The paper explores the importance of formal and informal institutionsin setting attitudes of private owners in respect to responsible forest management. Using a qualitative approach, in form of a case study at the level of Suceava County, the study identifies intrinsic values assigned to the forestland leading to attitudes and motivations in the use of the forest resource. The interviewed forest owners have identified the regulatory framework as highly restrictive having as a result various patterns of behaviours from strict compliance with the rules to illegal activities.

During the past two decades agrarian (‘land and farm’) reforms have been widespread in the transition economies of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA), following earlier ones in Asia (China and Vietnam). However, independent family farms did not become the predominant sector in most of Eastern Europe. A new dual (or bi-modal) agrarian structure emerged, consisting of large farm enterprises (with much less social functions than they had before), and very small peasant farms or subsidiary plots.

A broad community of independent scientific researchers and scholars challenges recent claims of a consensus over the safety of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In the following joint statement, the claimed consensus is shown to be an artificial construct that has been falsely perpetuated through diverse fora. Irrespective of contradictory evidence in the refereed literature, as documented below, the claim that there is now a consensus on the safety of GMOs continues to be widely and often uncritically aired.

Vietnam introduced a Policy of Renovation (‘Doi Moi’ Policy) to restructure the economy in 1986. Under this policy, the Land Use Right Certificate was introduced as a form of tenure for agricultural land and urban land, according to the Land Laws of 1987 and 1993, respectively. However, by 2001, most properties and/or land in Vietnam still did not have a legal title. Although Vietnam's land reforms in the 1990s provided some of the weakest private rights among the transition countries, big cities like Ho Chi Minh City are presently homes to thriving housing markets.

Conceptualising the ongoing conflict over genetically modified vs. non-genetically modified crops in the frame of property rights, one can see that economic valorisation dynamics and aspirations are working on both sides, within two differently evolving agri-food paradigms, with biotechnology companies propagating intellectual property rights on seeds and crops within a productivist strategy, and with retailer chains, non-governmental organisations and farmer associations claiming generic names and labels as public property rights on identity-preserved crops within a consumerist strategy.

Land tenure and carbon rights constitute critical issues to take into account in achieving emission reductions, ensuring transparent benefit sharing and determining non-permanence (or non-compliance) liabilities in the context of REDD+ strategies and projects. This is so because tenure systems influence who becomes involved in efforts to avoid deforestation and improve forest management, and that land tenure, carbon rights and liabilities may be linked or divorced with implications for rural development.

The aims of this paper are to delineate some important topics in landscape economics, and also to put landscape policy in the perspective of the sustainable development. The research issue is about the relationships between the development paths and landscape changes, paved with examples of consensus, controversies, and conflicts.

This paper examines whether better property rights will increase joint productivity of agricultural and timber products in the Brazilian Amazon. Farrell output-based technical efficiency and technological progress measures are derived by using DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) for Amazonian counties and are regressed on non-discretional variables such as land title. Land title is found to significantly improve the technical efficiency.