The growing awareness of the negative impact of agriculture on the natural environment creates social expectation towards the reduction of this impact through the pro-environmental activities of farmers. Agri-environmental programmes are one of the key instruments of EU agricultural policy aimed at encouraging farmers to do so. Due to their voluntary nature and involvement of farmers in these activities, there has been a scientific discussion for a long time on the factors determining the participation of farmers in these programmes.

Although still at incipient stages in most areas, agricultural land markets in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are growing rapidly. While the literature on the region’s land markets is expanding, there has been little attention thus far paid to the drivers of land rental prices. We know quite little about whether and how land markets and land contracts respond to meso-scale factors such as spatial variations in land abundance, or to micro-level factors, such as household land endowments.

This study was undertaken to examine local perceptions of the impacts of small-scale tree plantations, notably of Acacia decurrens (J.C. Wendl.) Willd., in Ethiopia’s Upper Blue Nile Basin. A particular focus of our study was on the different dimensions of livelihood sustainability centering on economic, social, human, physical, and natural capital. The unprecedented expansion of small-scale tree plantations in degraded agricultural land can be attributed to farmers’ efforts to overcome the problems of limited income options and land degradation.