In response to powerful trends in technology, resource and land supply and demand, socioeconomics and geopolitics, cities are likely to increase use of the subsurface in the near future. Indeed, the subsurface and its appropriate use have been put forward as being of crucial importance if we are to achieve resilient and sustainable cities.

The aim of the present study is to test empirically the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis for 42 Romanian counties over the 2000-2014 period. Specifically, we investigate the existence of an inverted U-shaped curve relationship between residential built-up land and economic development in a low-income EU country undergoing rapid and profound transition. We do so by making innovative use of spatial panel econometric techniques.

Most of the land in sub-Saharan Africa is governed under various forms of customary tenure. Over the past three decades a quiet paradigm shift has been taking place transforming the way such landl is governed. Driven in part by adaptations to changing context but also accelerated by neo-liberal reforms, this shift has created a ‘new’ customary tenure in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper reviews some of the evidence and analyses the ways in which this neo-liberalisation of customary tenure has been transforming relations of production and how land is governed in sub-Saharan Africa.

The presented paper synthesizes and reviews the history of Fist Nation land management, forming the background of three land management regimes types; the Indian Act land management (IALM), First Nations land management (FNLM) and frameworks of self-government land management (SGLM). The three regimes are compared to the Community Well-Being (CWB) index, being a measure of socio-economic development of communities across Canada.

Conservation Agriculture (CA) is advocated as an agricultural innovation that will improve smallholder famer resilience to future climate change. Under the conditions presented by the El Niño event of 2015/16, the implementation of CA was examined in southern Malawi at household, district and national institutional levels. Agricultural system constraints experienced by farming households are identified, and in response the technologies, structures and agency associated with CA are evaluated.

We assess the spatial and intertemporal variation in farmland prices using per hectare minimum willingness to accept (WTA) sales and rental (shadow) prices in Malawi. We use three rounds of nationally representative farm household panel data from the Living Standards Measurement Surveys (LSMS), collected in 2010, 2013 and 2016. The sample is split in quintiles based on distance from the nearest major city, building on the land valuation and transaction cost theory, and agrarian political economy perspectives on global and national land transactions.

Societal drivers including poverty eradication, gender equality, indigenous recognition, adequate housing, sustainable agriculture, food security, climate change response, and good governance, influence contemporary land administration design. Equally, the opportunities provided by technological development also influence design approaches. The Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) attempts to align both: the data model provides a standardised global vocabulary for land administration.

The dilemma between preserving farmland and urbanization has attracted many policymakers’ attention. One sound solution that has been practiced in several developed countries is the “transfer of development rights” (TDR). This study examines a specific TDR program in China—the Chongqing Land Quotas Trading program. We use a synthetic control method on the 2001–2014 statistics of 57 prefectures to quantitatively assess the program’s effect on farmland preservation and economic growth.

The main aim of this paper is to investigate the transformations of the Romanian agricultural paradigm under the domestic economic policy reforms. An econometric approach is adopted by analyzing the evolution of Romanian agriculture between 1960 and 2011 from the perspective of its implications on residential land economy. This methodological choice relies on its high degree of applicability and its ability to reveal the massive transformation of the Romanian agricultural paradigm during the period under focus.

Pastoralism faces diverse challenges, that include, among others, land tenure insecurity, that has necessitated the need to formalize land rights. Some governments have started regularizing rights for privately owned land, but this is complex to implement in pastoral areas where resources are used and managed collectively. Our aim was to assess how the scale of communal land tenure recognition in pastoralist systems may affect tradeoffs among objectives such as tenure security, flexibility, mobility, and reduction of conflicts.

Researchers and policy makers are increasingly looking at the drivers of forest recovery (or forest transition) for inspiration in their search for win-win solutions to deforestation. However, causal generalizations regarding forest transitions are subject to significant problems. First, forest transition theory (FTT), at least in its simplest renditions, tends to emphasize socially benign processes and fails to pay sufficient attention to the causal role—and social impacts—of negative (push) dynamics.

An urgent need to stop degradation is frequently cited as support for climate mitigation efforts involving forests. However, lessons learnt from social science research on degradation narratives are not taken into consideration. This creates a risk of problematic degradation narratives being used to legitimise forest carbon projects. This study examined a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) forest plantation in Uganda, where incomplete and partly contradictory evidence on land use change was interpreted in a way that overemphasised degradation.