查看更多>>摘要：? 2021 Elsevier LtdThe Himalayan ecosystem has global significance for supporting unique and rich ecological and socio-cultural diversity as well as a range of ecosystem services important for the very survival of human beings. However, constant anthropogenic pressure, unsustainable developmental practices and climate change led to the transformation of irrational land-use practices that have seriously compromised the ecosystem productivity and livelihood of the mountain communities. Considering the above, integrated land use planning, effective land use policy and legislation is a key element to address unsustainable land-use practices in the Himalayan ecosystem. Realising the increasing trend of degradation of natural resources and associated livelihood challenges for rural communities, a comprehensive scientific framework was developed for improving the functionality of marginal degraded land. A total of twelve tree species used for a variety of purposes prioritised by local communities based on ecological, social and economic value were selected for plantation on marginal degraded land belonging to the village community. Significant improvement in survival rate, growth, and circumference of planted tree species was observed across the sites after ten years of the plantation. The plantation activities enhanced the net productivity of degraded landscape while increasing characteristics of soil leading to increment in water percolation, improve soil moisture and decreased runoff. Total biomass accumulated by tree species planted in three selected sites within the period significantly contributed to carbon sequestration thus reducing the adverse impact of changing climate. The provisioning services in the form of fuel, fodder, and grasses obtained from developed landscapes reduced the drudgery and workload of marginal communities. The study advocates interdisciplinary knowledge production, enrich social learning among stakeholders, improved understanding of current and future challenges associated with land-use practices and relevant policy implications for sustainable land management in the region.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2021 Elsevier LtdDry forests are among the most threatened ecosystems globally, due to agricultural expansion driven by the increasing demand for food, fibers, and energy in developed and emerging countries. Among these, the forests of the South American Gran Chaco are one of the global deforestation hotspots. The Argentine Dry Chaco has been the focus of several studies that assess the factors that drive forest conversion. However, these studies do not describe the causal relationships among these drivers and seldom use existing theory to select drivers. Here we employ a theory-driven approach to test the relative merits of alternative and complementary hypotheses to explain the drivers and mechanisms explaining the unequal spatial distribution of forest loss and maintenance in the Argentine Dry Chaco from 2000 to 2010. Using structural equation modeling, we quantified the direct and indirect effects of multiple drivers and compared the explanatory power and parsimony of these alternative hypotheses, i.e. the biophysical, infrastructure, socio-demographic, institutional, and the integration of them. For both forest loss and maintenance, the model containing infrastructural drivers had the best balance between parsimony and explanatory power. Integrated models, comprising a combination of drivers, had the highest explanatory power (R2 = 0.81 for forest maintenance, and R2 = 0.58 for forest loss). We show that biophysical constraints operate directly and indirectly: soil suitability had direct effects on forest cover maintenance, while precipitation affected it both directly and indirectly through influencing the institutional (land tenure) and infrastructure (road density). Indigenous communities positively affected forest maintenance both directly and indirectly mediated by non-private land tenure. Our results suggest that disentangling the structure of the relationships among drivers could increase our capacity for understanding and steering land-use change. Furthermore, policies for halting deforestation might increase their effectiveness by accounting for the mechanisms that underlie forest loss and maintenance.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2021 The AuthorsClimate smart farming requires food production to sit alongside practices which sequester greenhouse gas emissions. Given the requirement to meet net zero emissions by the middle of the century, agricultural policies are now seeking to embed climate smart approaches within future support schemes. Path dependency, the influence of past choices on decision making, has been found to constrain future growth pathways. We apply this concept within a survey of 2494 farmers in Scotland to understand their intentions towards uptake of two prominent climate smart approaches, namely forestry expansion and on-farm renewable energy. We employ a bivariate probit model to estimate the single and joint dependences of these two activities within a farm decision making framework. Factors such as succession planning, the level of agricultural diversification and risk seeking perceptions were found to be positively related to influencing uptake. However, the strongest predictors for uptake were past expansion of these activities and, conversely, a limiting factor for those who did not intend to increase activities. This provides some evidence that path dependencies will limit large scale adoption to meet a net zero target. We argue for a dual approach to intervention which differentiates between past adopters and those who are reluctant to adopt. More targetted support for these two cohorts would address these high level policy ambitions.