Land governance highly affects rural communities’ well-being in landscapes where land and its access are contested. This includes sites with high land pressures from development, but also from conservation interventions. In fact, local people’s motivations for sustainably managing their resources is highly tied to their perceptions of security, trust and participation in land management regimes. Understanding these perceptions is essential to ensure the internal legitimacy and sustainability of conservation interventions, especially in areas where development changes are fast paced.

Land governance highly affects rural communities’ well-being in landscapes where land and its access are contested. This includes sites with high land pressures from development, but also from conservation interventions. In fact, local people’s motivations for sustainably managing their resources is highly tied to their perceptions of security, trust and participation in land management regimes. Understanding these perceptions is essential to ensure the internal legitimacy and sustainability of conservation interventions, especially in areas where development changes are fast paced.

Land degradation poses a major threat to agricultural production and food security in Ethiopia, and sustainable land management (SLM) is key in dealing with its adverse impacts. This paper examines the covariates that shape rural livelihood diversification and examines their effects on the intensity of adoption of SLM practices. Household-level data were collected in 2017 from 270 households in three drought-prone watersheds located in northwestern Ethiopia. We used the Herfindahl–Simpson diversity index to explore the extent of livelihood diversification.

Food security is the basis of social stability and development. Maintaining sufficient amounts of arable land is essential for China’s food security. In this paper, we consider the relationship between arable land demand to grain demand and production capacity. The changes in national population, grain production, and consumption from 2000 to 2015 are analyzed. Then, we forecast the respective possible changes in the future and accordingly forecast the arable land demand in different possible situations.

Effective ownership, management and access to land are central for sustainable development and can impact significantly on the opportunities for local enterprise. In 1998, Scotland’s Land Reform Policy Group concluded that ‘Land reform is needed on the grounds of fairness and to secure the public good’ Consequently, Scotland has introduced various schemes that facilitate or compel the transfer of land from an existing landowner to a community body.

Programs that seek to increase women’s participation in marketing activities related to the principal household economic activity must involve men if they are to be successful. In this paper we analyze take-up of a project that sought to increase women’s involvement in sugarcane marketing and sales by encouraging the registration of a sugarcane block contract in the wife’s name. We find that men who are more educated and live in households with higher wealth and expenditures are more likely to agree to the registration.