Recent studies assessing agricultural policies, including the EU’s Agri-Environment Scheme, have shown that these have been successful in attaining some environmental goals. In Finland, however, the economic situation of farms has dramatically fallen and hence, the actions do not result in social acceptability. Sustainable intensification is a means to combine the three dimensions of sustainability: environmental, economic and social. Here we introduce a novel land use optimization and planning tool for the sustainable intensification of high-latitude agricultural systems.

Despite a growing recognition of the importance of social learning in governing and managing land use, the understanding and practice of learning has received limited attention from researchers. In global environmental programs and projects aimed at supporting sustainable land use in developing countries, learning is often promoted but without explicit learning goals. The focus may be on capacity building and community participation, and on testing policy tools, rather than on collaborative social learning.

Brazil’s Soy Moratorium solidified the world’s largest traders’ commitment to stop soybean purchases from production areas deforested after July 2006. The aim was to remove deforestation from the soybean supply-chain and halt one of the main drivers of forest loss in the Amazon biome. In this study, we investigated changes in deforestation at the property-level for the period 2004 to 2014.

The scholarly debate around ‘global land grabbing’ is advancing theoretically, methodologically and empirically. This study contributes to these ongoing efforts by investigating a set of ‘small-scale land acquisitions’ in the context of a recent boom in banana plantation investments in Luang Namtha Province, Laos. In relation to the actors, scales and processes involved, the banana acquisitions differ from the state-granted large-scale land acquisitions dominating the literature on ‘land grabbing’ in Laos.

Cash crops have kept expanding at an accelerating rate across the globe during the last decades. It therefore requires elaborate efforts to examine the socioeconomic and ecological consequences of cash crop cultivation. With a case of the Hangzhou region in subtropical China, this paper investigated the dynamic patterns of four cash crop types (tea, fruit, mulberry and nursery) at town level by using aerial photos; and then quantified the subsequent socioeconomic and ecological consequences using spatial regression.

The construction of consistent time series of land use presents a key challenge when accounting for elective land use-based activities under the Kyoto Protocol (wetland drainage and rewetting (WDR), cropland management (CM) and grazing land management (GM)), in which current land use-driven greenhouse gas emissions are compared to a reference situation in 1990. This case study is the first to demonstrate the feasibility of using high-resolution land-use proxies from different datasets for Kyoto accounting in a data-rich case study region in Germany.

IAI projects funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and Canada's IDRC included support of research in the La Plata Basin, which has experienced extensive land use changes. Projects examine the effects of hydrological and climate change on agriculture, as well as how land use feeds back into effects on regional hydrology and climate, both economically and socially. Several articles in this newsletter present results of these interactions, such as an economic analysis of flooding, effects on soil carbon stocks, and drivers of land use change.

Approximately 20% of novel emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) and 50% of emerging and re-emerging zoonotic diseases have been attributed to land-use change. It is a clear threat to global biodiversity and ecosystem services and a key driver of EIDs. The project investigates the mechanisms underlying disease emergence by assessing the impacts of land-use change, measured as forest fragmentation, on viral diversity and bat host assemblages.

Adaptation at Scale in Semi-Arid Regions (ASSAR) researchers collaborated to understand the complex changes and patterns in semi-arid vegetation and socio-ecological systems. Ecosystems were mapped using a cross-regional coarse scale study, relying on climate data to capture global and regional trends. Finest spatial scale mapping relied on LANDSAT to show changes in land use and land cover. Details of observed changes are provided for Botswana, Namibia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Mali, Ghana, West Africa, and India. Links to referenced studies are embedded in the report.

The paper provides a case study of the conversion of state land in the Commune of Limonade, from a community-controlled agricultural economy to a large-scale agro-export banana plantation called Agritrans. This study shows how repurposing state land may impact food security and social stability of peasant farmers. The Agritrans plantation, designed and implemented by Haitian businessman and current President Jovenel Moïse, is used as a blueprint for Haiti’s development future.

A severe outbreak of Côte d’Ivoire lethal yellowing disease (CILY) has been wreaking havoc throughout coconut farms since 2013. This study provides an analysis of crop-specific land use change, applying a multinomial probit model based on a theoretical land use model to predict the spatial distribution of land use within the department of Grand-Lahou in Côte d’Ivoire where coconut plantations have been devastated by CILY disease.

The study explores the relationship between decentralization and conflict, comparing two case studies in Cambodia and the Philippines. It addresses to what degree and in what ways decentralization influences conflicts that are related to natural resources management (NRM), especially where local institutions are often unrepresentative of, and unaccountable to local communities. In developing countries, the research indicates that sufficient time is an essential component for bringing about genuine and effective local governance, as well as being a means for averting conflict.