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2020 Elsevier LtdThis study goes beyond the crisis-based understanding of spatial fix to consider a holistic exploration of capital accumulation and urban land development in association with a mega-event in China. Decoding the event-triggered land banking (tudi chubei) process in the (re)making of Expo Park, it shifts the focus of this land-based accumulation to pre-event relocation and post-event investment attraction. The contributions of this study are twofold. First, this study contributes to the mainstream literature by incorporating the place-based mega-event into the study of spatial fix. Spatial fix through mega-events is enacted through pre-Expo primary land development, which reshapes the built environment to articulate a “higher and better use,” followed by a post-Expo land disposition, which fixes investment to accomplish capital restructuring. Second, this study indicates that state entrepreneurialism offers a more accurate interpretation of the governance of land processes led by mega-events than urban entrepreneurialism, and enriches the literature on state entrepreneurialism by illuminating the ways in which capital accumulation is achieved through land development under this governance paradigm. In the pre-Expo phase, a state-owned urban development corporation (UDC) was established to take charge of land finance. An ad hoc quasi-government in proximity to the central state and on behalf of the municipal official mobilized administrative resources to aid land resumption—tailoring space to squeeze out inefficient accumulation modes. In the post-Expo phase, a restructured municipal state-owned enterprise (SOE) took over responsibilities for land disposition from the state-owned UDC and prioritized central state SOEs over other investors.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2021 Elsevier LtdLand consolidation (LC), as an effective instrument to relieve rural land issues and promote rural sustainability, has already attracted the attention of the Chinese government and academia. Some Chinese scholars have proposed strategies to promote the development of LC by investigating cases in European countries and comparing them with that in China. However, the introduction of LC in Europe as a whole and China has not been done systematically from a comparative perspective. This paper aims to offer a broader view of the development of LC in China and Europe and identify points for improvement based on the current Chinese political system and European experience. Given the special sociocultural background of Europe, it has been divided into Central, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe in the comparison and analysis. The comparison of LC, therefore, was conducted from the aspects of historical background, political will, legislation, procedure, and public participation. This is the first attempt to compare LC between Europe as a whole and China in literature. It identifies reasons behind the differences between China and Europe, and considers possible lessons that China might learn from the experience of LC in Europe. Based on these, the paper puts forward some countermeasures and suggestions for the development of LC in China.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2021 The AuthorsForest conversion for farming remains an issue of scientific and societal concern due to its growing impacts on biodiversity and climate change. Therefore, scientists and policymakers emphasise the urgent need to find a balance between forest conservation and agriculture. Meanwhile, across tropical Africa, subsistence farmers account for nearly two-thirds of forest conversion to farms annually. These farmers’ perceptions and experiences about forest conversion may offer alternative perspectives about the problem and how to tackle it. However, such viewpoints remain scanty in the sustainable forestry literature. This paper employs narrative policy analysis to disentangle the stories that underpin farming by forest-fringe communities (FFCs) in protected forests. The FFCs’ narratives were identified through fieldwork in 12 forest communities of Southwestern Ghana and juxtaposed with forest regulators and cocoa sector actors’ narrativization of forest conversion in Ghana. The results indicate that a combination of factors incite FFCs to farm in protected forests, but the perceived need to respond to food insecurity is the most crucial factor. In the absence of strong grassroots organisations, FFCs cannot convey this crucial need to the forest policy arena, leaving it largely unaddressed in forest policy. Thus, forest encroachment has become a tool for FFCs to resist forest conservation, and generally, as a means for their survival. The paper proposes food security corridors (FSCs) as an integrated landscape management option that can enable FFCs and other policy actors to negotiate and institute food security and conservation goalswithin communities trapped in blocks of forest reserves. The potential FSCs hold to overcome forest conversion for subsistence farming can be unleashed when governments, development partners invest to refine and pilot the concept. Overall, the paper contributes to the land-use conflict literature, showing how context-specific food insecurity can accelerate deforestation. Forestry sector actors need to guard against oversimplifying their assumptions about forest conversion in order to find pragmatic and sustainable solutions to the problem.