an important stage of agricultural and rural development. This is a significant land use planning process, when private, municipal and state land parcels located in rural areas are redistributed in a complex way, their boundaries and location are changed by the prepared land consolidation project of a certain area. Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the benefits of land consolidation to farm structure and productivity, restructuring of rural areas and development, but there is not enough emphasis on the benefits of our environment, landscape and biodiversity.

The global economic growth results in the increase of intensity of land use, which is one of the main natural resources. The degradation processes of land and soil occur as a result of economic activities and natural conditions creating degraded territories. Restoration of degraded territories and degradation risk prevention is an important task of each local government for sustainable development of a territory. It is determined by international and national legislation.

Remote sensing and geospatial technologies find tremendous application in rapid spatial and temporal monitoring as well as assessment of tropical forest resources and hence in formulation of concrete policy

This assessment report of strategies for the Montpellier case study presents three territorial levels: the Agglomeration, three communes in the context of agriculture dynamics and one commune which is involved in a flood protection plan. This study follows the general framework of the module 3 in the PLUREL project, which proposes to use criteria to assess the strategies and describe the regional level of performance in front of issues or challenges located in the urban fringe.

The ICMM has developed 20 tools to support mining and metals companies in promoting sustainable community development. These tools will also be useful to companies involved in other sectors. They offer practical guidance for every stage of the mining process from exploration, construction and operations, to decommissioning, closure and ultimately, the post-closure environment.These tools are accompanied by easy-to-use, step-by-step route maps, to help:

• Foster constructive working relationships between communities, companies and governments

This note is part of an Action Notes series and provides guidance for governments and companies on negotiating, designing, and implementing community development agreements with local communities in ways that benefit them.

This document gathers a number of case studies on the use and application of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT) in a wide range of projects, and highlights successes in these experiences. For each project, it includes a description of and information on the approach adopted, and provides additonal resources for stakeholders interested in learning more about these projects.