This working paper by Tikvah Breimer previously of the Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS) and Mark Napier previously of Urban LandMark, analyses the provision of core housing in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, specifically taking into account the residents' response to the state's delivery of core housing. It aims to explore to what extent the South African government's approach to providing large-scale housing addresses the relevant demands in the context of rapid urbanisation.

This case study draws on research that investigated the extensive informal land market in Luanda, Angola. It examines how urban land is transacted and the mechanisms by which it is secured and regulated. The case study is based on research undertaken by

This is the first report to be issued by the SACN on the ‘State of South African Cities’. The report takes a hard look at the forces that have transformed the country’s largest cities over the decade since 1994 and asks, if the current trends continue, whether cities can expect positive or negative things in the years to come. As part of the process of celebrating 10 years of democracy, the Office of the President has led a ‘Ten Year Review’ to assess what has been achieved over the last decade, and to define the strategic challenges for the future.

This paper presents an evaluation of the multi-source satellite datasets such as Sentinel-2, Landsat-8, and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) with different spatial and temporal resolutions for nationwide vegetation mapping. The random forests based machine learning and cross-validation approach was applied for evaluating the performance of different datasets.

Pollinators provide critical ecosystems services vital to the production of numerous crops in the United States’ agricultural sector. However, the U.S. is witnessing a serious decline in the abundance and diversity of domestic and wild pollinators, which threatens U.S. food security. In response, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has created the Pollinator Habitat Initiative (CP-42) to induce landowners to create quality habitat for pollinators by planting beneficial crops and wildflowers on Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)-eligible land.

The authors would like to correct the following errors in Figure 1 in [1]: In the original publication data source is wrong in “Figure 1. [...]

During the twenty-first century, large carnivores have increased in human dominated landscapes after being extinct or nearly extinct. This has resulted in increasing numbers of livestock killed by large carnivores. The intent of this paper is to give a land use-historical perspective on the recent livestock–carnivore conflict in boreal Sweden. More specifically we address: (1) depredation risks (livestock killed by carnivores) and (2) local knowledge of how to protect livestock from predation and whether it survived among pastoralists until the present.

The global food market makes international players intrinsically connected through the flow of commodities, demand, production, and consumption. Local decisions, such as new economic policies or dietary shifts, can foster changes in coupled human–natural systems across long distances. Understanding the causes and effects of these changes is essential for agricultural-export countries, such as Brazil. Since 2000, Brazil has led the expansion of soybean planted area—19 million hectares, or 47.5% of the world’s increase. Soybean is among the major crop commodities traded globally.

Landscape Character Assessment (LCA) has been introduced into Jordan through the MEDSCAPES project. The purpose of this project was to streamline landscape studies and integrate them into the land use planning practices in Jordan. Two areas within the Mediterranean and arid climatic zones of the country were chosen as test areas for the methodology. These were the Yarmouk River drainage basin in the northwest of the country and the Mujib River area in the west of Jordan within the Dead Sea basin.

Restoration of degraded landscapes through the implementation of soil and water conservation practices is considered a viable option to increase agricultural production by enhancing ecosystems. However, in the humid Ethiopian highlands, little information is available on the impact of conservation practices despite wide scale implementation. The objective of this research was to document the effect of conservation practices on discharge and sediment concentration and load in watersheds that have different soil depths and topography.

Asian dust events are massive meteorological phenomena during which dust particles from Chinese and Mongolian deserts are blown into the atmosphere and carried by westerly winds across Northeast Asia. Recently, there has been steady increase in both the frequency and the severity of Asian atmospheric dust events. Concern has been expressed regarding the potential health hazards in affected areas. The principal nature of the damage associated with Asian dust events differs between the emission (sandstorm) and downwind (air pollution) regions.

Resettlement resulting from dam construction has raised several concerns due to the negative aftermath impacts. In Ghana, the construction of three hydroelectric dams resulted in large-scale resettlements. Given the little experience that Ghana has in resettlements, it is necessary for a robust monitoring structure for resettlements. However, this was not available in the last resettlement undertaken for the Bui Dam Project. This paper aims at developing an assessment framework for monitoring resettlement activities on customary lands from a good governance perspective.