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2021 Elsevier LtdAs the Earth enters the Anthropocene, the system complexity and site-specificity of dryland social-ecological systems (SESs) presents new challenges for realizing the target of land degradation neutrality (LDN) in drylands. The valuable local environmental and scientific knowledge (LESK) of dryland SESs is crucial for adaptive governance but remains scarce. Here, we proposed an analytical framework to understand the LESK in relation to the mechanisms of ecological policy-household interactions and ecological performance of resource systems. According to this framework, we explored LESK by linking land surface dynamics and investigations of policy and households in a typical dryland region, Minqin. We reported that ecological policy contributed to significant socio-ecological benefits, including increased water resources, land desertification reduction, and natural vegetation restoration. However, there exist conflicting aspects, demonstrated by the encroachment of agricultural land, which increases the land degradation risk of oasis. These results implied that top-down ecological policy and bottom-up household responses caused both positive and negative LDN outcomes, which can be attributed to collective and conflicted actions between the self-interest orientation of multiple stakeholders. By investigating households, we found that education-induced economic need was one of the major drivers for the conflicted actions on the policy of agricultural land reduction. Therefore, we proposed a series of adaptive measurements to balance short-term economic concerns and long-term LDN. This study also highlighted that navigated LESK should be considered for future sustainable management and ecosystem modeling.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2021 Elsevier LtdGrowth and expansion of urban areas often result in dramatic transformation of land use in cities in Ghana with implications for farming and food production, which is a major livelihood activity for some of the inhabitants. This study assessed the implications of urban growth on farming and food crop production in Bolgatanga Municipality using a mixed method research design. Household interview schedule and key informant interviews were employed in the collection of primary data. In addition, multi-temporal satellite data was used to analyze land use and land cover change in the Municipality. The findings revealed that urban growth, resulting from increase in population, residential and commercial developments, seem to engulf agricultural activities. There has been a dramatic expansion of built-up areas in the Municipality with adverse implications for farming and food production in the future. The study concludes that continuous unguided conversion of farmlands, woodland and shrubs into built-up areas in the Municipality is detrimental to farming and food production. The formulation and implementation of an urban planning policy, by the Municipal Assembly in conjunction with the Land Use and Spatial Planning Department and the Municipal Department of Agriculture, that incorporates zoning of fertile lands for farming purposes and encourages best farming practices is recommended.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2021 Elsevier LtdUnderstanding farmers’ preferences for efficiency and equity regarding different land use rights is necessary for the success of land reforms because economic efficiency with equity is the key distinguishing feature of China's land reforms. This paper presents a comparative analysis of farmers’ preferences for tenure security (a measure of efficiency) and distribution equality in two similar but distinct land use practices: reallocating physical farmland and reallocating forest monetary shares, both of which contradict government-imposed tenure individualization policies but have long co-existed in some parts of Southeast China. The analysis includes farmers’ self-interested as well as prosocial motivations. Data from 222 households, collected from five communities using surveys and a public good game, shows that farmers have a high preference for distribution equality over tenure security in both types of land reallocations. Using bivariate probit models, we find farmers’ preferences for reallocating land property rights are associated with their prosocial preferences, but the influence of prosocial preferences varies across reallocations. Moreover, the higher cost of implementing farmland reallocations contributes to farmers’ higher preference for tenure security in farmland reallocations than in forest shareholdings reallocations. The research provides empirical evidence of the influence of prosocial motivations on farmers’ land property rights preferences and demonstrates that farmers in the same communities may have different preferences for land property rights for two land uses (agriculture and forestry), and the influencing factors and their influence on land property rights preferences may also vary across land uses.
查看更多>>摘要：? 2021 Elsevier LtdThe main cognitive goal of this study is to diagnose and identify trends for agricultural land-use structure in the CEECs. Particular attention has been paid to the spatial differentiation characterising that structure, and to the significance that diverse kinds of conditioning have had in shaping it. Analysis has extended to the main structural elements that are grasslands and arable land, while the countries included are the CEECs acceding to the EU at different times, i.e. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia and Bulgaria. EUROSTAT and the FAO have been the main sources of relevant materials. The region under study emerges as very much differentiated in terms of structure relating to both grassland and arable uses. However, once the Eastern Bloc fell, all the CEECs experienced losses in area of grassland, as well as declines in the amounts of land growing perennial-type crops. Where key crops were concerned, the shares of industrial species have increased at the expense of the cultivation of vegetables, fruit and potatoes. Key factors underpinning observed trends for land use have been the privatisation and restitution of land, demographic processes in rural areas, domestic and EU agricultural policies, and agroecological conditions.
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