Much of the international commons literature reveals a decreased functioning of local traditional institutions that regulate natural resource harvesting. In South Africa, it is believed that the creation of new democratic structures at the end of Apartheid has contributed significantly to the deterioration in traditional resource regulation and this in turn has led to the extensive resource degradation seen in parts of the country. Many of these assertions, though, remain anecdotal in nature.

A collapsed incident occurred on 10 October 2016 in Wenzhou City, China, which resulted in 22 casualties and 6 injuries. Most of victims were migrant laborers (rural dwellers who move to urban for a temporary work), who rented apartments in these residential buildings, which were originally constructed by local rural residents. This case report investigates the collapsed incident as well as other similar previous incidents. From the perspectives of both social and technical aspects, this report analyzed the Chinese rural land use policy with relevant technical factors.

Context: The fundamental driving force of land use and land cover (LULC) change is related to spatial and temporal processes caused by human activities such as agricultural expansion and demographic change. Landscape metrics were used to analyze post-war changes in a rural mountain landscape, the protected area of Halgurd-Sakran National Park (HSNP) in north-east Iraq. Therefore, the present work attempts to identify the temporal trends of the most fragmented land cover types between two parts of the national park.

Resource-use decisions affect the ecological and human components of the coupled human and natural system (CHANS), but a critique of some frameworks is that they do not address the complexity and tradeoffs within and between the two systems. Land system architecture (LA) was suggested to account for these tradeoffs at multiple levels/scales. LA and landscape ecology (LE) focus on landscape structure (i.e., composition and configuration of land-use and land-cover change [LULCC]) and the processes (social-ecological) resulting from and shaping LULCC.

The food-biodiversity nexus is a concept that defines and characterizes the complex interactions between agricultural systems and biodiversity conservation. Here we use a social-ecological systems approach that combines fuzzy cognitive mapping and graph theoretic analyses to uncover system properties that determine food security and biodiversity outcomes at a landscape scale. We studied a rice-based agricultural landscape system situated in Mbeliling district of West Flores, Indonesia.

Tropical countries are now facing increasing global pressure to conserve tropical forests, while having to maintain cultivated lands (particularly shifting cultivation) for the subsistence of local people. To accomplish the effective conservation of tropical forests in harmony with subsistence shifting cultivation, we evaluated the influence of shifting cultivation on ecosystem services (i.e., biodiversity and carbon stock) at a landscape level based on three land-use scenarios.

In arid regions, oases ecosystems are fragile and sensitive to climate change, and water is the major limiting factor for environmental and socio-economic developments. Understanding the drivers of land use/cover change (LUCC) in arid regions is important for the development of management strategies to improve or prevent environmental deterioration and loss of natural resources.

The Chairperson went through the A-List and verified that the amendments had been effected in the Agrément South Africa Bill [B3B-2015]. Members moved to adopt the Bill, and it was adopted.

The Commission for Gender Equality presented on its proposed campaign called One Woman, One Hectare of Land’. The campaign aims to mainstream gender equality, for it was proposed that the State should allocate one hectare of land, for the growing of food, to the poorest rural female-run households. It was believed that this would help alleviate poverty and empower rural women. It was pointed out that where women had land, their families generally were better nourished, better educated and able to move on.

The Commission on Restitution of Land Rights (the Commission) presented its expenditure trends and financial and performance report for the 1st quarter of the 2015/16 financial year. The performance was fully described by noting the achievements and the targets. In the first quarter, there was a target to settle 92 land claims but the Commission settled 38. 57 land claims were finalised against a quarterly target of 74. Eight projects were approved, against a quarterly target of 12. From the 1998 land claims, 195 land claims were researched compared to the quarterly target of 532.

The Department of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) and the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) jointly presented on the implementation of the One District, One Agri-Park programme in the context of the framework of the rural economic transformation model.

The Deputy Minister tendered apologies on behalf of the Minister and the Director General for their absence due to other ministerial commitments.

The Commission on Restitution of Land Reform (Commission) briefed the Committee on responses to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) findings on systematic challenges affecting land restitution in South Africa. The brief focussed on the background of the SAHRC investigative hearing, summary of the findings of the SAHRC, strategic plan of the commission, and response on each finding and recommendations of the SAHRC.